When a law changes the letter of citizenship, it can also change its spirit. In December 2019, the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) did just that—quietly, but profoundly. For the first time since Independence, India’s citizenship law was rewritten to include religion as a qualifying criterion. The government called it a humanitarian gesture. For millions, it felt like a line drawn through the heart of the Constitution.

That was the “act.” The “anxiety” came next. The proposed National Register of Citizens (NRC) and the National Population Register (NPR) were framed as tools of integrity and national security. But in an unequal country, where millions lack birth certificates or land records, these measures threatened to turn citizenship into a privilege you had to keep proving. It was not just about being an Indian—it was about being able to prove you were one, on the government’s terms.

The logic of centralized control didn’t stop there. In August 2019, the abrogation of Article 370 erased Jammu & Kashmir’s constitutional autonomy, redrawing not only maps but the very federal compact. Done under President’s Rule, with a security lockdown and without local consent, it set a precedent: when the center wants change, exceptionalism can override deliberation.

By 2025, the anxiety had reached the ballot box. Bihar’s Special Intensive Revision of electoral rolls—ostensibly an administrative clean-up—saw millions flagged for deletion just before elections. Opposition parties alleged targeted disenfranchisement. The Election Commission denied bias. But in a country still raw from the CAA-NRC debates, perception was as damaging as fact.

This is the real legacy of 2019–25: the normalization of doubt. Doubt about one’s documents. Doubt about one’s place in the federal union. Doubt about whether the right to vote will still be there tomorrow.

A democracy is not only about ballots and booths; it is also about the ease with which citizens inhabits their rights. When the comfort of citizenship shrinks, the anxiety expands. And the more we normalize this anxiety, the more fragile the foundations of our democracy become.

India’s institutions can still choose a different path—one that makes belonging secure, not conditional. But that will require seeing citizenship not as a test to be passed, but as a promise to be kept.