Reimagining citizenship: The politics of India's amended citizenship laws

India's just-amended citizenship laws, the groundswell of ongoing protests against these amendments and their continued brutal repression by the state signal rapid political change and the making of a humanitarian emergency that warrants urgent attention. This project aims to ethnographically research the emergent reimaginations of citizenship in India through imminent official identification of citizens and ongoing protests against such mechanisms, By ethnographically researching the mechanisms through which people will be enumerated as citizens or excluded from the NRC, the project is an urgent response to the gap in our knowledge of official imaginations of citizenship that can only be accomplished within the next 12 months. By ethnographically researching the protests against India's amended citizenship laws as they unfold and before they are browbeaten into submission, the project is an urgent response to the limits in our understanding of oppositional imaginations of citizenship that will only be possible to achieve over the next few months. This research project provides the basis for longer-term research on the future of citizenship as democracies 'backslide', 'recede' and 'die' not only in India but elsewhere in the world.

Who will benefit from this project?
1). People likely to be excluded from the ambit of India's amended citizenship laws
2). Actors in civil society focused on addressing social exclusion, especially those protesting the new laws
3). UN agencies (UNICEF, ILO and UNDP); and
4). Development partners (World Bank and OECD).
5). Academic researchers involved in this project
6). Academic researchers researching themes social exclusion, urbanism, historical institutionalism, comparative politics,
ethnography and political aesthetics will particularly benefit from our research
8). Governments (national, State and municipal)

How will they benefit?
1). Enhanced appreciation of the ways in which people 'reimagine' citizenship
2). Improved understanding of how people protest exclusionary ideas of citizenship
3). "Sensory ethnography that research 'reimaginations of citizenship' that take into account not only what people see or hear, but what what they feel.
4). A larger research program will be developed to study reimaginations of citizenship under conditions of democratic 'decline', 'recession' and 'death'

What will be done to ensure that they benefit?
TThe analysis of our data will provide multimedia accounts of the imaginations of citizenship among people, their vision of the future, and the strategies they propose to achieve these. With their permission, we will provide these accounts to activists in civil society, politicians and municipal officials sympathetic to social inclusion, and practitioners in NGOs and foundations who might be interested in working with them. Such accounts will enable these stakeholders to understand people's exclusions better and to design their own programs so as to ameliorate their social exclusion and political marginalisation. The multimedia accounts will include not only a digital archive and a real-time catalogue of the process through which the Indian state will identify its citizens and people protest such legislation but also fifty testimonies, 20 transformative stories, six ethnographic films, six ethnographic poems, one visual essay and legal primers.

In the medium term, the qualitative datasets produced by the research will provide the basis for longer-term research on the future of citizenship as democracies 'backslide', 'recede' and 'die' not only in India but elsewhere in the world. By illustrating the threats to democratic citizenship (by official fiat) as well as commitments to renew such citizenship (by protestors' actions), the project will allow us to develop a comparative research program on the future of citizenship, democracy and liberalism in comparative perspective.

In the shorter term, we will establish an interactive project website to disseminate the core project findings, including the multi-media accounts noted above. The website will allow users to navigate about the project easily and thereby inform them about project progress. More importantly, the content of the website will present the human dimension of social exclusion and provide insights to the public on the 'hopes' harboured by socially excluded people. The researchers will maintain the website and upload content from their fieldwork on a regular basis. They will also invite their interlocutors to post blogs or notes on the website, expressing their 'hopes' for the 'future'. The website will enable the project to reach out to a wider public, thereby educating them about the ways in which people confront social exclusion with hope. members of the general public will also be invited to contribute their views and exchange notes with project participants. The website will be hosted by Centre for Equity Studies as part of their existing site so no further costs for establishing a website have been requested.