About the Book

‘Citizenship’ is considered to be a ‘fundamental right’ of an individual within the boundary of state of his/ her origin. The democratic countries of the world thus have ensured ‘right to citizenship’ in their constitutions. But ‘citizenship’ has remained a ‘contested one’ for a considerable number of ‘forced’ and ‘voluntary’ migrants of the South Asian countries as well as for the dwellers of the Indo-Bangladeshi enclaves [popularly called chhitmahals]. After critically analyzing the historical development in India, Bangladesh, Myanmar and Bhutan, this book has examined the constitutional provisions of citizenship, citizenship acts, nature of statelessness’, and nation building process in India, Bhutan and Bangladesh with a perspective of migration studies.

About the Author

Dr. Rup Kumar Barman (b.1975) is a Professor of History at Jadavpur University (Kolkata, India). He is currently the Coordinator of the Centre for Ambedkar Studies of Jadavpur University.  Dr. Barman has completed his BA  (1996), MA (1998) and Ph.D (2006) from the University of North Bengal (Darjeeling, West Bengal, India). He served earlier St. Joseph’s College, Darjeeling (2000-2001), ABN Seal (Govt.) College, Cooch Behar, (2001-2002), Department of History, Jadavpur University (2002-2006) as Lecturer of History. He has also served International Relations Department of Jadavpur University (2006-2009) as Associate Professor.

    Dr. Barman has authored several research papers and nine books. Among them- From Tribalism to State (2007), Contested Regionalism (2007), Fisheries and Fishermen (2008), Partition of India and Its Impact on The Scheduled Caste of West Bengal (2012) , Jatpat, Jati Rajniti O Dalit Pratarka (2019), The Origin and Evolution of the Enclaves of India and Bangladesh:  A Historical Study (2019), Nature, Communities and State: An Environmental History of Bengal and Assam (2019), Practice of Folk Medicine in Sub-Himalayan Bengal: A Study on the Folk Medicinal Practices of the Rajbanshis in Historical Perspective, ( 2019) ; are noteworthy. At present he is working on Dalit Discourse, and ‘history of rivers of South Asia.