The Indo-Pak border: Displacements, aggressions and transgressions

This article focuses upon the border between India and Pakistan as a site for political and cultural negotiation. By reflecting upon contemporary engagements within wider border studies, the article interrogates the Indo-Pak border and its contextual location in terms of the manner in which India and Pakistan have evoked the border in order to transmit bounded national identities. However, it is argued that, along side the aggressive stances by both governments towards one another through the border, there simultaneously have been various types of transgressive acts (acts that defy or challenge what it symbolises). Thus, the Indo-Pak border continues to evoke action and response from both hegemonic and marginal perspectives, posing fundamental questions around the border's meaning and legitimacy. Drawing upon historical and contemporary illustrations of the border as a constructed, monitored and contested boundary, the article brings into sharp relief the significance of the Indo-Pak border to the movement and displacement of people, processes and ideas in the region. © 2003 Taylor and Francis Ltd.