Citizenship has been organised around territorial consolidation, historical cut-off dates and official documentation requirements that affect ethnic or religious minorities disproportionately. These mechanisms do not operate at the margins of the state; rather they define its boundaries.
Keywords: Colonialism, statelessness, Myanmar, India, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka
Statelessness in Myanmar, India, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka is rooted in the region’s legal and political history and the impact of British colonialism.
During the 19th and 20th centuries until the end of World War II, Britain controlled the territories of British India—including Burma (now Myanmar), what is now the state of Pakistan and Sri Lanka (then Ceylon). The Partition of British India in 1947 displaced an estimated 15 million people across newly-drawn borders. Pakistan emerged as a new nation comprising West Pakistan and East Pakistan (which became Bangladesh in 1971). Burma and Sri Lanka both gained independence from Britain in 1948.
Citizenship laws in the newly independent nations were drafted in the shadow of these ruptures. They privileged descent, domicile and documentary proof as markers of belonging. These developments are often presented as separate national crises, but when examined together, they reveal a structural pattern.
The transition from imperial subjecthood to national citizenship created new realities of national territory, classification and displacement. resulting in the production of statelessness.
The scope of the problem
International law defines a stateless person as someone ‘who is not considered as a national by any State under the operation of its law,’ as set out in the 1954 Convention relating to the Status of Stateless Persons. The right to nationality is recognised in Article 15 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and is further reinforced by the Convention on the Rights of the Child, which obliges states to ensure that children acquire a nationality where they would otherwise be stateless.
The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) estimates that there are more than 600,000 people in Myanmar’s Rakhine state who are stateless under the current citizenship law. More than 900,000 Rohingya have been forced over the border to Bangladesh to escape violence in Myanmar. By the end of 2024, UNHCR reported more than 1,005,000 stateless people in Bangladesh alone. In the Indian state of Assam, almost two million people have been left out of the state-run National Register of Citizens and are at risk of statelessness. Sri Lanka has made significant inroads in resolving the status of 300,000 Tamils of Indian origin within its borders, but historical stateless has caused continuing marginalisation.
The UNHCR has consistently cautioned that global and regional statelessness figures are known to be under reported because many states lack comprehensive identification procedures which do not fully capture populations without effective nationality. The documented numbers therefore represent a minimum baseline rather than a comprehensive measure of statelessness.
The Colonial inheritance: Territorialisation, classification and exclusion
Modern citizenship regimes in India, Sri Lanka, Myanmar and Bangladesh were shaped within the administrative logic of British imperial rule. Colonial governance reorganised political authority through territorial consolidation, bureaucratic centralisation and systematic classification. As historians Sugata Bose and Ayesha Jalal, Bernard Cohn and Partha Chatterjee demonstrate in different ways, empire did not simply rule over society. It reordered it.
Through national censuses and related administrative practices, fluid social identities were converted into fixed categories. Individuals’ relationships to the state were required through documentation. This classificatory logic was based on new territory and movement within empire was reframed as cross-border migration. Such mobility, however, was not simply voluntary but was shaped by colonial labour regimes, administrative controls and episodes of displacement that structured and, at times, compelled movement across imperial space.
Colonial rule had embedded documentary proof as a condition of recognition. Revenue settlements, registration systems and administrative reporting privileged written evidence of status and residence. As political scientist Niraja Gopal Jayal observes in the Indian context, postcolonial citizenship would be structured around similar tensions between formal legal status and documentary verification. Sociologist William Roger Brubaker’s broader analysis of citizenship underscores that such regimes reflect durable state traditions concerning membership and nationhood.
By the early twentieth century, two features were firmly entrenched. Belonging was imagined in territorially bounded terms and recognition was mediated through classification and documentation. Imperial subjecthood had once provided a broad status across territories, but independence narrowed that status into national citizenship while retaining the administrative apparatus.
The production of statelessness was inherited from colonial structures and reactivated within a sovereign state framework. The transition from empire to nation did not dismantle the classificatory state, rather, it nationalised it. The following case studies illustrate how these inherited structures shaped postcolonial citizenship regimes in Myanmar, India, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka.
Myanmar: Race, colonial migration and the Rohingya
Myanmar’s contemporary citizenship regime is rooted in its colonial reorganisation under British rule. Burma was incorporated into British India between 1824 and 1937, during which labour migration from the areas of Bengal into Arakan increased within the imperial jurisdiction. Movement across the Bay of Bengal was not treated as foreign migration under empire.
After independence in 1948, citizenship law increasingly tied nationality to officially recognised ethnic membership. The 1982 Citizenship Law formalised a tiered structure of citizenship restricted to ‘national races’ whose ancestors were considered to have settled in Burma before 1823. The Rohingya were excluded from this list. As a result, large numbers were denied full citizenship and access to documentation.
