The Punjab Borderland

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

The Author`S Of The Various Essays Presented Here Have Undertaken To Analyze And Describe The Stresses, Strains And Conflicts That Have Ensured As The Western Borderlands (Baluchistan, Nwfp) Became Involved In The Processes Of Modern Politics And Of Integration Into Pakistan. Contents: Political Problems Of A Borderland - Pakistan`S Imperial Legacy - The Segmentary Linkage System: Its Applicability To Pakistan`S Political Structure - Continuities In Borderland Politics - Economic Change In Baluchistan: Process Of Integration In The Larger Economy Of Pakistan - Brahui Political Organization And The National State - Pushtunistan: Afghan Domestic Politics And Relations With Pakistan. Without Dustjacket, Inscribed On The First End Page, Bookseller`S Stamp On The First End Page, Text Clean, Condition Good.

The Mohammadan Anglo-Oriental College (MAO), that became the Aligarh Muslim University (AMU) in 1920 drew the Muslim elite into its orbit and was a key site of a distinctively Muslim nationalism. Located in New Dehli, the historic centre of Muslim rule, it was home to many leading intellectuals and reformers in the years leading up to Indian independence. During partition it was a hub of pro-Pakistan activism. The graduates who came of age during the anti-colonial struggle in India settled throughout the subcontinent after the Partition. They carried with them the particular experiences, values and histories that had defined their lives as Aligarh students in a self-consciously Muslim environment, surrounded by a non-Muslim majority. This new archive of oral history narratives from seventy former AMU students reveals histories of partition as yet unheard. In contrast to existing studies, these stories lead across the boundaries of India, Pakistan and Bangladesh. Partition in AMU is not defined by international borders and migrations but by alienation from the safety of familiar places. The book reframes Partition to draw attention to the ways individuals experienced ongoing changes associated with “partitioning”-the process through which familiar spaces and places became strange and sometimes threatening-and they highlight specific, never-before-studied sites of disturbance distant from the borders.

This work of 1901 describes the geography and border disputes of the north-west frontier, including the Second Anglo-Afghan War.

'The Bengal Borderland' constitutes the epicentre of the partition of British India. Yet while the forging of international borders between India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Burma (the 'Bengal Borderland') has been a core theme in Partition studies, these crucial borderlands have, remarkably, been largely ignored by historians.

For most residents of India?s bustling metros and big towns, nationality and citizenship are privileges that are often taken for granted. The country?s periphery, however, is dotted with sleepy towns and desolate villages whose people, simply by having more in common with citizens of neighbouring nations than with their own, have to prove their Indian identity every day. It is these specks on the country?s map that Pradeep Damodaran rediscovers as he travels across India?s borders for a little more than a year, experiencing life in far-flung areas that rarely feature in mainstream conversations. In Borderlands, he recounts his encounters with the war-weary fishermen of Dhanushkodi at the southernmost tip of Tamil Nadu, who live in fear both of the Indian Coast Guard and the Sri Lankan navy; farmers in Hussainiwala, a village on Punjab?s border with Pakistan, who are unwilling to build concrete houses for fear of them being destroyed in the ever looming war; Tamil traders of Moreh, a town straddling the Manipur?Myanmar border, who pay bribes to at least ten different militant organizations so they can safely conduct their business; and ex-servicemen in Campbell Bay who were resettled there three generations ago and have long been forgotten by the mainland. From Minicoy in Lakshadweep to Taki in West Bengal, Tawang in Arunachal Pradesh to Raxaul in Bihar, Damodaran?s compelling narrative reinforces the idea that, in India, a land of contrasts and contradictions, beauty and diversity, conflict comes in many forms.