This is transcript of video lectures from the series of [[15 Video Lectures on Indian Constitution]] **Navigate to other lectures in this series:** [[Introduction to Indian Constitution]] | [[Constituent Assembly Debates]] | [[Preamble of Indian Constitution]] | [[Citizenship in India]] | [[Right to Equality]] | [[Reservation Policies and Indian Constitution]] | [[Freedom of Speech & Expression]] | [[Right to Life and Personal Liberty]] | [[Freedom of Religion]] | [[Rights of Minorities]] | [[Directive Principles]] | [[Fundamental Rights, Directive Principles & Fundamental Duties’ Relationship]] | [[Union Executive Powers & Position of President & Prime Minister]] | [[Indian Judiciary]] | [[Constitutional Amendments & the Basic Structure Theory]] # Chapter 4 - Lecture 4 By Prof. (Dr.) Faizan Mustafa Namaskar, welcome to yet another lecture of online course on Indian Constitution, which is sponsored by Ministry of Law and Justice, Government of India, and is conducted by Nal sir University of Law, Hyderabad. Today we are going to talk about citizenship in India. Who is an Indian citizen? How citizenship is acquired? How citizenship is lost? What have been the amendments to the citizenship act? Now first of all we must understand why citizenship is so important. So citizenship is legal membership of nation states. For citizen the context is always outsiders, alien, enemy, migrant, illegal migrant, refugee. So it is always in the context of others, we talk of citizenship. Citizenship is promise of equality and integration within a political community. Now how political community as such of which citizenship indicates membership comes into being when people agree to live together within a framework of mutually agreed rules, consenting to a sovereign political authority. Now let us try to understand what are these mutually agreed rules and what does political authority mean? The mutually agreed rules in modern times refer to constitutions. It is a constitution which reflects the mutually agreed rules and that is why it is called a sacred covenant. It is called a social contract. We discussed it in our first lecture. The political authority means power to enforce these rules. Now what are the legal implications of citizenship? Idea of citizenship goes beyond mere formal or legal membership in terms of belonging, quote unquote belonging. Idea of citizenship talks of non-discrimination. That is why article 15 says states shall not discriminate against any citizen only on grounds of religion, race, caste, sex, bliss of birth. So state cannot discriminate on these prohibited grounds against any citizen. This is the formal idea of equality but the substantive idea of equality may require a special treatment. So we have a special treatment for women, for several other underprivileged sections of our population. What are the two central principles of citizenship? Citizenship is based on one of these principles. The first principle is called the universal principle, the broader concept just solely which means right to citizenship associated with soil or place of birth. So if someone has taken a birth in some country he is entitled to citizenship of that country. The narrower concept of citizenship is called just sanguini and it means citizenship emerging from blood ties. So you will not emphasize mere birth, you would also look at the blood relationship. Now who is an Indian citizen as per Indian constitution? You will be surprised from citizen has not been defined either in the constitution of India or in the citizenship act of 1955. There was lot of debate, intense debate in the constituent assembly on the question of who should be given Indian citizenship. Dr. Bhimra Ambedkar said no other subject has given this much headache to the drafting committee as citizenship. Several drafts were prepared and destroyed. There was a suggestion that we give citizenship on the basis of religion, it was rejected. Now citizenship as a subject unfortunately is not taught in law colleges and in national law universities. It is only recently that there is a renewed interest in the subject of citizenship. Part two of the constitution of India deals with citizenship. Articles five to eleven provide for citizenship various kinds of citizenship and interestingly while the constitution of India we told you came into force on 26 January 1950. The citizenship articles came into force immediately on the adoption of the constitution on November 26 1949 that is the constitution day. Now who is an Indian citizen and how article five deals with it? So article five tells us who was an Indian citizen on the commencement of the constitution. On January 26, 1950 who are the persons who were Indian citizen and it says every person who has domicile that means he lives in the territory of India and who was born in India will be an Indian citizen. So if you are residing in India on 26 January 1950 and you were born in India you are an Indian citizen but it went further and it said either of whose parents was born in the territory of India. So maybe you are not born but either of your parents were born in India then you would also get Indian citizenship or who has been ordinarily resident in the territory of India for not less than five years immediately preceding such commencement that is 26 January 1950. So if for five years you were living in India you shall be an Indian citizen. Now article six is a very important article because you need to understand that we got independence but we also got partition in the name of religion it was based on a flawed two nation theory and it involved migration of millions of peoples. It was a human tragedy of a very great magnitude. So article six is talking of citizenship of people who migrated to India from Pakistan. It says any person who migrated to India from Pakistan shall be deemed to be a citizen of India if he or either of his parents or any of his grand parents was born in India as defined by the government of India act 1935. In terms of territories we would look at government of India act 1935 and that's why in our conversation about evolution of the constitution we paid so much of attention on the government of India act 1935 because it is important even for the purposes of citizenship of people who migrated to India from Pakistan. So any person who migrated to India from Pakistan shall be deemed to be a citizen of India if he or either of his parents or any of his grand parents was born in India this is important when in article five we talked about we talked of parents here we are going one step ahead even if grand parent one of the grand parent was born in India for those who migrated from Pakistan will get Indian citizenship. Similarly if such a person who saw migrated before the 19 July 1948 and has been the ordinarily resident of India shall be deemed to be an Indian citizen these dates are important as you will see in subsequent articles. So any person who was living in the territories which became Pakistan if they migrated to the territories which