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The Spectrum of Citizenship in South Asian Borderlands book cover

1st Edition

The Spectrum of Citizenship in South Asian Borderlands

Edited By Gorky Chakraborty, Samik Roy Chowdhury Copyright 2027
168 Pages
by Routledge

This book examines how citizenship operates in the contested borderlands between India, Nepal, Myanmar, and Bangladesh, revealing a complex reality that defies conventional nation-state frameworks. By focusing on these reportedly porous regions where state authority proves inconsistent, the collection uncovers how cross-border mobility, intimacies, and connections generate anxieties and conflicts... Read more

Introduction: beyond the territorial jigsaw: locating citizenship and its adjacent spaces in South Asian borderlands

Gorky Chakraborty and Samik Roy Chowdhury

 

1. Contested beings: citizenship along the riparian zone in the India–Bangladesh borders

Hassan Momin and Gorky Chakraborty

 

2. Looking beyond the chicken’s neck: re-thinking the lives and connections of borderland citizens in the Darjeeling-Nepal border

Rahul Ganguly

 

3. Negotiating citizenship in carceral spaces: experiences of incarcerated Bangladeshi women

Mrinalini Subba

 

4. Citizenship anxiety and the politics of land ownership in the eastern Himalayas: the struggle of Nepalis in the Darjeeling hills

Biswanath Saha

 

5. The reluctant citizen: the nation, state and the citizen in India

Subhasri Ghosh, Samik Roy Chowdhury and Mrinalini Subba

 

6. Refugees and the state: India’s varying response to Myanmarese refugees in recent times

Pum Khan Pau

 

7. Rethinking citizenship and statelessness in South Asia through the Rohingya crisis

Sucharita Sengupta

 

8. Legacy of ‘exceptional’ citizenship: revisiting the debates and history of citizenship in post-colonial Assam

Binayak Dutta

 

9. Who are they? Deconstructing non-citizenship in India

Samik Roy Chowdhury, Dipesh Agarwala and Gorky Chakraborty

 

10. Afterword: reading the spectrum of citizenship: placing South Asia in the global discourse

Gorky Chakraborty and Samik Roy Chowdhury

 

Biography

Gorky Chakraborty is Faculty at IDSK, where he researches development-related issues in Northeast India. Some of his recent publications include Citizenship in Contemporary Times: The Indian Context (Routledge, 2023), Development and Sustainability: Perspectives from Northeast India (2024), Accumulation and Dispossession: Communal Land in Northeast India (Routledge, 2024), and Borderland Intimacies and Discontents: India's East and Northeast (2026).

 

Samik Roy Chowdhury is Senior Research Fellow at IDSK, where his work examines the intersection of citizenship and borderlands in East and Northeast India.

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