Contested Question, Half-baked Answer: Review Of ‘The Undocumented’

When we speak of identity through the lens of the state, citizenship becomes unavoidable. Yet, citizenship cannot be reduced to paperwork, bureaucracy or the judiciary; it must also be measured by our capacity for humanity. With the NRC, CAA and SIR, citizenship has become increasingly contested. Nidhi Dugar Kundalia’s The Undocumented: One Family’s Journey from Bangladesh to India (Penguin Random House) enters this debate through one family’s story, revealing the human cost behind immigration and documentation. It leaves us with a difficult question: is the problem being undocumented, or the way we choose to treat the undocumented?

Citizenship cannot be reduced to a single experience. It has many versions, each carrying its own story, pain and struggle for survival. Through Safrat and her family, Kundalia makes one such pain visceral. Yet, the book’s idea of citizenship remains largely confined to those who are undocumented and openly othered. It leaves less explored another reality: that of the people who possess documents proving their Indian citizenship but are still excluded because of their religion, language or appearance. A book that enters the periphery of citizenship must ask who gets pushed there, with or without documents. Otherwise, the experiences of those who have faced or still face detention camps, eviction and everyday exclusion remain outside its frame. Kundalia makes one kind of pain visible, but many others still remain in the darkness.

In the opening chapter, Kundalia, writing as an investigative journalist, begins with the story of a Muslim woman who dresses as a Hindu to find work and survive. The episode exposes how Muslims are usually othered even in metropolitan cities. But it also risks reinforcing a familiar state narrative that imagines Muslims as people hiding their identity, feeding wider anxieties around ideas such as ‘Love Jihad’ and other conservative claims.

Kundalia’s portrayal of class division in Kolkata, where privilege determines who is seen, respected and heard is compelling. Her account reveals how the poor are often treated as invisible, disposable or undeserving of dignity. Through food, Kundalia captures the precarious lives of those divided by class and discrimination. One person finds joy in eating dry fish, while another consumes expensive food, yet both meals reveal the same truth that food is not merely sustenance but a marker of inequality, privilege and survival.

Kundalia offers a vivid and unsettling picture of migration driven by climate disasters and extremist violence. Yet, she says little about how political and state structures shape, and sometimes exploit, the migration narrative for electoral gains. While Kolkata receives attention as a destination for Bangladeshi migrants, Assam, which has faced similar questions of migration and belonging, remains largely invisible. Ahmad being called a person of “Little Pakistan” reveals how migrants are othered, but the book leaves crucial questions unanswered:  who creates these perceptions, and why?

Kundalia’s description of Kolkata as a “city of rallies” is unsettling, especially given the city’s long history of student movements, Left politics and dissent. Rather, the narrative favours the belief of the governments which have been against these very “rallies”. Yet, her observation of people shifting political loyalties for power or access to welfare is sharp and revealing. As political non-fiction, however, the book often raises questions without pursuing the structures beneath them. On citizenship, what becomes crucial is that beyond everyday othering lies a deeper question about the future imagined for those pushed to the margins. Kundalia captures the situation well, but the subtext demands greater attention and has not been fleshed out well.

When Kundalia writes that “she and many of her slum people are like them”, referring to people arriving “from somewhere else”, the language itself risks othering them. A migrant from Kerala may also struggle to survive in Kolkata, yet is not treated as an outsider in the same way. The distinction becomes sharper when the migrant is from another country. Similarly, Kundalia’s portrayal of adolescent men turning to drugs or beedis because of abandoned dreams feels too broad. Many immigrants instead work relentlessly, in brick kilns, as ATM guards or vegetable sellers, trying to rebuild their lives in an unfamiliar home. Their struggle is not simply about survival but about overcoming the suspicion and exclusion imposed on them. The experiences of a few young men, therefore, should not become a portrait of an entire migrant community.

Since the story of Safrat, her family and many other immigrants is set between 2007 and 2011, Kundalia misses the rise of Tapan Ghosh’s Hindu Samhati in 2008, which shaped a growing narrative of outsiders threatening Bengal. She also overlooks how, after the 2009 election, the RSS expanded its influence by accusing the Left and the TMC of “Muslim appeasement” and presenting its workers as “saviours of Bengal”, as Tapan Ghosh claimed at a Birbhum rally. The changing vocabulary of Bengal appears in parts throughout the book, but this period was crucial to the growing influence of Hindutva and the othering of Muslims in the state. By leaving out this political context, Kundalia captures the experience of migration without fully examining the forces that shaped its meaning.

The Undocumented approaches citizenship largely through the lens of privilege without fully entering its larger political and social debate. It builds an intimate story around a few individuals but does not adequately represent either the complexity of citizenship or the wider experiences of those labelled as immigrants. The book may help readers recognise why citizenship remains such a contested question today. Yet, those looking for deeper political context, evidence and the realities behind the narrative may be left asking for more.

(Kabir Deb is a writer, reviewer and translator based in Karimganj, Assam)