Scholars and human rights bodies have emphasised that Myanmar’s citizenship framework institutionalises exclusion through ancestry-based criteria rather than through administrative oversight. The Institute on Statelessness and Inclusion similarly notes that the Citizenship Law embeds ethnic recognition as the gateway to nationality, producing structural statelessness for unrecognised groups.
Although Rohingya families have lived in Rakhine State for generations, the requirement to prove ancestral presence prior to 1823 imposes a burden that is often impossible to meet. Colonial-era classifications are thus retroactively mobilised to deny contemporary belonging. Under British rule, administrative practices such as the census and ethnographic surveys sought to categorise populations into fixed ‘ethnic races’, transforming fluid and overlapping identities into rigid, hierarchical classifications. These categories were subsequently inherited and reworked by postcolonial Myanmar, most notably in the identification of ‘national races’, which continues to determine access to citizenship and exclude communities such as the Rohingya.
Myanmar illustrates how colonial migration, racial categorisation and postcolonial territorial nationalism converge. A population that moved within imperial space was later redefined as external to the nation. Statelessness in this context is produced through law. It arises from a citizenship regime that ties membership to recognised ethnicity, territorial history and documentary proof.
India: Documentation, partition and the politics of suspicion
In India, the politics of migration and citizenship unfolded within a state already accustomed to counting, classifying and territorially anchoring populations. India’s formal citizenship framework took shape in the immediate aftermath of Partition. The creation of India and Pakistan in 1947 displaced approximately 15 million people across newly demarcated borders. The Constitution of India, adopted in 1950, addressed citizenship through provisions on domicile, migration and descent, reflecting the upheaval of territorial rupture. Citizenship was therefore tied not only to birth and ancestry but also to movement during a defined historical period. Citizenship became linked to historical presence within bounded territory.
Recent scholarship, including that of constitutional law and human rights scholar Mohsin Alam Bhat, has demonstrated how processes such as the National Register of Citizens and the Citizenship Amendment Act operationalise religious identity in determining belonging. These mechanisms distinguish between ‘persecuted minorities’ and ‘illegal migrants’ along explicitly religious lines, thereby embedding differential access to citizenship within the legal framework itself. Religious identity functions as an axis of exclusion, closely tied to bureaucratic systems that determine citizenship through documents, administrative discretion, and inherited classifications. In practice, these processes have disproportionately impacted Muslim communities, particularly in Assam, where large numbers of individuals were excluded from the NRC on the basis of documentary deficiencies. The Citizenship Amendment Act, by offering a pathway to citizenship for non-Muslim groups while excluding Muslims from its ambit, further reinforces this asymmetry. Rather than operating independently, it is mediated through colonial and postcolonial structures that render certain populations persistently suspect and vulnerable to statelessness.
In Assam, debates over cross-border movement from East Pakistan (Bangladesh) intensified in the late twentieth century. The Assam Accord of 1985 fixed 24 March 1971 as the cut-off date for identifying ‘foreigners’ in the state which has led to the exclusion of large numbers of individuals from the citizenship register, with many subsequently facing detention, appeals processes, or ongoing uncertainty regarding their legal status.
This logic culminated in the updating of the National Register of Citizens. Supervised by the Supreme Court of India, the final list published in August 2019 excluded approximately 1.9 million applicants. Those excluded were required to pursue appeals before specialised tribunals. The process relied heavily on documentary proof linking applicants or their ancestors to official records predating 24 March 1971. For many rural residents, and particularly for women, such documentation was difficult or impossible to produce. Minor discrepancies in spelling or age were sufficient to trigger rejection. The burden of proof rested on the individual.
India does not formally recognise statelessness within domestic law. Yet prolonged exclusion from citizenship registers produces a condition of legal uncertainty. Individuals excluded from the National Register of Citizens are neither automatically deported nor recognised as secure citizens. Concerns regarding detention and procedural fairness have been documented by human rights organisations.
India’s citizenship regime thus reflects the colonial redrawing of territorial boundaries combined with a bureaucratic insistence on documentation. As Niraja Gopal Jayal argues, Indian citizenship has long been shaped by the tension between formal status and documentary verification. The National Register of Citizens illustrates how belonging is anchored to a historical cut-off date and mediated through paper. Migration that once occurred within imperial space is reframed as cross-border infiltration.
Bangladesh: Liberation, linguistic nationalism and legal limbo
Bangladesh emerged as an independent state in 1971 after a war of liberation from Pakistan. The redefinition of national identity after 1971 was influenced by a colonial administration that had already tied language, community and territory to citizenship. Determinations of belonging were mediated through administrative recognition, documentation and political allegiance, rather than through residence alone. This negatively effected the Urdu-speaking community commonly referred to as ‘Biharis’.
