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Cartographic Anxiety: Mapping the Body Politic in IndiaAuthor(s): Sankaran KrishnaSource: Alternatives: Global, Local, Political, Vol. 19, No. 4 (Fall 1994), pp. 507-521Published by: Sage Publications, Inc.Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/40644820 .

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Alternatives 9 (1994),507-521

Cartographic nxiety:Mapping heBodyPolitic n ndia

SankaranKrishna*

The parliamentary lections of May 1991 in India were disrupted bythe assassination f the former rime minister, ajivGandhi. In the af-termath f this event, one of the ubiquitous election posters of theCongress (I) party howed a picture of RajivGandhi's identity ard.1On the identity ard, the space allocated for designation of religionwas filled by the word Indian. The not-so-subtle mplication was thatthe slain eader had, in his ifetime, ranscended divisive ocietal den-tities uch as Hindu or Muslim and defined himself rimarily s a sec-ular citizen of a nation-state.2

The effacement f alternative dentities nherent n this politicalstrategem, nd their replacement by one based on the modern, sover-eign nation-state that of citizen is interesting. t one level, t canbe seen as an attempt orewrite ndia in terms f a univocal narrativeof modern nationalism a nationalism hat s supposedly ecular andhostile to all other forms of identity. n viewof nationalism or theretrospective llusion of nationalism, s it has been described3 al-

ternative deas of the self, bethey eligious, egional, inguistic,

r eth-nic, are rendered spurious, reactionary, nd vestigial. Moreover,modernity omes to be defined n the disciplining f ambiguity nd itsintolerance for multiple or layered notions of identity r sovereignty:citizenship s invariably matter f either-or.4

Yet, at another level, the equation of religion ith ndian highlightsthe fact that terms ike nationalism, overeignty, nd citizenship rethemselves mplicated n practices that are, in their own way, he ritu-als of a modern faith. Contemporary ationalism may then, ccording

♦Department f Political Science, University f Hawaii at Manoa, Honolulu, Hawaii96822, e-mail:[email protected]. awaii.edu. For their comments and encourage-ment on previous drafts, would especially like to thank Michael Shapiro, CarolBreckenridge, tty braham, Rob Walker, nd Ena Singh.

507







508 Cartographic nxiety: Mapping heBodyPolitic n ndia

to this ine of thought, e regarded s one in a long ineof discoursesthat have ought o construct ocialreality nd identity orpeople ina given pace.5 The production f national dentity s a contestedprocess verywhere nd the struggle oproduce itizens ut of recal-citrant eoplesaccounts ormuch of whatpassesfor history n mod-ern times.6n India, s in many nother ettings, heprocess as beenaccompanied y n enormous egreeof violence, oth physical ndepistemic. his essay ooks t one small acet f this ngoing rocessof nation-buildingn India: that f cartography.

Bycartographymean more than the technical nd scientific ap-ping of the country. use the term o refer o representational rac-tices hat n variousways ave ttempted o nscribe omething alledIndia and endow hat ntity ith content, history, meaning, nda trajectory. nder such a definition, artography ecomesnothingless than the social and political production f nationality tself.Within his, am specificallynterested n the visual epiction f com-peting epresentations f ndia n public ulture, uchas the way hecountry sdepicted n political osters, overnment aps,newspaperand newsmagazine rticles, lection campaign iterature, oliticalrhetoric, nd other uch artifacts hat eek to create nd reproducethe ymbolic niverse f the ndian nation.

The argument f this rticle an be summarized s follows: n apostcolonial ociety uch as India, the anxiety urrounding uestionsof national dentity nd survivalsparticularly cute. While his nxi-ety s writ arge over the political ulture f the country, ts carto-graphic manifestations re particularly nteresting nd revealing.Specifically,heubiquity f cartographic etaphors, heproductionof nside nd outsidelong the borders f the country, eveal oth the

epistemic nd physical iolence hat ccompanies he nterprise f na-tion-building. t the same time, people who ive along borders rewont o regard his atest iscursive niverse f nationality nd terri-toriality s, at a minimum, ne moreminefield o be navigated afely,or better one to be profited rom. he encounters etween hestate nd the people along frontiers ssuggestive f the ontested ndtortured roduction f sovereign dentity. ltimately, artographicanxiety s a facet of a larger postcolonial nxiety: f a society us-pended forever n the space between he former olony nd not-yet-nation. his suspended state can be seen in the discursive

production f India as a bounded, overeign ntity nd the deploy-ment f this n everyday olitics nd in the country's iolent orders.Quotidian ife long the frontiers nd its micropolitics enders rans-parent he arbitrariness nd the violence f the discourse f nation-







Sankaran rishna 509

hood. Cartographic nxiety, rom hisperspective, ecomes promi-nent ignifier f the postcolony.