became India before 19 July 1948 and is living in India he will be treated as an Indian citizen now for those who migrated after 19 July 1948 there was a difference they had to be registered as a citizen if anyone from Pakistan migrated to India before 19 July 1948 he shall be deemed to be Indian citizen without registration but if someone came to India after 19 July 1948 then what he has to do he has to register himself as an Indian citizen with a special officer appointed by the government for this purpose. Now there is another provision in this article which says but no person is to be registered unless he has been resident in the territory of India for at least six months immediately preceding the date of application. So if you want to be Indian citizen you migrated to India after 19 July 1948 you can apply if you have been in India for six months at the time of making an application for your registration. Then article seven talks of citizenship of migrants to Pakistan this whole partition business it has created all kinds of problems for Indian nation. So notwithstanding anything in article five and six we are not talking of people who are born in India or whose parents are born in India we are not talking of people who migrated from Pakistan to India. Now we are talking of people who went from India to Pakistan and then returned back. Look at the problem many people they either got stuck because India and Pakistan were one country there were suddenly partition and there were partition rights there were traders there were merchants there were people who had their relatives in that part of the country and they could not return. So now subsequently when they return how their citizenship is to be determined. Article seven tells us that a person who has after first March 1947 migrated from India to Pakistan shall not be deemed to be Indian citizen anyone who went from India to Pakistan after first March 1947 now the partition will come in August we are talking of first March 1947 and we are saying such a person shall not be deemed to be an Indian citizen but there is a room for a different kind of a person this provision shall not apply to a person who after having migrated to Pakistan has returned to India and how he has returned he has returned under what was called a permit of resettlement or permanent return now these permits were issued after lot of inquiries by our embassy by the district officials to which that person belong and then that person will be allowed to return to India and shall be deemed to have migrated to India after 19 July 1948 even if he came before that why because if we deemed him to have migrated before 19 July 1948 automatically he is deemed as citizen but we do not want this benefit to give to him therefore we said you shall be deemed to have migrated to India after 19 July 1948 and therefore now to get Indian citizenship you have to get Rajashtra so registration was necessary for people who went from India to Pakistan and then return many people did not have idea about what kind of partition it would be and therefore once they realize that a new country has been born they thought their country and their motherland is India and therefore they return and many as I told you were traders or many merchants or people who are just visiting their relatives who return like this then article 8 talks of citizenship of people who are living outside India so any person who or either of whose parents or any of whose grand parents was born in India that is Indian territory as defined by the government of India at 1935 and who is ordinarily residing in any country outside India he shall be deemed to be an Indian citizen if he has registered with Indian diplomatic or councillor representative in that country you know there were many people who are outside India at the time of commencement of the constitution how do we give our citizenship to them they will go to our embassy or they will go to our councillor services and register themselves as Indian citizens then you may lose your citizenship article 9 if you have voluntarily acquired citizenship of a foreign country then you will lose your citizenship many people who have migrated to USA or several other countries they acquire citizenship of those countries and consequently they lose Indian citizenship then article 11 gives power to the parliament to regulate citizenship this is an important provision the constitution of India is talking of citizenship on the commencement of the constitution subsequently how citizenship will be given that power was given to the parliament of India because we have single citizenship so on the question of acquisition and termination of citizenship and all matters relating to citizenship article 11 gives complete powers to the parliament moreover entry number 17 of the union list has citizenship as a central subject therefore nobody has a power to pass any law in respect of citizenship except parliament and exercising this power parliament pass the citizenship act in 1955 this act has been amended number of times prominently in 1986 in 2003 in 2015 and recently in 2019 now many states have passed resolutions against the CAA 2019 now these resolutions legally speaking don't have any value because state assemblies do not have any power in respect of this in respect of citizenship the critics of this bill say that this bill is discriminatory on the basis of religion the government's argument is that they are making people eligible for citizenship if they have phased religious persecution in Pakistan Afghanistan and Bangladesh so what did we learn today we learned about citizenship we know citizenship is a state-centric concept citizenship is relationship of individuals with a state with a nation-state citizenship is a bundle of rights citizenship can either be based on birth or it can be based on blood ties who is an Indian citizen we will meet soon for the next lecture in the next lecture we are going to talk about right to equality which is one of the most important fundamental rights we would talk about formal equality substantive equality we will talk about two expressions equality before law and equal protection of law and from where we have borrowed these two concepts we will also talk about article 15 which is article about non-discrimination it prohibits state from discriminating only on the basis of religion race caste sex place of birth etc we would also talk about a abolition of untouchability and abolition of titles thank you very much dana ---  *Disclaimer: I am not asserting any claim over this content. The content is entirely from the Ministry of Law & Justice and NALSAR University of Law's joint online course on the Indian Constitution. My effort has been to make the transcript available for people like myself who prefer to read or quote it rather than to listen. This is part of my public self-archiving project. For more details, see [notes.daktre.com](https://notes.daktre.com) or [daktre.com](https://daktre.com).* Last updated: 2026-02-21 22:18