This book presents a radical rethinking of Border Studies. Framing the discipline beyond conventional topics of spatiality and territoriality, it presents a distinctly South Asian perspective – a post-colonial and post-partition region where most borders were drawn with political motives, ignoring the socio-cultural realities of the region and economic necessities of the people. The authors argue that while securing borders is an essential function of the state, in this interconnected world, crossing borders and border cooperation is also necessary. The book examines contemporaneous and topical themes like disputes of identity and nationhood, the impact of social media on Border Studies, trans-border cooperation, water-sharing between countries, and resolution of border problems in the age of liberalisation and globalisation. It also suggests ways of enhancing cross-border economic cooperation and connectivity, and reviews security issues from a new perspective. Well supplemented with case studies, the book will serve as an indispensable text for scholars and researchers of Border Studies, military and strategic studies, international relations, geopolitics, and South Asian studies. It will also be of great interest to think tanks and government agencies, especially those dealing with foreign relations.

This book presents a radical rethinking of Border Studies. Framing the discipline beyond conventional topics of spatiality and territoriality, it presents a distinctly South Asian perspective – a post-colonial and post-partition region where most borders were drawn with political motives, ignoring the socio-cultural realities of the region and economic necessities of the people. The authors argue that while securing borders is an essential function of the state, in this interconnected world, crossing borders and border cooperation is also necessary. The book examines contemporaneous and topical themes like disputes of identity and nationhood, the impact of social media on Border Studies, trans-border cooperation, water-sharing between countries, and resolution of border problems in the age of liberalisation and globalisation. It also suggests ways of enhancing cross-border economic cooperation and connectivity, and reviews security issues from a new perspective. Well supplemented with case studies, the book will serve as an indispensable text for scholars and researchers of Border Studies, military and strategic studies, international relations, geopolitics, and South Asian studies. It will also be of great interest to think tanks and government agencies, especially those dealing with foreign relations.

Universities are inherently and definitionally universal in their quest for the creation and dissemination of knowledge. They are set to defy borders that exist in parochial forms. Globalization which opened up borders has by design or default created inequalities and imbalances in knowledge systems. Undoubtedly, knowledge is power but there is difference in the power that is intrinsic to it and the power that is ascribed which is determined by dominant political and economic hierarchies. If knowledge predominantly flows from global north to global south, people seeking knowledge move from global south to global north. These imbalances are also seen within these regions, between cultures and communities, one claiming superiority over the other. These realities call for a reassessment of not only what constitutes knowledge, but also what encompasses the idea of borders. This book elaborates on the inclusive role of education that can act as an equalizer or as a catalyst for creating a level playing field across borders. Print edition not for sale in South Asia (India, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bangladesh, Pakistan and Bhutan)

Since India attained independence, its foreign policy discourse has imagined its South Asian neighbourhood through the politics of realism. This imagination explicates state interest in South Asia by establishing it as a space of sovereign territoriality. Even today, India’s foreign and security policies are primarily shaped by geopolitical centrism, and remain unaffected by economic prosperity and community concerns. As a part of the Oxford International Relations in South Asia series, this volume examines alternative conceptions of South Asian space in terms of geo-economics and community, and justifies why they have been unable to replace its dominant understanding, irrespective of the political regime. This volume probes reasons behind the relevance of differentiated cartography of territorial nationalism in our shared understanding of space, politics, society, and the community.

Post-colonial and post-partition South Asia, one of the fastest-growing and yet one of the least integrated regions of the world, is marked by both optimism and pessimism. This intriguing dichotomy of strength and weakness, security and insecurity, hope and fear, connections and disconnects underpins South Asia’s regionalism conundrum and gives birth to borders and boundaries – both material and mental – with a complex territoriality. The Janus-faced nature of South Asian borderlands – the inward nationalizing impulses entangled with the outward regional frontier-orientations – is a stark reminder that history of mobility in this eco-geographical region is much older than the history of territoriality and colonial cartography and ethnography. This collection of meticulously researched, theoretically informed, case studies from South Asia provides useful insights into bordering, ordering and othering narratives as practices and performances that are intricately entangled with identity politics and security discourses. It shows how a sharper focus on subterranean subregionalism(s), border communities, popular geopolitics of enmity, and transborder challenges to sustainability, could open up spaces for new multiple (re)imaginings of borders at diverse scales and sights including sub-urban neighbourhoods, school textbooks/cinema and trans-border conservation initiatives. The chapters in this edited volume have been contributed by both renowned as well as young emerging scholars, looking into the borders and boundaries in South Asia. Each chapter offers new perspectives and insights into themes like trans-Himalayan borderlands, India-Pakistan physical and mental borders, Afghanistan-Pakistan border and numerous social boundaries that we see in everyday South Asia. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of the Journal of Borderlands Studies.

This is an interdisciplinary volume exploring a range of historical, anthropological and literary ideas and issues in South Asian Borderlands. Going beyond the territorial and geo-political imaginaries of contemporary borderlands in South Asia, chapters in this book engage with the questions of sovereignty, control, policing as well as continuing affections across politically divided borderlands. Modern conceptions of nationhood have created categories of legality and illegality among historically, socially, economically and emotionally connected residents of South Asian borderlands. This volume provides unique insights into the interconnected lives and histories of these borderland spaces and communities.

Enclaves along the India-Bangladesh border have posed conceptual and pragmatic challenges to both states since Partition in 1947. These pieces of India inside of Bangladesh, and vice versa, are spaces in which national security, belonging, and control are shown in sharp relief. Through ethnographic and historical analysis, Jason Cons argues that these spaces are key locations for rethinking the production of territory in South Asia today. Sensitive Space examines the ways that these areas mark a range of anxieties over territory, land, and national survival and lead us to consider why certain places emerge as contentious, and often violent, spaces at the margins of nation and state. Offering lessons for the study of enclaves, lines of control, restricted areas, gray spaces, and other geographic anomalies, Sensitive Space develops frameworks for understanding the persistent confusions of land, community, and belonging in border zones. It further provides ways to think past the categories of sovereignty and identity to reimagine territory in South Asia and beyond.