Majoritarian project sees a backdoor opening

With the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020, two of the most controversial legal instruments in India’s recent history—the National Register of Citizens (NRC) and the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA)—appeared to fade from public view.

The country’s attention, quite rightly, shifted to healthcare collapse and economic despair. Yet, the ideology underpinning these exclusionary measures, deeply embedded in the Hindutva vision of the BJP and the Sangh Parivar, has not withered.

Instead, it has returned in more insidious forms, cloaked in bureaucratic and, ostensibly, neutral exercises that now threaten to upend the very idea of citizenship and belonging in India.

The NRC-CAA duo marked a dangerous shift in Indian constitutional jurisprudence. For the first time, religion was introduced as a determinant
of citizenship under the CAA, undermining the secular bedrock of the
Indian Constitution.

In tandem, the NRC sought to place the burden of proof for citizenship on individuals, many of whom lack comprehensive documentation due to poverty, displacement or illiteracy. The result was a system that placed millions, especially Muslims, at risk of being rendered stateless in their own country.

While the pandemic momentarily stalled this communal citizenship reconfiguration, the Indian state appears to have since adopted more indirect, yet equally damaging, methods to pursue the same agenda.

In Assam, mass eviction drives have disproportionately targeted Bengali-origin Muslims, particularly Miya Muslims, who are long-standing residents but are nevertheless branded “illegal encroachers”. In Bihar, the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls has quietly transformed a routine democratic exercise into a de facto NRC—one lacking legal sanction.

The Bihar SIR, ostensibly a voter roll “clean-up”, has created an onerous documentation burden that risks disenfranchising vast numbers of poor, migrant and Muslim voters.

The shift from self-declaration—previously accepted under electoral regulations and by the Supreme Court—to stringent documentation verification marks a dangerous new normal. This shift is not a mere bureaucratic reform; it is a reconstitution of who is allowed to participate in India’s democracy.

The consequences are grave. With migrants constituting nearly 20% of Bihar’s population, and the poor often lacking stable documentary records, large swathes of the electorate may find themselves arbitrarily excluded.

Recent analysis by Scroll.in shows that Muslim-dominant areas trail in filling enumeration forms; six of the state’s 10 districts with the biggest share of Muslim population also have the highest number of pending forms. What we are witnessing is demographic engineering by stealth—a subtler, paper-based gerrymandering that disempowers the most vulnerable in society under the guise of procedural legitimacy.

The implications, however, go far beyond Bihar. Officials have hinted that similar “revisions” are planned in other states, including Assam, West Bengal, and Tamil Nadu, creating a template for exclusion with nationwide resonance.

Meanwhile, Assam has seen a brutal acceleration of state-led evictions, largely targeting Muslim families who have occupied land for decades.

The government justifies these actions by invoking claims of encroachment on “government land”, but such claims ignore the constitutional and legal protections for shelter and livelihood.

The notion that land ownership is proven solely through paperwork discounts the historical and social realities of settlement, especially in a state
repeatedly battered by river erosion and displacement. That bulldozers arrive without adequate notice or avenues for legal redress makes a mockery of due process.

The 2021 Darrang eviction, where police fired upon unarmed, landless peasants, including a child, remains etched in public memory as a chilling reminder of the state’s capacity for violence in the name of legality.

Recent evictions in Uriamghat, displacing over 1,400 Muslim families and razing settled neighbourhoods, reflect the same disregard for human dignity.

These are not isolated administrative actions—they are part of a systematic policy of de-citizenisation and marginalisation.

Further, the selective use of state machinery to harass Muslim communities—whether through arbitrary evictions, arrest campaigns in the name of child marriage, or coercive documentation exercises—shows a pattern of governance designed to exclude. This aligns seamlessly with the BJP’s larger political playbook, which includes the CAA, the abrogation of Article 370 in Jammu and Kashmir, and the demolition drives in BJP-governed states such as Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh.

Fundamental rights to shelter, livelihood, and democratic participation are being hollowed out for marginalised communities, particularly Muslims, through the combined force of majoritarian ideology and administrative
coercion. This is not merely a violation of individual rights—it is an assault on the Constitution’s vision of pluralism and equality.

In this climate of creeping authoritarianism and systemic exclusion, the onus lies squarely on the Supreme Court of India.

It must not only enforce its own judgments against illegal demolitions but also urgently hear and decide the long-pending batch of petitions challenging the constitutionality of the CAA.

The court must clarify, unequivocally, that citizenship in India cannot be determined by religion, nor denied due to the absence of documents that millions—due to social and economic marginalisation—simply do not possess.

Moreover, the court must strike down the unconstitutional voter verification practices that convert routine electoral processes into tools of disenfranchisement. It must reassert the principle that democratic rights flow from residence, participation and belonging—not from the vagaries of a bureaucratic paper trail.

India is at a constitutional crossroads. If the judiciary fails to act decisively, the slow-burning erosion of citizenship and democratic rights may soon become irreversible. What is at stake is not merely the fate of marginalised communities in Assam or Bihar, but the foundational promise of Indian democracy. A republic that denies its own people the right to belong has already begun to forget what it means to be a nation.

(The writer is an assistant professor with the Department of Professional Studies, Christ University, Bengaluru)

The views expressed above are the author's own. They do not necessarily reflect the views of DH.