Ramanathan (2013a, 2013b) urged scholars to expand the notion of citizenship beyond its typically bounded understandings, towards conceptualizing it as "being able to participate fully" (p. 162). This view highlights the "processual" aspects of citizenship, shifting away from the more categorical meanings that underpin the term (Ramanathan, 2013a; Ramanathan, 2013b; Ricento, 2013). Dis-citizens' ability to participate in different processes is more limited. This theoretical perspective casts new light on the opening statement of an influential Indian language policy report, "The Teaching of English" (NCERT, 2006), which contended, "English is in India today a symbol of people's aspirations for quality in education and a fuller participation in national and international life." India's premier educational research body's imagining English as a benchmark of "participation" in Indian life merits further analysis. This ethnographic case study explores this concept of participation through the examination of the English literacy experiences of students in an English-medium village school. Involving eight focal children from an "anathashram" (orphanage) in suburban New Delhi, the data draws on extended fieldwork at the school in 2011, entailing participant observation supplemented with audio- and videorecording, and interview exchanges. The analysis reveals how the English literacy practices are implicated in the production and reproduction of discitizenship, in order to demonstrate how "English-medium" schooling functioned to exclude the focal children from "fuller participation in national and international life.