“NRC se Azadi”: Process, Chronology, and a Paper Monster

Abstract

This article considers the demands for azadi (freedom) from the National Register of Citizens (NRC) that were central to the protests that swept through India over 2019-2020. It does so by considering the processes through which such a gargantuan bureaucratic exercise would be executed as well as through a consideration of its attachment to the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA). This leads to a conceptualization of the NRC as a “paper monster” possessed of the power to divide and devour India. The article argues that the bureaucratic processes demanded by the NRC would greatly exacerbate the violence of paperwork that lies at the heart of the Indian state. The NRC will strengthen the longstanding dubiousness associated with all documents and can only culminate in the creation of an alternate paper-based reality of who really is an Indian.