SUBJECTS OR CITIZENS ?: INDIA , PAKISTAN AND THE 1948 BRITISH NATIONALITY ACT Dr Sarah Ansari, History Department, Royal Holloway University of London. Egham, Surrey TW20 0EX. 01784 443314
[email protected] 1 SUBJECTS OR CITIZENS ?: INDIA , PAKISTAN AND THE 1948 BRITISH NATIONALITY ACT * Sarah Ansari Royal Holloway, University of London It is now widely recognised that decolonisation, which picked up momentum from the mid-twentieth century onwards, was an extended affair.1 In the case of British India, independence may have taken place at relatively short notice in August 1947, but tying up the loose ends of empire stretched over many years. In particular, the realignment of subjecthood and citizenship necessitated by decolonisation was protracted, and raised complex questions about identity in both the newly independent states and the former imperial power. Against this backdrop, the following article takes as its focus the drawn-out process of disengagement that followed formal independence in relation to one particular case study: namely the various ways in which Britain sought to square the working of its 1948 Nationality Act with Indian and Pakistani citizenship legislation that took shape in the 1950s. By exploring different aspects of how the Act was interpreted and applied in the South Asian context, it contributes to current understanding of the contested making of citizenship in post-1947 India and Pakistan. In the process, it also argues that while British legislation did not, in the late 1940s and 50s, create a legal distinction between European and non-European British subjects, perceptions about ‘racial identity’ proved time and again to be a major factor in the classification of different categories of UK citizen, with “issues of race becoming more and more explicit in discussions, more and more public in debates” throughout this period.