The citizenship debate

Citizenship has been one of the more contentious issues in Nepali politics and society since the inception of the post-monarchy Constitution of 2015. While several new acts came into existence, nationality law still has to see the light of day almost five years after promulgation of the new Constitution. At the center of the whole debate on citizenship lies the naturalization rights of foreign nationals—particularly women, from India. Although the fiasco has a gender tint, with many rightly claiming it to be gender discriminatory, the ethnic dimension to it plays a more pivotal role in the lawmakers' willingness to compromise, especially because that very dimension is seen to weaken national security. Let's delve in.

Nepali citizenship is based on the principle of jus sanguinis, which means that a person’s claim to citizenship to Nepal originates from bloodline or descent, largely through father. The first Citizenship Act of Nepal was passed in 1952, after overthrow of the autocratic Rana regime. This Act was "very liberal on the issue of naturalized citizenship and gave citizenship to anyone who had lived in Nepal for at least five years” (Shrestha 2017, 3). Many consider this liberal nationality law to be “the root of the problem which gave Nepali citizenship to Indian-origin migrants who settled in Nepal” (Mulmi 2019). Indeed, the then policy of the state to issue citizenship to the “Indian-origin” people does remain at the heart of the current problem of exclusion and statelessness. To rectify the errors of the 1952 Act and to preserve the “Nepaliness” of the populace by restricting the settlers’ easy access to citizenship, the nationality laws that followed were made much stricter.