The Great War and a ‘Proper’ Passport for the Colony

Border-Crossing in British India, c.1882–1922

Bibliographic Data

ID8961364
AuthorsRadhika Singha (Jawaharlal Nehru University, corresponding author)
Year2013
Volume50
Issue3
Pages289-315
Publication date2013-07-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueThe Indian Economic & Social History Review (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0019-4646 • E-ISSN: 0973-0893
PublisherSAGE Publishing (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1177/0019464613494621
OpenAlexW2057007117
LanguageEN
Citations received16
References cited18

Racial controls on Indian migration to the British Dominions can explain only some features of the compulsory passport regime as it crystallised in India during the Great War. The streaming of population movement across India’s borders was shaped by regional geo-political imperatives as well. While race issues certainly haunted the Indian intelligentsia’s stance on border management, its positions were also shaped by the class and gender parameters in which it cast citizenship. Both the colonial regime and the Indian intelligentsia conceived of the passport, for different reasons, not just as a document of identity and nationality but also as a civic testimonial which only some kinds of Indians were qualified to hold. Behind the seeming homogeneity of the ‘international’ form of the passport were accommodations to ‘local’ colonial protocols of recording and attesting identity, and keeping ‘undesirables’ under surveillance. However the new British Indian passport regime bore some trace also of the trans-national constituencies which intervened in the new order of travel being shaped by the Euro-American world

Citizenship · Colonialism · Genealogy · Geography · Intelligentsia · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Population · Sociology · Colonial History and Postcolonial Studies · Demography · History · Law · Legal and cultural studies analysis · Socioeconomic Development in Asia

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