The Complexities of Border Conflicts in South Asia

Abstract

In South Asia, boundaries are blurred but borders are bona fide. Boundaries have been blurred since geological time and so it has been culturally in the most recent times. Borders are of many kinds: between rival ethnic groups; between a majority and a minority; between different religious affiliations; or between citizens and denizens. Caste and class are there too, as is the difference between savage and cultured and others like the rural-urban dichotomy, all of which are prominent in South Asia. The commons—air, water, land—give rise to claim and counter-claim; and the political borders defy reason. It is, finally, in the mind of man that the geo-cultural unity of South Asia has to be constructed.