GUWAHATI, Dec 21 ? The international borders in South Asia are no longer the neat mosaic of colourful societies, cultures and states. They are the zones of concentrated violence and landscapes of fear for the people living within these areas. This was how Dutch social scientist Willem van Schendel, a professor of Modern Asian History at the University of Amsterdam, described the international borders of South Asia.
He was delivering a lecture in a seminar on maps, borders and identities and the need to re-imagine South Asia in the city yesterday. The seminar was organised by the Centre for Northeast India, South and Southeast Asia Studies (CENISEAS) of the Omeo Kumar Das Institute of Social Change and Development (OKD Institute).
Schendel, presently Head of the Asia Department of the International Institute of Social History, recalled that when he was undergoing training to become a social scientist, he had learnt to think of the world as a mosaic. The basic pieces of the mosaic were States that appeared on our maps as brightly coloured territories ? organisations that laid claim to particular bits of the earth?s surface.
But today, he said the developments were such that he had to focus on those living near the international borders. For, he said, going by the developments in those areas, he was convinced that there was a need to develop the study of borderlands and the borderlanders. For the purpose, he chose the international borders of the South Asian countries.
These countries were created as recently as the second half of the 20th century, after the imposing Indian colony of the Britishers fell apart. The process became known as ?partition of India? or simply the partition of 1947. The region has been the scene of one of the most audacious experiments in 20th century border making. This experiment continues to cast dark shadows over international relations and individual identities today, he said.
Around the location of the international borders, their legitimacy and control, much of South Asian regional politics and identity formations revolve. Their very legitimacy is often contested by the States themselves and by individual South Asians.
Though Kashmir is the most highly publicised case, in the last few decades India and Bangladesh have fought well over 60 gun battles over the disputed land along the Muhuri River on the Tripura border. However, the issue remains to be resolved, said the Dutch scholar.
There are many border areas that remain in territorial limbo. Despite the partition of the region completing six decades, many borderlanders here have completed full lives suspended between national identities.
The popular image of the partition of borderland here is that the States are employing well-measured exclusionary violence against outsiders who threaten the integrity of the national territory. But unauthorised cross-border migrants or smugglers have never been effectively deterred despite the construction of border fences and the deployment of very large number of paramilitary troops, he said.
The exclusionary violence of partition is also turned against the State?s own nationals. Metropolitan disdain for borderland grievances translates into powerful protection, indeed impunity for border guards and poses serious political problems for borderlanders, said the social scientist. Border guards often complain that they cannot distinguish between Indian and Bangladeshi citizens. This leads to their categorising the entire borderland population as suspect, unworthy of civil rights and national identity, the social scientist said.
And from this point it needs a small step towards meting out a subhuman treatment to the borderlanders and disciplining them by physical means. When border guards take out their frustration on the bodies of their co-nationals in the borderlands, they enact partition by excluding their victims from the nation and reaffirming their own identity as definers of that nation?s boundaries, said the Dutch scholar. CENISEAS head Sanjib Baruah, OKD Institute director ANS Ahmed and noted social scientist Dr Amalendu Guha, among others, also took part in the deliberations of the function.