Bordering through legal non-existence: the production of de facto statelessness among women and children through the National Registry of Citizens in Assam, India

This article applies a feminist bordering lens to examine the legal and administrative procedures through which an estimated 1.9 million residents of India's northeastern state of Assam have been excluded from the 2019 National Registry of Citizens (NRC). Since India's independence from Great Brittan, the colonial legacy of borders and national belonging have fuelled heated conflicts among the Assamese ethnic majority, Bengali-speaking Hindus and Muslims whose ancestors originated in what is now Bangladesh, Adivasi communities, (i.e., the region's original inhabitants), and the Indian government's authority to expel 'foreigners'. While the convergence of Hindu nationalism and Assamese ethnonationalism contributes to a citizenship crisis among people of Bengali heritage in Assam, we consider how bureaucratic requirements to verify citizenship reinforce racial, class, and patriarchal inequality for women and children from low-income communities who are at risk of de facto statelessness because they are not 'legible' as citizens in India.