Liminal Spaces of the New State: Refugee Camps, Corruption, and Citizenship in Delhi

Abstract

Drawing on evidence from Delhi in the immediate aftermath of Partition, this paper explores the refugee camp as a site where relief and corruption converged. As scholarship on Partition has established, the relief and rehabilitation of refugees served as a focal point for state formation and citizenship during the transition to independence. The postcolonial state extended its reach into society in unprecedented ways by assuming critical functions of rescue, care, and control (Purushotham 2021). At the same time, refugees’ demands for and competition over state resources were central to their transformation into rights-bearing citizens and to the emergence of citizens’ rights discourses and movements more broadly (Chatterji 2012, Ansari and Gould 2020). Recent scholarship has also shown that relief and rehabilitation efforts—including compensation for lost property, housing, job placement, and rationing—were entangled with both corrupt practices and rumors of corruption, reinforcing the centrality of corruption in the political culture in both India and Pakistan (Gould 2011, Chattha 2012). Developing these insights, this paper foregrounds the refugee camp as a liminal space—neither fully outside nor within the new state order—where relief and corruption intersected amid crisis. It integrates evidence from bureaucratic records, fiction, press, and memoirs to explore what these dynamics might reveal about state formation and citizenship in the postcolonial period