In August 1949, as the Constituent Assembly debated the citizenship provisions of the draft Constitution, B R Ambedkar described Article 5 as one that had given the Drafting Committee “a headache” like no other. Nearly 140 amendments had been moved, prompting Assembly President Rajendra Prasad to describe them as a “veritable jungle”.
Although Ambedkar’s draft ultimately prevailed, the debate revealed sharply different ideas of what Indian citizenship ought to mean. Some members wanted citizenship tied to religion, while others argued it should follow ancestry rather than birthplace. Some sought broader protection for Partition refugees, while Assam member Rohini Kumar Chaudhuri argued for tighter safeguards against migration into the province. The Constitution ultimately adopted only one of these competing visions.
Citizenship provisions as defined by Ambedkar (generated with AI assistance)
‘Citizenship should be restricted, not automatic’
Panjabrao Shamrao Deskhmukh, representing the Central Provinces and Berar, called the article on citizenship the “most ill-fated article in the whole Constitution” and argued that the definition suggested by Ambedkar would make it the “cheapest on earth.”
“…I can well understand, if India was a small country…that we want more people, no matter what their character is or what the country’s interests are. But we are already troubled by our own overwhelming population. Under the circumstances, how is it that we are making Indian citizenship so ridiculously cheap?” he argued.
He argued that citizenship should be harder to acquire. He proposed limiting it to persons born to Indian parents or those naturalised under the law. He also sought to extend it to any “Hindu or Sikh by religion” who was not a citizen of another State, arguing they had no other country to look to for citizenship.
Deshmukh also argued that five years’ residence should not be sufficient ground for the grant of citizenship. “We should merely say here that every person residing in India who is naturalised under the Law of Naturalisation will be a citizen of India,” he said.
Birthplace or parentage?
Deshmukh opposed granting citizenship to children born on Indian soil with “no relationship whatsoever to the parentage”, illustrating the point with the example of a couple “travelling in an aeroplane which halts at the port of Bombay for a couple of hours and if the lady happens to deliver a child there, irrespective of the nationality of the parents, the child would be entitled to be a citizen of India.”
Naziruddin Ahmad, who represented West Bengal, agreed, arguing that “citizenship follows parentage.” Given the “difficulty and complexity” of the subject, he said citizenship “should not have been dealt with in this fashion”.
Taking the example further, Ahmad argued that the child could simultaneously be claimed by India, the mother’s country and the father’s country, producing “a confused state of affairs”.
“India will claim the child to be a citizen of India… the mother… will claim the child… the father has another nationality and he claims the child… All the three countries will compete with one another,” he said.
Constitutional gap after January 26, 1950
Unlike most other critics, Jaspat Roy Kapoor, representing the United Provinces, raised a procedural rather than ideological concern. He argued that the Constitution defined citizenship only as of January 26, 1950, without laying down how citizenship would be acquired thereafter.
He sought to amend Article 5 to “cover the cases also of those persons who are newly born of Indian parents on Indian soil after the 26th January 1950…”
Kapoor also opposed granting citizenship to anyone who had “transferred his loyalty from India to Pakistan”, arguing such migration was “complete and absolute” and extinguished their right to Indian citizenship.
Partition refugees deserve wider protection
Bhupinder Singh Mann, representing East Punjab, argued that the draft did not go far enough in protecting refugees displaced by Partition, describing its approach as “a weak sort of secularism… and an unfair partiality”.
He argued that people who had fled communal riots in Pakistan and were in India at the commencement of the Constitution should receive citizenship automatically, without having to register or prove six months’ residence.
Mann also questioned July 19, 1948, as the cutoff date. “These unfortunate refugees could not have foreseen this date; otherwise they would have invited Pakistan’s knife earlier…It will be very cruel to shut our borders to those who are victimised after the 19th July 1948,” he argued.
Citizenship as a secular, territorial compact
Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru defended the draft as the product of months of deliberation in the wake of Partition, arguing that no citizenship provision could anticipate every circumstance while remaining fair. The citizenship articles had “probably received far more thought and consideration…than any other article contained in this Constitution”, he said, because they had to address both Partition and the position of Indians living abroad.
Rejecting accusations of “appeasement”, Nehru insisted that justice and equity—not religion or political expediency—should guide citizenship policy.
“Do the honourable Members who talk of appeasement think that some kind of rule should be applied… which has nothing to do with justice or equity?… This Government will not go by a hair’s breadth… from what they consider to be… justice to the individual or the group,” he said.
Supporting Ambedkar, Alladi Krishnaswami Iyer, representing the Madras Province, argued that India’s citizenship provisions were already more restrictive than those of the United States because birth alone was not enough: a person also had to be domiciled in India.
He also defended Article 5A, arguing that it made no distinction between communities and addressed the realities of Partition rather than conferring citizenship on religious grounds. Having permitted refugees to settle after satisfying itself that they intended to make India their permanent home, he argued, it would be “the grossest injustice” to deny them citizenship.
The Assembly ultimately rejected the competing amendments one by one before adopting Ambedkar’s draft. In doing so, it settled—at least for the Constitution’s commencement—on a secular and territorial conception of citizenship, while leaving Parliament free to frame a permanent citizenship law later.
Although Ambedkar's draft ultimately prevailed, the debate revealed sharply different ideas of what Indian citizenship ought to mean. (Wikimedia Commons) 
Citizenship provisions as defined by Ambedkar (generated with AI assistance)
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