Gendered Citizenship in India Participation and Protest as Acts of Care in the anti-Citizenship Amendment Act/National Register of Citizens movement
Year: 2025
Type: dissertation
Abstract: What is our understanding of a ‘women’s movement’? Is it a movement for women by everyone/ a movement by everyone for women/ a movement for women by women/ or all of the above? The existing hetero-patriarchal, nation-state model creates a sociopolitical imaginary where “women’s issues” are feminised; and “national issues” that are matters of greater inclusivity, diversity, and generality are masculinised. This reinstates the framing of citizenship, religious freedom and resource politics as affairs of greater concern, hence masculine; while sexual/domestic violence and reproductive rights are considered specific, and therefore feminine. My research uses the women-led anti Citizenship Amendment Act/National Register of Citizens (anti-CAA/NRC) movement in India to challenge this imaginary. It is structured around a triangular theoretical framework comprising Citizenship, Political Participation, and Social Movements, held together by a Politics of Care. Using in-depth interviews with protestors from the Northeast Indian city of Guwahati and the national capital city of Delhi, it posits that the liberal definition of citizenship fails to capture the lived reality in postcolonial democracies. Instead of treating care as a discrete theme, I approach it as the connective tissue – an epistemic and affective force that links how citizenship is lived, how participation is enacted, and how resistance is sustained. Across both field sites – Delhi and Guwahati – this model allows for a comparative reading of feminist dissent that foregrounds the everyday labour and solidarities that constitute political life from the margins. This thesis, therefore, utilises a historically discrete moment in contentious politics to contribute to the discourse on gendered citizenship in South Asia.
Author: Ghosh, Kusumika
Language: English
Subfield: Sociology and Political Science
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W7112876376