India_ election _2019

India election 2019: Echoes of Trump in Modi's border politics

The outcome of India's general election may help determine a central question at the heart of the contest - what does it mean to be Indian? Prime Minister Modi and his BJP party, like US President Donald Trump, have focused on borders to shape a particular vision of India's future.

Shanti Chandri has lived in the small, impoverished village of Dimilapar, outside Assam's capital city of Guwahati, for half a century.

The diminutive 79-year-old says she fears her 50 years as a resident will be erased after the state publishes its updated National Registry of Citizens (NRC), a census created in 1951 to determine who was born in India and who might be a migrant from Muslim-majority East Pakistan, now known as Bangladesh.

The census, conducted only in the north-eastern state of Assam, counts citizens who can prove they were residents of India before 24 March, 1971, just before Bangladesh declared its independence from Pakistan.

Families are required to provide documentation to show their lineage, and those who cannot prove their citizenship are deemed illegal. But the process has been fraught, with some families unable to produce documents due to poor record-keeping, illiteracy or because they lack the money to file a legal claim.

Shanti and her son Vinay, Hindus from the Bengali-speaking minority, were among those left off the NRC draft issued last year. Why Shanti's elder son, Paritush, was included on the list is unclear.

Vinay, a 30-year-old day labourer, was overwhelmed by the 50,000 rupees ($715; £560) needed to fight his case in court. He was among many in the village who feared being placed in detention centres where hundreds of residents suspected of living in Assam illegally have been held.

NRC officials have also begun holding "foreigner tribunals" to hear contested cases - much like the immigration court hearings under President Donald Trump at the US-Mexico border - while the draft list is being finalised to meet a 31 July deadline mandated by the Supreme Court.