MILITARISED BORDERLANDS AND BORDER MARKETS OF NORTHEAST INDIA

Abstract:

The state creates walls and fencing on the border to fortify its territorial sovereign limit. However, societies, especially the post-colonial borderland societies, and their territoriality are not defined by this cartographic sovereignty of the state. Most of these borders are part of colonial cartography, which erupted after partition, dividing the families at the border. In the borderlands of India, even after 78 years of independence, these borders continue to influence everyday lives and livelihoods. This paper aims to understand the India-Bangladesh border in the Northeast India region in the context of state-sanctioned border markets (haats) in remote rural spaces. In 2011, India and Bangladesh established their first border haat (market) as a part of their bilateral treaty, aiming to reopen the traditional market system in the remote rural area in Northeast India. These haats are strictly militarised bounded spaces, which contradicts the idea of traditional or usual market space, which is an open space for both trade and socialization. Again, the idea of border haat produces an opened and closed border simultaneously because of the fencing that has been constructed by the Indian state on its border for its security anxiety with the neighboring state. In this work, I question how these haats reinforce border-making by creating and recreating borders in multiple layers. Using the Foucauldian concept of discipline and surveillance, I argue that these spaces are made to ‘order’ the borderland mobile societies that do not limit themselves to the sovereign limits.

Keywords: Border, fencing, haats (markets), Northeast India

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