Subject and citizen: the ‘Sikkim Subject’ in Indian democracy

ABSTRACT The paper deals with the empirical category of Sikkim Subject, now a special category of Indian citizens. It traces the path of the citizenship project in Sikkim, which remained insulated from the processes of India’s citizenship regime from 1975. The paper further analyses evolving citizenship discourse from the framework of acquiring citizenship through the incorporation of foreign territories by India after the commencement of the Indian Constitution, 1950, and the Indian Citizenship Act, 1955. One such encounter, the Sikkim Citizenship Order of 1975, highlights the evolving tensions associated with the practical imperatives of Indian citizenship often exacerbated by anti-immigrant movements in parts of North East India. The paper argues that Indian citizenship, liberal in its foundations, which situates individual equality as the unit of citizenship analysis converge with the differentiated model of citizenship with group and community-cultural rights in a historical specificity in Sikkim.