January 24, 2022

India Citizenship Act, 1955

Together with the Constitution of India (promulgated in 1949), the 1955 Citizenship Act defined the precise nature and bestowal of citizenship in the new postcolonial state of India. It determined that Indian citizenship could be acquired via birth, descent, registration, naturalization, and (crucially) incorporation of territory into the Indian state.

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Document Icon India Citizenship Act, 1955

List of reading

Anupama Roy, Mapping Citizenship in India (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010)

Haimanti Roy, “Paper Rights: The Emergence of Documentary Identities in Post-Colonial India, 1950-67,” South Asia 39, no. 2 (2016): 329 - 349

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