Hyphenated nationality and the paradox of the nation state

Recent incidents of harassment and deportation of migrant workers from West Bengal, who are suspected of being illegal migrants from Bangladesh, have caused an outcry in Bengal’s political circles. While these events might be seen as a contemporary political issue, the real problem is much deeper and questions the very nature of belonging in India. The question of “hyphenated nationality” in India is not new. What is new, however, is the growing list of communities facing this scrutiny.

Politicians have responded by waging linguistic battles to prove these communities belong to India. These might seem like reasonable responses. But they miss a crucial point: Is this question of “hyphenated nationality” really new in India?

What’s actually new is how long the list has become. It now includes communities whose “Indianness” we once considered beyond question. But haven’t we been here before? From the very beginning of independent India, communities like Muslims, Sri Lankan Tamils, northeasterners (in Indian cities), and Indian Nepalis have repeatedly been treated as “metics” — precarious residents who “illegitimately” enjoy citizenship benefits.

This problem — judging citizens’ loyalty based on ethnic and territorial ties — has spread across our known world. Look at South Asia: the Muhajir problem in Pakistan, the Madhesi problem in Nepal, the Tamil problem in Sri Lanka, or the Lhotshampa problem in Bhutan. Even the U.S. faces similar issues.

The logic of modern nationality

French philosopher Etienne Balibar explains that modern nationality has a foundational logic. Every nationality must define itself as carrying forward their ancestors’ sacred heritage. This creates a power of assimilation and civilisation — but also domination and exclusion. “Genuine” nationality demands unambiguous loyalty, rooted in a civilisational core within definite territorial limits.

This explains why we have hyphenated communities. A Muslim, Nepali, Sinhalese, Tamil, Lhotshampa, Madhesi, Muhajir, or Bengali can never escape being identified with their ethnic homeland — even though some of these “homelands” only emerged through post-colonial politics after India’s independence.

So a Muslim, Sri Lankan Tamil, or Nepali in India gets linked to Pakistan, Sri Lanka, or Nepal respectively. By the same logic, Madhesis in Nepal are linked with India, Lhotsampas in Bhutan with Nepal, Tamils in Sri Lanka with India, and now Bengalis in India with Bangladesh.

The nation-state formula

This sharp identity formation came with the 1648 Westphalian Treaty. It created a unique equation: nation = state. The formula became “one nation = one state.” Here lies the fundamental paradox: nation-states simultaneously need diversity (for economic vitality and cultural richness) while demanding homogeneity (for political unity and national identity). This desire for homogeneity amid existing diversity creates an unsolvable puzzle at the heart of the Western nation-state concept. Perhaps the European Union is an attempt to escape this puzzle?

But this nationalist doctrine contains a built-in contradiction that creates the “other.” Postcolonial theorist Homi K. Bhabha unravels these complexities. He argues that nation-states constantly try to create ancient homogeneity. This creates two simultaneous processes: pedagogical instruction and performative strategy. The “other” emerges from the constant oscillation between what Bhabha calls “pedagogy” and “performative strategy”.

Pedagogy is the official story of the nation — its laws and documents that say who belongs. Performative strategy is the act of living out that identity, which always generates something more than the official script.

The identity question of Bengali migrant workers (Indian Bengali or Bangladeshi Bengali?) gets caught between cultural meaning-making and nationalist certainty. Simply having authentic documents (pedagogy) wasn’t enough to save them from the misfortune they faced because they were found speaking Bengali in metropolitan areas within Hindi-speaking regions. The performative narrative overrides everything — even the fact that Bengali has a secure place in India’s Eighth Schedule of the Constitution.

Hyphenated nationalities in India — Indian Muslims, Indian Nepalis, and now migrant Indian Bengalis — reveal the double-edged character of national identity. This identity works by defining who belongs to the national community and who is an “other” or “foreigner.” A national community can only exist if other nations exist. The nation must be understood as part of a dual relationship, not as a self-contained unit. This becomes clear when migrant Bengali workers struggle to prove they are “Indian Bengalis” with documentary proof, distancing themselves from “Bengalis from Bangladesh.”

It’s ironic that in our globalised age, where everything moves across borders be it goods, capital, technology, services, banking systems, nation-states remain faithful to exclusionary rules, especially when dealing with migrant (moving) labour.

A fundamental paradox

These treatments might seem politically motivated. But they actually reflect a fundamental paradox built into the Western model of nation-states. This paradox can hardly be escaped, practically or theoretically.

Bureaucratic procedures for data verification — needed for SIR, elections, Census, or National Family and Health Surveys — create perfect moments for exposing this paradox. In popular imagination, this double identification operates at other scales too. We naturally associate Biharis with Bihar, Marwaris with Rajasthan (since Marwar region falls in western Rajasthan), and so on.

These identifications might not be considered “national threats” since they operate within the nation-state. But can we deny that such reasoning has repeatedly resulted in inter-state rivalries, inter-community animosities, and community clashes? Most importantly, the same identification process — conflating ethnic and territorial ties as the exclusive basis of belonging — operates within the nation-state. Can we really dismiss these as unrelated cases unworthy of reflection?

The structure remains the same whilst the forms keep changing.

Legal Identity vs moral grounding

Citizenship in post-colonial societies involves both legal and moral dimensions fused in a single community or individuals. Legitimate citizens are those whom the state gives legal identity and society offers moral engagement.

State-confirmed legal identity emerges from juridical protocols and documents that determine who is legible or illegible as a citizen. Socially engaged moral entitlement comes from cultural processes — primordial identification with the motherland, participation in national movements, firm location in the nation’s civilisational core. The crisis facing the Bengali migrant workers falls directly into this state-society conflict. Their identity is being measured not by their legal documents, but by negative storylines that frame them as the “other” nationality.

The enduring paradox

The harassment of Bengali migrant workers is thus not an isolated incident or mere political opportunism. It represents the surfacing of a deeper structural contradiction that has haunted the modern nation-state since its inception. The very mechanism that creates national belonging — the conflation of ethnic, territorial, and political identity — simultaneously produces categories of exclusion and suspicion.

This paradox manifests differently across time and space, but its essential logic remains constant. Today’s Bengali workers face the same fundamental challenge that has confronted hyphenated communities throughout India’s post-colonial journey. The forms evolve, the targets shift, but the underlying structure persists: the nation-state’s simultaneous dependence on diversity and demand for homogeneity creates an irresolvable tension.

Until we grapple honestly with this foundational contradiction, we will continue to witness new iterations of the same exclusionary logic. The Bengali workers’ plight illuminates not just a policy failure, but the inherent limitations of the nation-state model itself in accommodating the complex realities of belonging in a diverse, interconnected world.

Swatahsiddha Sarkar teaches at the Centre for Himalayan Studies, University of North Bengal.