"We Are Not ‘Climate Refugees’ but ‘Patients’ of the State": Residence, (im)Permanence and Legality in the Chars of Assam

The paper takes the field location in the chars (riverine islands) in the northeast Indian state of Assam, and aims to understand people’s everyday negotiations with river erosion, climate-induced displacement and construction of a ‘doubtful’ identity. It grapples with people’s identification of themselves as ‘rightful citizens’ and dissociation from a (climate) refugee identity. This is because a refugee identity is understood as an exception of belonging and citizenship. The chars are transient landscapes that render residency an impermanent phenomenon. With irregular and unpredictable inundation, disappearance and appearance of land and the resultant displacements of populations, land ownership in the regions is fraught with ambiguity. Concurrently, citizenship in India is largely determined by sedentary residence. Hence, the legality of residence of the displaced (to a new destination) comes to be questioned by the state and a vigilant civil society and entails doubt and suspicion in the everyday. This often culminates to label them as illegal foreigners or ‘Bangladeshis’.

The paper engages with the embedded vocabulary of the inhabitants where they refuse to identify as refugees, but as rightful citizens who await the empathy of the state. They claim belonging as ‘citizens’ in a welfare state and thereby access to rehabilitation initiatives. The National Registrar of Citizens (NRC) that aimed to document ‘authentic’ citizens residing in Assam, is argued critically due to its exclusion of several sections of riverine communities. These communities traverse the question of citizenship, which is tied to land rights and indigeneity. The instability of the land mass in the char areas implies the impermanent nature of the land itself. This translates to make residence and/or citizenship impermanent. The paper examines how the char-dwellers navigate and seek belonging, living in a fluid habitat, in the absence of a permanent home, and the narrative around the illegality of their identity.