The article argues that the specter of “potential foreigners” continues to play a role in how both countries determine citizenship policies. The article traces the development of citizenship legislation and policies in India and Burma from independence to the present, noting how both countries used ideas of the potential foreigner in their midst to craft their respective approaches to citizenship and national belonging. Increasingly fusing citizenship with ethnic and religious identities has important consequences in both states, evidenced by the genocidal violence against Myanmar’s Rohingya population and Modi’s Citizenship Amendment Act of 2019.
New publication: “The Specter of Potential Foreigners: Revisiting the Postcolonial Citizenship Regimes of Myanmar and India”
New research on Burma and India by Elizabeth Rhoads co-authored with Ritanjan Das at Leiden University, takes a comparative historical approach, tracing citizenship policies in both countries since Burma’s partition from British India in 1937.