Many Urdu-speaking minorities had migrated from Bihar to East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) after Partition in 1947. During the 1971 war, sections of this community were perceived as having supported Pakistan. After independence, they were labelled as ‘stranded Pakistanis’ and confined to camps across Bangladesh. For decades, many lived without effective recognition as Bangladeshi nationals and without access to Pakistani citizenship. Without citizenship documents, camp residents faced barriers to education, employment and political participation. Although Pakistan’s Citizenship Act of 1951 remained formally applicable, its implementation in relation to Biharis was inconsistent and shaped by perceptions of political loyalty and linguistic affiliation.
In 2008, the High Court Division of the Supreme Court of Bangladesh affirmed that members of the Urdu-speaking community born after 1971 were citizens of Bangladesh and entitled to voter registration. The ruling clarified that prolonged administrative exclusion could not override constitutional guarantees. While it marked formal recognition, socio-economic marginalisation persists.
Bangladesh also hosts a large Rohingya population displaced from Myanmar. Although the state has provided refuge, it has not established a pathway to citizenship, maintaining that long-term resolution lies in repatriation. A substantial displaced population therefore remains without nationality within Bangladeshi territory, though the primary legal exclusion originates in Myanmar.
Bangladesh’s experience illustrates how post-independence nation-building can generate internal categories of exclusion. Statelessness here reflects both colonial inheritances and the postcolonial state’s effort to define the contours of the national community.
Sri Lanka: Plantation labour and post-independence exclusion
Sri Lanka’s citizenship crisis emerged soon after independence in 1948. Colonial governance had administratively separated plantation labour from other populations through registration, estate-based residence and ethnic classification. Independence converted these administrative distinctions into criteria for citizenship.
Under British rule during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Ceylon’s plantation economy relied heavily on labour recruited from southern India. These Indian-origin Tamil workers were employed primarily on tea estates in the central highlands. Within the imperial framework, their movement was internal to empire. They were British subjects circulating within colonial territory.
Independence transformed this legal position. The Ceylon Citizenship Act of 1948 introduced stringent requirements relating to paternal descent and prolonged residence. Many plantation Tamils lacked formal birth registration, land ownership records or documentary proof of ancestry. As a result, an estimated 700,000 individuals were rendered stateless in the years following independence.
Subsequent legislation, including the Indian and Pakistani Residents (Citizenship) Act of 1949, further restricted access to citizenship for Indian-origin residents. Stateless plantation workers lost voting rights and political representation.
In the decades that followed, bilateral agreements between India and Sri Lanka sought to resolve the situation. The Sirima–Shastri Pact of 1964 and subsequent arrangements provided for repatriation to India or the granting of Sri Lankan citizenship. Implementation, however, was gradual and uneven, and many individuals remained in prolonged legal uncertainty.
Legislative reforms in the early 2000s, including the Grant of Citizenship to Persons of Indian Origin Act, 2003, formally recognised the remaining stateless plantation Tamils as Sri Lankan citizens. While this marked legal resolution, the episode remains one of the most significant instances of postcolonial statelessness in South Asia.
Sri Lanka illustrates how independence functioned as a moment of boundary-making. A population integrated into the colonial economy was reclassified within a narrower national framework. Documentary proof of descent became central in a context where systematic record keeping had been limited. Statelessness here was not the product of administrative omission. It was generated through the deliberate redefinition of membership at the moment of state formation.
Conclusion: Statelessness as structure, not exception
Statelessness in Bangladesh, India, Sri Lanka and Myanmar is often treated as an exceptional condition affecting marginal populations. Yet the cases examined here suggest something more structural. Across different political contexts, citizenship has been organised around territorial consolidation, historical cut-off dates and official documentation requirements that affect ethnic or religious minorities disproportionately. These mechanisms do not operate at the margins of the state; rather they define its boundaries.
Independence did not simply produce new national communities. It required the narrowing of membership within fixed borders. Belonging became conditional upon proof of ancestry, residence and recognition by the state. Where populations could not satisfy these criteria, exclusion followed.
Mobility that once occurred within imperial space was recast as foreign intrusion. Communities with layered migratory histories were required to demonstrate rootedness through documentation that may not exist. Ethnic and linguistic recognition became the gateway to formal membership. Statelessness, in this context, is not an administrative oversight. It is a predictable outcome of citizenship regimes structured around verification and territorial closure.
Understanding statelessness in the region therefore requires rethinking how modern citizenship operates. Citizenship exposes how legal membership, far from being neutral, is shaped by inherited institutional logics that continue to define who can belong within the nation and on what terms.
Image: Anti Citizenship Act protestors in a street in Chandmari, Guwahati. Credit: WikiCommons/Ankur Jyoti Dewri.
