ABSTRACT
This article explores how postcolonial states in South Asia employ citizenship law as an instrument of ‘legal violence’. It argues that India, Myanmar, and Bangladesh have repurposed the colonial legacies of classification, division, and bureaucratic control to disenfranchise and marginalise certain groups. Taking inspiration from critical legal studies and postcolonial theories, this article demonstrates that law, commonly presented as neutral and objective, is a political instrument with the power to suspend rights and reinterpret identity and belonging. Three different and yet interlinked forms of legal violence have been identified. In India, procedural violence takes the form of legal instruments such as the National Register of Citizens and Citizenship Amendment Act, which together have been deliberately designed to exclude Muslims from their status and rights as citizens. In Myanmar, annihilative violence is institutionalised via the 1982 Citizenship Law, which reduces the Rohingya to a state of non-citizenship and, in formal ensure, brings statelessness and persecution. In Bangladesh, attritional violence is experienced by the marginalized minorities in terms of administrative neglect. Together, these cases help to reveal how postcolonial citizenship regimes recycle colonial logics, produce statelessness, and undermine inclusive democracy.
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