The privilege of the Indian passport (1947-1967)
Caste, class, and the afterlives of indenture in Indian diplomacy
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 3649331 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Kalathmika Natarajan (0000-0002-2535-1187, University of Exeter, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2023 |
| Volume | 57 |
| Issue | 2 |
| Pages | 321-350 |
| Publication date | 2023-03-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Modern Asian Studies (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0026-749X • E-ISSN: 1469-8099 |
| Publisher | Cambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1017/s0026749x22000063 |
| OpenAlex | W4285043853 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 15 |
| References cited | 11 |
This article examines the postcolonial Indian state's 20-year-long discretionary passports policy until 1967, often in collaboration with the British government in its efforts to limit growing numbers of Indian immigrants. While a vast scholarship has shown the racialized limits to mobility perpetuated by the passport and visa system against 'coloured immigrants', this article considers the Indian state's own restrictions over the emigration of a particular category of its 'undesirable' citizens. This passport regime was based on Indian diplomatic notions of the 'international' realm as one shaped by the journeys of migrants and imbued with discourses of indenturequacaste. The Indian state sought to prevent the mobility of 'lower' caste and class migrants who were deemed to be legatees of the dreaded 'coolie' and therefore unworthy of travelling abroad as representatives of India. Such a reading of the postcolonial Indian passport as a document of caste and class privilege goes beyond the existing literature which largely focuses on its use in the context of partition. In so doing, this article posits the histories and afterlives of indenture as a constitutive element in the making of Indian diplomacy, demonstrating that a focus on indenture facilitates a much-needed recovery of the narratives and euphemisms of caste in Indian diplomacy
Caste · Context (archaeology · Diplomacy · Immigration · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Privilege (computing · Scholarship · Sociology · State (computer science · Asian Geopolitics and Ethnography · Colonial History and Postcolonial Studies · Gender Studies · History · Law · Socioeconomic Development in Asia
Citizenship as bordering practice
Do good and talk about it”
How Britain’s efforts to launder inequality in citizen rights contributed to a forgotten Unga declaration
Marking Race
Paradox of Passports Privileges and Prejudices
Passport discrimination from the lens of critical phenomenological perspective
Brahmins and Balance of Power
From Colonial Subjecthood to Shared Humanity
Classical Realism and Indian Foreign Policy
Theorizing Foreign Policy
Subjects, aliens, and undesirables
Policy differentiation and the politics of belonging in India's emigrant and emigration policies
International Relations, Silent Erasure, and the Cruelty of Caste
Indian diaspora, caste and public diplomacy
Reproducing and reformulating categories of skill in regional and global migration governance
Global Migration, 1846–1940
Making and Unmaking of Strangers – The Komagata Maru Episode and the Alienation of Sikhs as Undesirable Persons
Immigration restriction
Imagining Communities Through Immigration Policies
A transnational history of immigration restriction
Subjects or Citizens? India, Pakistan and the 1948 British Nationality Act
The Desirable and Undesirable in the life of the Chief Immigration Officer in Cape Town, Clarence Wilfred Cousins, 1905–1915
Paper Rights
The Great War and a ‘Proper’ Passport for the Colony
Betwixt the Oceans
World-Menace
| Unique citing works | 15 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 5 |
| Citation span | 2023 - 2026 (4) |
| Citation velocity | current |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 15 |