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Foundation Course Human Rights, Gender & Environment
Citizenship and Rights
Anupama Roy
Citizenship is generally understood as referring to the relationship between the
individual/collective and the state. The commonly accepted definition of citizenship by the
British Sociologist T.H.Marshall as full and equal membership in a political community
denotes (a) the unit of membership, i.e., the political community, which in the modern
context is the nation-state, and (b) the nature of that membership, i.e., full and equal.
Citizenship would thus manifest a significant aspect of the relationship among people who
live together in a nation. It comprises, therefore, of a range of issues and elements,
including, rights, freedom and equality, political allegiance to the state, civic loyalties within
the community, and cultural and emotional ties and identities that mediate the relationship
among citizens and the state.
Thus citizenship is no longer seen only in narrow legal-formal terms and has acquired
significance as an analytical category and a conceptual tool for understanding social
reality. It is increasingly being seen as a substantive notion capturing a range of issues
that that manifest the lived experiences of people. While the underlying principle defining
citizenship is equality, the fact that society is hierarchical, means that socio-economic
categories of gender, class, caste, race, nationality etc., determine the extent to which we
enjoy our rights of citizenship, have access to various resources that equip us for
citizenship, or even the extent to which we can exercise our duties of citizenship. A host of
important questions addressing inequalities among nation-states in the world have also
become integral to understanding citizenship. Moreover, while one may have grown up
thinking that citizenship is primarily concerned with rights and duties of individuals, it is
become acceptable to talk about cultural rights, whereby cultural/religious communities,
while participating in the common national political life, have the right to maintain their own
cultures. Rights of citizenship therefore, may then be seen as not just accruing to
individuals as citizen, but also to individuals as a part of a community, and the rights of
community as such.
What is Citizenship?
The origins of the idea of citizenship are generally traced to the ancient Greek and Roman
republics. The word itself is derived from the Latin word civis and its Greek equivalent
polites which means member of the polis or city. With the development of capitalism and
liberalism, the idea of the citizen as an individual bearing rights irrespective of her/his
caste, class, race, gender, ethnicity, etc., became entrenched. Since the nineteen eighties
however, globalisation and multiculturalism have provided the contexts within which this
notion of citizenship has been challenged. The nation, it is argued, is no longer the sole
unit of membership, and the ideas of world citizenship and human rights beyond national
borders is being earnestly talked about. Similarly, the individual, it is argued has been
displaced as the core of citizenship theory and rights of cultural communities and groups
have started gaining ground. Thus, it may be said that the idea of citizenship has
developed over several historical periods. Its form and substance have not remained the