Bordering and Othering: Encounters at Shrine of Chamliyal at the India-Pakistan Border

Abstract

ABSTRACT The paper examines the dynamics of bordering and othering at the shrine of Chamliyal situated at the India-Pakistan border in the Jammu region of Jammu and Kashmir, India. The shrine is believed to be more than three-hundred-year-old, represents the social and cultural ties that predate the political differences and territoriality implicit in the India-Pakistan border. The reverence towards the shrine from people in adjoining villages on both sides of the international border present it as an “outlier” seemingly contrary to the formal and popular articulations of nationalist identities evoked by the India-Pakistan border. Following a constructivist approach, the paper explores how the border is socially constituted by the borderlanders in their narratives and practices at the shrine. In the borderlands, these narratives and practices present an array of characteristics that oscillate through assertion, negotiation, and challenge the hegemonic articulations of national identity.