Lines and Lives: Stories of Conflict, Resilience and Hope from Jammu and Kashmir Borderlands
Edited by Mohita Bhatia, Rekha Chowdhary and Sandeep Singh
Orient BlackSwan, 280 pages, Rs 1,510

While the conflict in Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) has been extensively analysed from journalistic and academic perspectives, the J&K borderlands, one of the most constraining, violent and securitised borders in the world, remain under-explored. The different kinds of borders in J&K and the effect of their fluidity and volatility on the lives of the people require a systematic study.

‘Lines and Lives’, a pioneering study of both the International Border and the Line of Control (LoC) in J&K, offers an understanding of border realities through interactions among the state, people, communities and physical spaces. The book demonstrates the specificities of South Asian borders, and implications for those living on the J&K border as well as those affected by the ‘bordering’ process, such as ‘divided families’ and PAJK refugees.

Through semi-structured and focus group interviews and narrative analysis, the book explores the paradoxical nature of the J&K borders which manifests in a variety of ways. The book analyses the everyday life of people living around the International Border in Arnia (Jammu) and the LoC in Poonch; studies the role played by divided families around Poonch, Rajouri (Jammu), and Kargil (Ladakh) in resisting as well as reinforcing borders; and explores cross-border interaction via the cross-LoC bus service and trade.

Scholars and practitioners of sociology, anthropology, political science, Partition and border studies, policy and strategic studies, South Asian Studies, and curious readers willing to understand the complexity of the lived experience in J&K will find this book illuminating.

Here is an excerpt from an essay from this volume.

Marginalisation and Borders
What does it mean to live on the Loc?

By Chakraverti Mahajan and Sandeep Singh

Nabeel: Ek jaise log, ek jaisi zubaan, ek jaisa rehan-sehan, bas in siyasatoon ne humein lakiro mein baant diya (One people, one language, one way of life; only the politics has separated us from each other through lines).
Sujaan: Inhi lakiro ne to sab kuch cheen liya hamara (These lines have snatched everything from us).

One evening, in a nondescript village situated on the LoC in Poonch district of Jammu and Kashmir, as Nabeel sits around the fire with Sujaan and Billa, he expresses his amazement at the similarity between people, language and lifestyle on either side of the LoC. Nabeel, a young Muslim man, was visiting along with his paternal grandmother from Mirpur, which is a border district on the Pakistani side of the LoC, to meet her sister on the Indian side of the LoC. Sujaan, a middle-aged Hindu man who lost his father and young sisters during the Partition carnage, exclaims that these lines had snatched away everything from them. Billa, a young Muslim man, orphaned due to the ongoing conflict, attempts to lighten the mood by asking Nabeel and Sujaan to stop talking about ‘lakeero-shakeero’ (lines) and rather concentrate on the drink that he had offered.

The above scene is from the film ‘Lines’ (2021) directed by Hussein Khan, which shows multiple aspects of people’s lives on both sides of the LoC. The movie is set in the late 1990s, before the Kargil War of 1999. Though the movie is primarily a romanticised tale of love and marriage across the borders, it also manages to capture genuine moments from the day-to-day lives of the borderlands. Scenes of intermittent shelling and firing, dislocation from the villages to makeshift camps, accidental civilian deaths, separated families, sustained kinship ties across the borders and navigating the layered bureaucracy intersperse the movie. The aspects that we want to underscore in this chapter are those depicting the peculiarity of the LoC, in terms of the cultural continuity among the people living on either side of this border, lived kinship and the fuzzy nature of the border which, despite the decades of conflict and antagonism, allows people to feel connected.

Before excavating the everyday lives of people living close to the LoC, it is crucial to comprehend its meaning. Borders are ‘lines’ separating one country or state from another. However, these borders are not just ‘visible lines’ on the land, they are complex creations with manifold meanings and functions (Haselsberger 2014). The term ‘border’ does not identify itself just as a physical boundary that separates the sovereign writ of one state from another, but also as another fault line generated or accentuated by a conflict (DasGupta 2012) that separates people living on either side of it. This chapter moves away from analysing the complex relationships that nation-states and borders share. It is given that imagining a border without a nation-state and a nation-state without a border is impossible. However, borders are also peculiar spaces and institutions, established and sustained by the exceptional interplay between border communities residing on either side. Borders are ‘vibrant and have their internal dynamics that influence, and are influenced by, the patterns of social, economic and political developments in surrounding landscapes’ (Kliot and Newman 2000: 9). People living across the LoC are affected by the more significant socio-political processes between two nations and yet manage to lead their lives through a web of local social ties, cultural continuity and lived kinships.

In this chapter, we shift our focus away from the International Border (IB), the settled border between India and Pakistan. Instead, we focus on the Line of Control, the unsettled border between Jammu and Kashmir and Pakistan-controlled Jammu and Kashmir that runs through all the three regions of the erstwhile State of Jammu and Kashmir (or now, the UTs of Jammu, Kashmir and Ladakh). To be more specific, the chapter talks about the borderlanders living in the Poonch and Rajouri districts of the Jammu region. These areas have borne the major brunt of the conflict between India and Pakistan. The chapter is based on field observations since 2011—especially trips to Poonch and Rajouri in June and August 2014—and supplemented by focus group discussions, and interviews with elders, youth, women, traders and the intelligentsia of the areas as well. The primary respondents comprise the people residing in the villages along the LoC and key towns of the sub-region. Recent telephonic interviews were also conducted in 2021 with people from the region.

The chapter aims to study people living along the LoC in terms of the cultural continuities and kinship with those living across the border. Living on the margins of the state should not be understood in terms of an absence of the state. On the contrary, these borders are where the state becomes extremely visible, and the process of state-making remains active in these areas, especially the LoC.

[The chapter continues. The excerpt reproduced with the permission of the publishers.]