Borderland Lives in Northern South Asia

David N. Gellner is Professor of Social Anthropology at the University of Oxford. He is the editor of Varieties of Activist Experience: Civil Society in South Asia and Ethnic Activism and Civil Society in South Asia and coeditor (with Krishna Hachhethu) of Local Democracy in South Asia: Microprocesses of Democratization in Nepal and Its Neighbours.

"Anthropologists working on any issue of contemporary identity or politics would be well served to study this volume, as well as van Schendel's original essay and the literature it has inspired. I expect that, armed with this perspective, researchers will find more borderlands than we anticipated while also finding the entire concept of borders and the entities allegedly bounded by these borders increasingly problematic." - Jack David Eller (Anthropology Review Database) “Readers from a variety of theoretical and geographical orientations will appreciate its challenge to nation- and state-centric theorizing about borders. In this, the volume offers a most welcome addition to the literature on life where political and scholarly “areas” meet.” - Sarah Besky (American Ethnologist) "Although the history of Partition, antagonism with neighboring states, and the rich ethnic diversity of border regions make India’s borderlands a unique case, the essays in this volume speak to wider, comparative issues. The book would be significant for undergraduate and graduate courses on South Asia and India, anthropologies of the state, and comparative border studies." - Chad Haines (Journal of Anthropological Research)

• Preface viiIntroduction. Northern South Asia's Diverse Borders, from Kachchh to Mizoram / David N. Gellner 11. Borders without Borderlands: On the Social Reproduction of State Demarcation in Rajasthan / Anastasia Piliavsky 242. Allegiance and Alienation: Border Dynamics in Kargil / Radhika Gupta 473. Naturalizing the Himalaya-as-Border in Uttarakhand / Nayanika Mathur 724. On the Way to India: Nepali Rituals of Border Crossing / Sondra L. Hausner and Jeevan R. Sharma 945. The Perils of Being a Borderland People: On the Lhotshampas of Bhutan / Rosalind Evans 1176. Developing the Border: The State and the Political Economy of Development in Arunachal Pradesh / Deepak K. Mishra 1417. The Micropolitics of Borders: The Issue of Greater Nagaland (or Nagalim) / Vibha Joshi 1638. Nodes of Control in a South(east) Asian Borderland / Nicholas Farrelly 1949. Histories of Belonging(s): Narrating Territory, Possession, and Dispossession at the India-Bangladesh Border / Jason Cons 21410. Geographies and Identities: Subaltern Partition Stories along Bengal's Southern Frontier / Annu Jalais 245Afterword. Making the Most of "Sensitive" Borders / Willem van Schendel 266Contributors 273Bibliography 277Index 303