When A Passport Is Not Proof Of Citizenship, Freedom Is At Risk

What happens when the state refuses to recognize its own documents?

Citizenship is the fundamental vertical relationship between the individual and the state. In India, the government has officially declared that a passport is not proof of citizenship, reducing it to a mere travel document. If the state will not recognize its own issued documents as proof of status, citizens are left vulnerable to arbitrary state power, forced to prove what the state itself has already verified.

Originally, citizenship signified a belief in certain liberal and republican ideas, with little to do with territory and exclusion. Today, it has become a tool of exclusion. In Assam, Foreigners' Tribunals reportedly denied citizenship to people despite some possessing as many as 15 documents. The judiciary has grown increasingly restrictive in this regard.

How have the courts shifted on passport evidence?

The Supreme Court's trajectory shows a steady march toward restriction. In the 1951 Shabbir Hussain case, involving a trader stuck in Lahore during Partition who returned on a temporary permit, the apex court refused to treat him as a Pakistani national. Similarly, in the 1960 Abdul Khader case, the court refused to treat Khader as a foreigner despite his Pakistani passport. Yet, by 1962, in Izhar Ahmad Khan, the court treated possession of a Pakistani passport as conclusive proof of Pakistani citizenship. By 2008, in the Razia Bergum case, the court ruled that even possessing an Indian passport was not sufficient proof of citizenship.

B R Ambedkar once said the citizenship provisions of the Constitution gave the Drafting Committee