Borders have always been seen as physical lines of separation, which mark the ‘other’ and group geographical spaces into territories and nation-States. However, can borders and borderlands also simultaneously exist as gateways for trade and commerce while being rigid institutions that disallow the movement of people from one part to another?

Are some borders seen while others are only felt?

Negotiating Borders and Borderlands shows how these ‘in-between’ spaces of borders have their own stories to tell. The chapters move beyond the Statist view of borders and provide a picture of borderlands from the perspective of those who inhabit such spaces.

The authors show how the impact of Partition still echoes in the borderlands of postcolonial India, located along the land boundaries of Bangladesh, China, Myanmar, and Pakistan. They discuss

• issues of displacement, citizenship, territoriality, and identity that followed the often arbitrary boundary demarcations during the colonial period;
• how disputed political borders and cross-border military action affect the everyday lives of people;
• the sociocultural practices of minority communities in neighbouring countries; and
• the crucial role played by symbolic, invisible borders that present through the creation of the ‘self’ versus the ‘other’.

Gorky Chakraborty is Associate Professor of Economics, IDSK, Kolkata.

Supurna Banerjee is Assistant Professor of Political Science, IDSK, Kolkata.

List of Tables
List of Images
List of Abbreviations
Acknowledgements

ntroduction
Gorky Chakraborty and Supurna Banerjee

1. Beyond Theoretical Navel-Gazing: India’s Discourse on Borders and the Making of a Research Periphery
Nimmi Kurian 

PART I: INDIA–BANGLADESH

2. Partitioned Past, Bordered Present: The Need for Dialogue between Partition Studies and Border Studies
Debdutta Chowdhury

3. In between Inclusion and Exclusion: Citizenship Experiences in India–Bangladesh Enclaves
Deboleena Sengupta

4. From Borderlands to Borders: Engagements and the Politics of Peopleing in Assam
Binayak Dutta 

PART II: INDIA–MYANMAR

5. Rethinking the Indo–Burma Borderlands Through the Lens of ‘Border People’  
Pum Khan Pau

6. Chin–Mizoram Borderland
N. William Singh 

PART III: INDIA–CHINA

7. Bordered Spaces: The Frontier Tracts in Colonial Arunachal Pradesh
Sarah Hilaly

8. Analysing Spatiality in a Bordered Space: The Transcendence of the Hills of Darjeeling
Biswanath Saha and Gorky Chakraborty 

PART IV: INDIA–PAKISTAN

9. State and its Margins: Border Life at the Line of Control in Poonch, Jammu and Kashmir
Tarif Sohail and Asifa Zunaidha F.

10. Religion on the Margins: Borderlines Reshaping Socio-Religious Practices in Pakistan
Zahida Rehman Jatt

PART V: INVISIBLE BORDERS

11. Invisible Borders: The Social and Mental Scape of Calcutta, Post-1947
Subhasri Ghosh

12. Migration, Borders and Boundaries: Experiences of the Kuki Migrants in Delhi
Thanggoulen Kipgen

13. Local Histories of Bordering or How the Community Outsmarted the State
Abhijit Guha

Notes on the Contributors
Index