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Ranjan, A. (2025). Provincial Citizenship: Jharkhand Domicile, Migration and Politics of Scale. Studies successful Indian Politics, forthcoming (published online, September 2025)
Mobility successful its galore forms has agelong been considered halfway to the conception of advancement and the enactment of civilisation. Conversely, sedentarism—the signifier of surviving successful 1 place—emerges from the request to nexus property, descent, and lineage to the power of resources. World past is replete with the caravan trails of tribes, pastoralists, traders, and soldiers. This humanities discourse of mobility is reinforced by today’s planetary networks, which facilitate a caller satellite defined by the travel of not lone goods, services, and superior but besides labour. This, of course, alludes to globalisation—a unit that has affected our social, cultural, political, and economical standpoints, arsenic good arsenic our precise perspectives and identities.
A substance of concern
Given this backdrop, it’s funny that portion the thought of mobility has expanded, our carnal mobility often remains restricted, peculiarly erstwhile it comes to seeking livelihoods extracurricular one’s location State. Despite the precarity of migrant workers becoming painfully evident during the COVID-19 pandemic, Indian metropolises stay the astir coveted destinations for destitute agrarian workers from antithetic States.
More recently, successful the aftermath of the National Register of Citizens (NRC) updation and the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of Electoral Rolls, the mistreatment of migrant labour successful assorted cities has go a substance of nationalist statement and anxiety. While determination has been an upsurge of a media-fed ‘public mood’, the ‘public mind’ needs to beryllium nudged toward a deeper engagement with analyzable issues similar inter-state migration.
In this regard, it’s worthy reflecting connected provocative discussions successful world forums wherever caller insights, specified arsenic “provincial citizenship” (a word pitched by Alok Ranjan, a PhD campaigner astatine JNU), are sparking heavy reflection. Following Ranjan’s lead, it is meaningful to research the thought of inter-state migration for a broader audience, particularly for those who mightiness deliberation this contented lone concerns the straight affected oregon the policymakers tasked with providing relief.
Ranjan’s enactment reflects connected inter-State migration and however it has drafted a caller section successful the “politics of domicile” wrong India’s antiauthoritarian assemblage politic, though this operates lone astatine the provincial level. “Provincial citizenship” emerges from nativist authorities rooted successful an affectional belonging to a State, which gains contiguous leverage successful determination electoral politics. In the process, the entanglement of spatial identity, state of movement, and citizenship allows domicile to aboveground arsenic a caller class for governmental mobilisation. Crucially, these tendencies accentuate the value of States arsenic sites of citizenship, adjacent astatine a clip erstwhile a much inclusive, national-level citizenship is being emphasised arsenic the fulcrum of Akhanda Bharat (Undivided India).
Domicile arsenic a Political Instrument
Following Ranjan, we spot that a adjacent scrutiny of States similar Jharkhand, Jammu and Kashmir (J&K), and Assam tin assistance america recognize however domicile becomes a potent governmental instrument. In J&K, domicile policies were implemented aft the 2019 abrogation of its peculiar presumption arsenic a measurement of inclusive authorities to safeguard minorities (like the Valmikis, Gorkhas, and West Pakistan refugees). Jharkhand, however, represents a lawsuit wherever domicile was utilized to articulate majoritarian grievances against the perceived power of a number elite successful a State formed successful 2000. Backed by its unsocial history, the authorities of domicile successful Jharkhand departs from the norms seen successful Sixth Schedule regions. It tends to encompass the full State, superseding the nation’s national operation and questioning the nationalist citizenship rights guaranteed by Article 16(2) of the Indian Constitution.
Attaining statehood did not resoluteness sub-nationalist authorities successful Jharkhand. Instead, these sentiments were channelled into a antiauthoritarian authorities of domicile aft 2000. This modulation challenges the “one nation, 1 citizenship” ideal. Here, the conception of a azygous nationalist citizenship is undermined by the efficacy of the unofficially constructed thought of provincial citizenship, whose governmental value tin render the nationalist model inadequate.
Jharkhand’s acquisition besides suggests that conflicts betwixt the interests of interior migrants and the concerns of provincial citizenship cannot beryllium democratically adjudicated wrong the existing governmental structure, often requiring the Supreme Court’s intervention.
This “unofficial” provincial citizenship problematises the authoritative thought of a singular Indian citizenship. It creates a contention implicit definitions of ‘native’, ‘indigenous’, ‘Adivasi’, ‘local’, oregon ‘son of the soil’ that beryllium alongside the individuality of an Indian citizen.
The newness of an aged idea
The occupation of interior migrants successful provincial contexts is not new. Myron Weiner, successful his book Sons of the Soil: Migration and Ethnic Conflict successful India (1978), was possibly the archetypal to measure the societal and governmental consequences of interior migration successful States similar Maharashtra, Bihar, and Assam. More caller coinages similar “citizen-outsiders” (Roy 2010), “differentiated citizenship” (Jayal 2013), and “paused citizens” (Sharma 2024) “hyphenated nationality” (Sarkar 2025) person enriched our vocabulary for analysing this issue.
It is besides applicable to see the recommendations of the States Reorganisation Commission (SRC) of 1955. The members of the SRC anticipated the problems of favoritism and exclusion arising from domicile policies. They were greatly acrophobic astir these rules, uncovering them inconsistent with Articles 15, 16, and 19 of the Constitution and contrary to the precise conception of Indian citizenship. The members stated: “We bash not consciousness called upon to pronounce connected the purely ineligible aspects of these restrictions, but we person nary uncertainty whatsoever that their full effect is the nonstop other of what was intended by the Constitution” (SRC Report 1955, p. 230).
The SRC Report recommended that domicile rules should beryllium replaced by due Parliamentary legislation, informing that “Otherwise, the conception of a communal Indian citizenship would person nary meaning” (pp. 230-231). In galore respects, the conception of provincial citizenship echoes these decades-old warnings. Its newness lies successful however this conception has transcended the passivity of a written study to go an progressive and sedate reality.
(Swatahsiddha Sarkar teaches astatine the Centre for Himalayan Studies, University of North Bengal, Darjeeling, West Bengal)
