Abstract
How does the control of borders by the State relate to the control of bodies? How are borders the products of history even as they shape the process of history? Paula Banerjee poses these questions in her book that is a welcome contribution to the emerging literature on borderlands.
Reassured by cartographic absoluteness, nation-states in South Asia today defend the sanctity of their borders as historically given. Banerjee argues those borders were created by the imperial state during the Great Game in the scramble for territory. Far from being fixed, they are evolving entities.
Nearing the transfer of power, the colonial project of territoriality became a nationalist project. Who is a subject or a ‘foreigner’? This question assumed a new urgency to an Indian state-in-the-making. Before the Great War, there was hardly any distinction between a subject and an ‘alien’ in the British Empire. The Defence of India Act 1939 was an early attempt by nationalist India to securitise democratic space ostensibly through a democratic process in a semi-colonial milieu.
Informed by ideas of charity (as distinct from human right), the post-colonial state claimed moral superiority over its predecessor on account of its ethics of care shown to war refugees. Neither subjects nor foreigners, ‘refugees’ were seen as an aberration by the nation-state. Banerjee points out that the language of care here emerges from the language of violence that ‘often remains hostage to conflict’.
The Partition of India was the logical outcome of the territorial principle. Something meant ‘to resolve all territorial issues rationally, turned out to be an edifice of complete irrationality’. Once new boundary lines came into existence, they have a life of their own. Banerjee remarks, ‘The Great Game was not over’; it merely spit into several small games. If the Great Game turned open frontiers into borderlands, the Partition further hardened them into boundary lines.
Border dispute between India and China was not the product of Partition, but was a colonial relic of the Great Game. Banerjee observes that Nehru’s India evinced some degree of flexibility born out of its self-image as the leader of new Afro-Asian nations, if not a world power. This dream was shattered by her defeat in the hands of China in 1962. When India reasserted herself as a regional giant, she became more preoccupied with her borders. This development strengthened the National Security lobby to securitise, militarise and depoliticise border zones. By 1965, Kashmir became non-negotiable—thus precipitating another war with Pakistan. India’s success in the Indo-Pakistan war of 1965 was put down to her military preparedness.
The circle of insecurity further expanded with the naming of ‘disturbed areas’ largely in border areas. Taking a leaf out of the Raj’s book, the Indian state created a legal monstrosity in the shape of Armed Forces (Assam-Manipur) Special Powers (AFSPA) Ordinance in 1958, and its more draconian amendment in 1972. Initially the Ordinance was meant to be in the statue book for one year; but it has remained there ever since.
The book also contributes to critical feminist history and security dialogue by uncovering the linkages between the State’s control of border peoples and female bodies. Porous border and women’s bodies are seen as the carriers of HIV which is the disease of the marginals of whom women are in the forefront. Internally displaced Chin and Rohinga women are unable to protest against sexual crimes of migrant jawans for want of legal status. The bodies of stateless women are constantly abused in the labour market with ironic effect. Hitherto considered invincible, security forces are allegedly losing the battle to HIV. Therefore, ‘no amount of border fencing can make the region secure’ unless the insecurities of marginal people are addressed.
Kashmir and the Northeast share a history of exclusion that characterises them as ‘disturbed areas’. Women responded differently to their bordered existence. The visibility of women in Assam often led to repression by both the state and rebels groups. In Kashmir, close association of women’s organisation with militant outfits ‘submerged their own gendered voice’. Initiatives for ‘just peace’ (peace with equity) and human rights enabled Naga women to acquire certain legitimacy, and create a niche for themselves in the realm of high politics. Naga women leveraged the politics of peace not only to define peace, but also their own situation by reworking property rights.
Given the wide temporal span (c. 1864 to 2006), it would help if the author had presented her materials more systematically through tighter thematic or chronological control. Written in a readable prose, the book will appeal to readers with interest in borderlands history, colonial law, public health and women in conflict zones.