Conflict, Borderlands and Displacement: The Persistent and Escalating Crisis in Northwest India

Abstract

Borderlands are the geographical spaces or zones around a territorial border between nations. Defined by the borders that create and maintain the nation–state, the borderlands are the sites in the making, continually moulded, transformed or reconstructed by the social actors inhabiting them. Going beyond the boundary lines, borderlands encapsulate a much broader area where the impact of happenings at the border is felt and reverberated. Borderlands are of different types. They are classified as ‘alienated’ when dominated by conflict, hostility, insecurity and instability, as in parts of northwest India, particularly in Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) since 1947–1948. The border between India and Pakistan in J&K called the ‘Line of Control’ (LoC), is a de facto and not an international boundary and remains contested, disturbed, militarised and controlled. The borderlands surrounding it have witnessed many wars, war-like situations and displacement of people with several socio-economic ramifications. The post-colonial state tried to settle these conundrums of border-making but got entangled in the persistent and escalating crisis of intractable border disputes. The state and the media reconstructed and reproduced the rhetoric of nationalism and national security, sustaining the conflict and border entanglements. This paper argues for an alternative discourse to understand the crises of conflict based on people’s lived experiences, border formation and displacement in the wake of the partition of India and thereafter.