LEGAL VIOLENCE IN POSTCOLONIAL SOUTH ASIA: TYPOLOGIES OF EXCLUSION AND THE POLITICS OF CITIZENSHIP LAW

Morshed, Md. Tarik

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.

Keywords

References

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[1] Arendt, H. (1951). The origins of totalitarianism . Schocken Books.

[2] Ashesh, A., & Thiruvengadam, A. K. (2017). Report on citizenship law: India (GLOBALCIT Country Report No. RSCAS/GLOBALCIT-CR 2017/12). European University Institute. https://hdl.handle.net/1814/47124

[3] Asia Indigenous Peoples’ Pact et al. (2025, June 20). Urgent appeal regarding systemic racial discrimination against Indigenous Peoples in the Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT), Bangladesh (Submission to the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination [CERD])

[4] Bahn, D. (2019, August 23). Most people left out of NRC are suffering from trauma and humiliation, finds survey. The New Indian Express . https://www.newindianexpress.com

[5] Bauböck, R. (1999). Recombinant citizenship (IHS Political Science Series No. 67). Institute for Advanced Studies. https://irihs.ihs.ac.at/id/eprint/1225/1/pw_67.pdf

[6] Bhagat, R. B. (2006). Census and caste enumeration: British legacy and contemporary practice in India. Genus, 62 (2), 119–134. https://www.jstor.org/stable/29789312

[7] Bhattacharjee, M. (2024). Statelessness of an ethnic minority: The case of Rohingya. Frontiers in Political Science, 6, 1144493. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpos.2024.1144493

[8] Bhowmick, N. (2020, February 4). India’s new laws hurt women most of all . Foreign Policy. https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/02/04/india-citizenship-law-women/

[9] Bianchi, A. (2017). Critical Legal Studies and the New Stream. In International Law Theories: An Inquiry into Different Ways of Thinking (online ed., Chapter 7). Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198725114.003.0007

[10] Biswas, S. (2018). Gandhi, Ambedkar and British policy on the communal award. Studies in People’s History, 5 (1), 48–64. https://doi.org/10.1177/2348448918759867

[11] Bose, S., & Sarkar, S. (2023). Labour coercion and commodification: From the British Empire to postcolonial migration states. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 50 (3), 657–674. https://doi.org/10.1080/1369183X.2023.2269778

[12] Chakma, A. (Ed.). (2023). Human Rights Annual Report 2022 on Indigenous Peoples in Bangladesh: Women and Girls . Kapaeeng Foundation. https://doi.org/10.13140/RG.2.2.29271.24487

[13] Chatterji, J. (2007). The spoils of partition: Bengal and India, 1947–1967 . Cambridge University Press.

[14] Cheesman, N. (2017). How in Myanmar 'National Races' came to surpass citizenship and exclude Rohingya. Journal of Contemporary Asia, 47 (1), 1–24. https://doi.org/10.1080/00472336.2017.1297476

[15] Constituent Assembly of India. (1949, August 11). Constituent Assembly Debates: Volume 9 . https://www.constitutionofindia.net/debates/11-aug-1949/

[16] Dalrymple, S. (2025). Shattered lands: Five partitions and the making of modern Asia . HarperCollins.

[17] Das, H. (2024). Balancing heritage and citizenship: An analysis of Section 6A and the Assam Accord . White & Black Legal.

[18] Gravers, M. (2015). Disorder as order: The ethno-nationalist struggle of the Karen in Burma/Myanmar—A discussion of the dynamics of an ethicized civil war and its historical roots. Journal of Burma Studies, 19 (1), 27–78. https://doi.org/10.1163/22134379-12340035

[19] Hasan, M. T., & Sharmeen, S. (2023). Making of a capitalist frontier: Tobacco cultivation and changing agrarian relations in the Chittagong Hill Tracts, Bangladesh. Asian Anthropology, 22 (4), 255–274. https://doi.org/10.1080/1683478X.2023.2262292

[20] Hashmi, T. (2024). Biharis in Bangladesh: Organized elimination and marginalization of a community . In A. Ranjan, T. Hashmi, & M. Abbas (Eds.), The aftermath of the Bangladesh Liberation War of 1971: Enduring impact (Routledge). https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003463627-5

[21] Hossain, Z., & Billah, M. (2020). State of statelessness in Bangladesh: An overview . In South Asia State of Minorities Report 2019: Migrants, refugees and the stateless (pp. 15–31). South Asia Collective.

[22] Hussain, A. (2008). The end of Bihari statelessness. Forced Migration Review , 31, 18–19. https://www.fmreview.org/hussain/

[23] Judge, P. S. (2022). Citizenship and minorities in the Constituent Assembly debates: Making sense of the present. Sociological Bulletin, 71 (1), 7–23. https://doi.org/10.1177/00380229211063388

[24] Mawani, R. (2011). Legal violence: Immigration law and the lives of Central American immigrants. American Journal of Sociology, 116 (5), 1383–1429. https://doi.org/10.1086/663575

[25] Mawani, R. (2020). Postcolonial legal studies. In S. Stern, M. Del Mar, & B. Meyler (Eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Law and Humanities (online edn). Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780190695620.013.7

[26] Muquim, N. (2023). The Urdu-speaking community of Bangladesh: Forgotten denizens or putative citizens? 37 Emory International Law Review , 689

[27] Prasse-Freeman, E. (2023). Reassessing reification: Ethnicity amidst “failed” governmentality in Burma and India. Comparative Studies in Society and History, 65 (3), 670–701. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0010417523000075

[28] Quijano, A. (2000). Coloniality of power, Eurocentrism, and Latin America. Nepantla: Views from South, 1 (3), 533–580. https://doi.org/10.1515/9780822388883-009

[29] Restrepo, E. (2017). Coloniality of power. In International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences (2nd ed., Vol. 5, pp. 344–348). Elsevier. https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-08-097086-8.92037-9

[30] Rusconi, I. (2023, March 16). The Rohingya crisis in Myanmar: Analysing the use of citizenship status as lawfare . The Defence Horizon Journal. https://tdhj.org/blog/post/rohingya-myanmar-lawfare/?

[31] Sadiq, K., & Gerasimos, M. (2021). The postcolonial migration state. European Journal of International Relations , 27(4), 1001–1026. https://doi.org/10.1177/13540661211000114

[32] Saikia, Y. (2019, August 13). The National Registry of Citizens: Violating Muslims, violating humanity in Assam. Globalcit . https://globalcit.eu/the-national-registry-of-citizens-violating-muslims-violating-humanity-in-assam/

[33] Samarendra, P. (2011). Census in colonial India and the birth of caste. Economic & Political Weekly, 46 (33), 51–58. https://www.tamilnet.com/img/publish/2011/08/16430.pdf

[34] Saxena, S., & McClure, A. (2023). Law, courts, and constitutions in twentieth-century South Asia. Law and History Review, 41 (2), 241–251. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0738248023000093

[35] Shaikh, J. (2010). Democracy and the Recasting of Caste in India. India Review , 9 (4), 450–461. https://doi.org/10.1080/14736489.2010.523634

[36] Unger, R. M. (1983). The Critical Legal Studies Movement . 96 Harvard Law Review, 561–675. https://doi.org/10.2307/1341032

[37] Waller, R. (2020, December 28). Incompatible identities: Ethnicity, belonging, and exclusion in making Myanmar’s democracy . Modern Southeast Asia. Yale University. https://seasia.yale.edu

[38] Wilson, C. S., & Cella, A. S. (2022). Deconstructing the worldview of the Neo-Brandeisians through Marxism and Critical Legal Studies. George Mason Law Review, 29 (4), 961.