National Register of Citizens (NRC) in Assam: within, without and beyond the law.

This paper analyses the historical antecedents, character and implications of Assam’s National Register of Citizens as a socio-legal instrument. It seeks to understand how dominant nationalisms and the state produce volatile paper citizenship regimes, and use law – as a reified transcendental performance of social will – to construct the ‘minority citizen’ through categories of ‘belonging’ and ‘citizenship’. The paper does this by analysing three typologies of the law-society interaction. First, it examines what/who is a citizen from <italic>within law</italic>. Second, it critiques the mythology of law by giving an account of belonging and suffering of minority citizens <italic>without law</italic>. Third, it foregrounds peripheral subjectivities by offering an account of minority citizenship <italic>beyond law</italic>. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]