The democratic process in Bihar has been dealt a shock. The Election Commission of India (ECI) has announced that only those who can prove their citizenship will be allowed to vote in the forthcoming Assembly elections.
There is nothing wrong with re-stating the well-known constitutional principle that only citizens can vote. However, the way in which citizenship is to be established, and the list of documents required, would lead not to a vote by all citizens, but to disenfranchisement, especially of underprivileged citizens. What is, in principle, an inclusionary idea – namely, citizenship – will, in practice, become an exclusionary device.
To understand the significance of the Bihar shock, it will be helpful to turn to history and comparison.
Citizenship and subjecthood
In modern political literature, a great distinction has always been drawn between subjects (praja) and citizens (nagrik). Subjecthood marked the polities of the pre-modern era, though it managed to bleed into modern times as well. Kings had subjects, whose privileges and entitlements depended on royal blessings (raja ki kripa).
In contrast, born with the American and French Revolutions of the late 18th century, citizenship is a fundamentally modern concept. In principle, citizenship stands for membership in a political community and the rights that come with it. Citizenship rights do not depend on royal wishes. Citizenship is inclusionary and equalising, whereas subjecthood was exclusionary, as it came with a diverse set of privileges for different classes of people.
In the 20th century, when more and more modern polities became democratic (though not all did), voting increasingly became a citizenship right without any distinctions of class, ethnicity, or gender. Universal franchise became the lifeblood of democratic citizenship after the Second World War.
There have been instances in history when the inclusionary thrust of citizenship was severely curtailed. We need to keep such examples in mind as we think about the implications of what the ECI is trying to do in Bihar.
The best-known case of citizenship truncation, even crushing, is the American South during the 1880s and mid-1960s. After the Civil War between the largely Republican-led North and Democrat-led South ended in 1865 – in which the North was a victor – the 13th Amendment of the US Constitution abolished slavery, the 14th Amendment gave Black Americans citizenship for the first time, and the 15th Amendment gave Black adult males the right to vote. By 1873-74, 80-85 per cent of southern Blacks had registered to vote. After 1876, Democrats started returning to power in southern states. One of their biggest political objectives was to deprive Blacks of their voting rights.
How did they do it? By developing literacy tests, instituting poll taxes, and demanding various other documents. The literacy rate of Black Americans was very low, and their incomes were so meagre that they could not afford the poll taxes necessary for voting. Partly as a result, a vast majority of southern Blacks lost their voting rights, dropping from 84-85 per cent in the mid-1870s to a mere 4-5 per cent by 1904-05. Only in 1965 did universal franchise finally return to America, the vote truncation thus lasting nearly seven to eight decades.
Also read: ECI’s voter verification drive in Bihar is tailor-made to keep Dalits, Muslims, EBCs out
Similarities with Bihar
ECI’s plans for Bihar have quite a few similarities. The basic similarity – and a big surprise – is that, much like in the US, the onus of registering voters is now being placed on citizens, when it was always the responsibility of the government. People must supply proof of their citizenship to vote. The assumption of India’s founding figures was that the poor citizenry would not have the literacy, or wherewithal, to step forward and register for voting. The government would, therefore, use its great resources to reach out to the poor and include them in the electoral rolls.
The second similarity has to do with literacy. According to the last Census (2011), Bihar’s literacy rate was a mere 61.8 per cent (as against the all-India average of 73 per cent). Illiterate citizens, like many in Bihar, are unlikely to have documents ECI needs — birth certificates, passports, matriculation certificates – to prove their citizenship.
For those temporarily residing outside of the state with or without documents registered in Bihar, the requirement is that they download the partially pre-printed enumeration form from a computer, fill them out, and upload them on the ECI’s website or app. For millions of Bihar’s migrants – working as doormen, watchmen, and labourers in cities such as Delhi, Mumbai, Bengaluru, and Chennai – this requirement is absolutely forbidding.
Also read: The price of citizenship for Indians like Goa’s Joseph Pereira—uncertainty, red tape, tears
Weaponisation of citizenship
The problem is compounded by the fact that the Government of India issues no single citizenship document. Very few Indians, including the literate ones, have birth certificates or passports. Citizenship is inferred from a variety of documents. The long-lasting practice is that if citizens say they are citizens and would like to vote, they are presumed to be one unless challenged by others and issued a notification. To try to solve the problem of ineligible voters via a documentation process, for which citizens are wholly responsible, is to inflict exclusion. It is well known in social science research that the idea of documentary adequacy works against the poor and those who have low literacy (which they did not choose but had to suffer).
Which communities will be disenfranchised as a result of this exercise? Most of Bihar’s poor are Dalits, Muslims, and lower OBCs (The Adivasi community constitutes a very small share in Bihar). The electorate will be disproportionately based among the upper castes and upper OBCs. Voting data shows that these are also the communities that heavily vote for the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). Whether or not one can prove that the ECI wanted this to happen, the effect of the new documentary process will tilt the scales in favour of the BJP.
Fair and inclusive elections have been a well-known hallmark of Indian democracy. India needs to return to it. Disenfranchisement by institutional fiat is profoundly undemocratic. Citizenship, an inclusive political idea in principle, is being weaponised to exclude citizens in practice.
Ashutosh Varshney is Sol Goldman Professor of International Studies and the Social Sciences and Professor of Political Science at Brown University. Views are personal.
(Edited by Zoya Bhatti)