The Currents section foregrounds the work of Indian scholars who examine the ramifications of state responses and counterresponses regarding the Citizenship (Amendment) Act in December 2019. This amendment to the Constitution of India granted citizenship to persecuted minorities from three nearby countries-namely, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Afghanistan-but not to those who were Muslim. The act brought into question not just the issue of barring certain refugees to the country but also the relationship of India's minorities with the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party that is at the helm of a Hindu right-wing wave. The contributions focus on the implications of the amendments and the protests against them for minority and/or Muslim identities through a combination of historical, autoethnographic, ethnographic, media, and theoretical perspectives in the midst of growing religio-political communalization in the subcontinent.

In this article I look at the responses of Indians to political events in 2019 regarding the abrogation of Article 370 concerning Kashmir in the Constitution of India and the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA). The critiques of abrogation as well as of the CAA as put forth by the people of India were based on constitutional grounds, decrying them as inconsistent and in conflict with the basic principles and ambit of the Constitution. I juxtapose these responses with a critique of the Constitution and the sovereignty it offers to India through an engagement with Kashmiri Muslims in Delhi. The anti-CAA protests offered Kashmiris an opportunity to extend their solidarity with Indian Muslims as well as comment on the ambivalent nature of Indian secularism as it is pitched against minorities. However, Kashmiris also offered a structural critique and a rejection of the sovereignty of the Indian Constitution: for while it sanctioned equality and freedom for Indian citizens, it is the basis of oppression and occupation of their homeland.

Article (Accepted Version) http://sro.sussex.ac.uk a, dyuti (2020) [Review] Michelangelo Paganopoulos (2018) In-between fiction and non-fiction: reflections on the poetics of ethnography in literature and film.

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