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Abstract

In 2019, India made the unprecedented move of listing 1.9 million people in its northeast state of Assam as illegal migrants from Bangladesh in a new National Register of Citizens before passing the Citizenship (Amendment) Act, which overtly discriminates against the country’s Muslim minority. Drawing from ethnographic fieldwork, this paper investigates the reality of precarious citizenship under India’s increasingly anti-migrant regime, particularly for Bengali-speaking Muslims. Going beyond the predominant notion that illegal migrants acquire documentary citizenship through fraudulent means after crossing the porous border between India and Bangladesh, this essay reveals a reverse scenario: those living with citizenship rights and in a regular social world are subjected to the gradual process of detection, detention and ‘deportability’ in India. This paper employs the concept of precarious citizenship to unravel this complex and oscillating world of legality and illegality, citizenship and noncitizenship, and the predicaments of life as a Bengali-speaking Muslim in India.