Paper short abstract:

This paper explores belonging as a contingent relation of inclusion that is produced through legislative and policy reform and through the enactment of rights to citizenship and property as these are reflected in court proceedings and policy choices.

Paper long abstract:

In the shadow of the 1947 Partition, a Hindu person who chose East Pakistan (and subsequently Bangladesh) as their country of citizenship and rights is always and already marked as a Hindu and a threat to the nation and state. This understanding of the Hindu as other is claimed and secured in legislative and policy reform as well as in court records. Importantly, however, senses of belonging and rights are not enacted once and for all but, rather, they are reproduced in historically specific ways across the temporal scape. Using examples of government reforms and court records, both prior to and since the independence of Bangladesh in 1971, this paper explores the reproduction of difference as this constitutes varying enactments of who has the rights of membership in the community, including the rights that attend to citizenship, and what constitutes elations of belonging and exclusion. Stated differently, this paper examines shifting patterns of what might be conceptualized as inclusive exclusion that configure changing understandings of belonging and aspirations of recognition.