The Punjab Borderland
Mobility, Materiality and Militancy, 1947–1987

Offers insights into how the new international boundary between India and Pakistan was made, subverted, and transformed.

Ilyas Chattha (Author)

9781316517956, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 16 June 2022

334 pages
23.6 x 15.8 x 2.5 cm, 0.57 kg

'This work is a pioneering study that adds to the growing understanding that linkages between the Pakistan and Indian Punjabis persisted long after the drawing of the Radcliffe boundary. Ilyas Chattha reveals how smuggling impacted on the local political economy of border areas. Drawing on access to previously unexplored local police records, he dispels the myths that the border was closed, even in the wake of the 1965 Indo-Pakistan War. His findings are highly significant not only for the history of the Punjab region, but for the understanding of the post-independence Pakistan state.' Ian Talbot, Professor in History of Modern South Asia at the University of Southampton

The Punjab Borderland offers a fascinating insight into how the new international boundary between India and Pakistan was made, subverted, and transformed. Dispelling the established historiographical narratives of an increasingly militarised border that presents as the epitome of animosity and a classic example of inter-state tension, this book offers a corrective to these accounts by bringing out narratives of border crossings and social relations built on mutual benefit and trust. It conceptualises the making of the vast contraband as an analytical tool, not merely as borderland societies' modes for evading the state imposition of a partitioned geography on their local lifeworld, but as a catalyst for enabling social mobility and political empowerment for the population involved and a thriving market for consumption in the urban centres. It reveals a 'bottom-up' history of the Punjab border and the invention of the borderland society, narrating a story with local meanings and transnational dimensions.

List of Maps and Photographs
List of Tables
List of Abbreviations
Glossary
Note on Transliteration
Preface and Acknowledgements
Introduction
1. Making of the Border
2. Cross-Border Flows
3. Illicit Cities: Contraband Trade between Lahore and Amritsar
4. Illicit Global Gold Trade and Wagah – Attari Crossing
5. The Making of Contraband Culture: People and Poetics
6. The Regulation of Cross-Border Flows, and State Patronage
7. Guns, Drugs, and the End of the 'Good Old Days'
Conclusion: Between Open and Closed Borders
Selected Bibliography
Index.

Subject Areas: International relations [JPS], Politics & government [JP], Sociology [JHB], Asian history [HBJF], Regional & national history [HBJ], History [HB]