Bandung, State-making, and Citizenship in South Asia

The Final Communiqué of the Bandung conference included a set of ten principles that emphasized “respect for the sovereignty and territorial integrity of all nations” and “abstention from intervention or interference in the internal affairs of another country.” In this essay, I examine the impact of these emphases on the domestic law of one of the Bandung states, specifically the law of citizenship in India. Given the significance of state sovereignty and the demarcation of the domestic and international spheres, international law has only generated partial and uneasy responses to questions of citizenship and the intentional creation of statelessness through state policy. Using the Indian case study, I argue that Bandung’s focus on borders has facilitated the disenfranchisement of religious minorities, requiring a rethink of the nation-state as the basis of the international order.