ReadingMapsas Texts

Mapsare too mportant o be left o cartographers lone.- J.B. Harley7

Despitehisfirm elief n the timeless xistence f a spiritual nd civi-lizational ntity alled ndia,Jawaharlal ehru nevertheless elt om-pelled to begin his appropriately itled iscoveryf ndia*with solidand physicalistic escription f the country's natural rontiers.Nehru's maginative eography epicted mpassablemountain anges,vast eserts, nd deepoceansthat roduced natural cradle or whatbecame ndia. And in Nehru's Autobiography?nxiety egarding hephysical oundaries f the nation s inscribed arly. The narrativescript hat uns through ehru's definitive ork n imagining ndiaclearly races hecountry's ownfall oporous rontiers nd, more m-portantly, o an unfortunate iming y which disunited nd frag-menting ndia encountered hecresting nd united ivilization f theBritish. he encounter roducednot only olonialrule but, with t,Nehru rgued, he ources f ndia's eventual edemption: odernity,science, herational pirit, nd, most mportantly, ational nity.10

Theworst ears egarding hysical oundaries ere ealized n 1947with hepartition f ndia at independence nto ndia and Pakistan.Nehru's ecollections f that vent re worth uoting:

Allour communicationserepset

nd broken.elegraphs,

ele-phones, ostal ervicesnd lmost verythings a matter ffact asdisrupted. ur ervices ere roken p.Our rmy asbroken p.Our rrigationystems ere roken nd o many ther hings ap-pened. . . . But above ll, whatwas broken p whichwasof hehighest m-portancewas something ery ital and that was the body f ndia. Thatproduced remendousonsequences,otonly hose hat ou aw,but hose hat ou annotmagine,n heminds nd ouls f millionsofhuman eings. 11

As this reation-by-amputationttempted oachievenationhood, hecorporeal lement f ts xistence as remained n the foreground. tis perhaps nsurprising hat his hild of partition, ndia, has carto-graphic nxiety nscribed nto ts very enetic ode.







510 Cartographic nxiety:Mapping heBodyPolitic n ndia

In the years ince,history an be (and often s) read as a series fencounters ith his nxiety: fChina n 1962represented demoral-izing efeat, angladesh n 1971wasrecorded s an important ictory.Since ndependence or more ccurately, incepartition) heanxietyhas been showcased erfectly n the spaceof desire alled Kashmir.More mportantly, accurate epresentations f the bodypolitic nmapsand insignia re watchedwith n intensity hat s perhaps un-equalledelsewhere.

In India today, here s an evident bsession with alien nfiltration,with hadowy foreign ands ut to destabilize he country, ith heneed for blue-water avy o secure the peninsula's oastlines; ithplans to construct fence along the borders with Pakistan ndBangladesh; nd with arious ther phenomena erceived s threatsto the unity nd integrity f the nation.12 he prevalence f carto-graphic hemes n politicaldiscourse an be seen in the followingspectacle. uring heRepublicDaycelebrations nJanuary 992, heleaderof the Bharatiya anata arty BJP), MurliManohar oshi, m-barked on what was described s an Ekta Yatra (literally, nityPilgrimage: ote the religiousmetaphor), lanned to begin at thesouthern ipof ndia and to end n a grand lag-hoisting eremony nSrinagar, hecapital f Kashmir, n the north. When t appeared thatthe yatra would be delayed, f not aborted, y avalanches nd badweather, henationwasexhorted y heBJP's eaders o draw n out-line map of ndia in the soil nearest hem nd plant the ndian tri-coloron the potrepresenting rinagar.

Cartographic hemeswere prominent n the parliamentary lec-tions f 1989, n which herewas an unprecedented se of the massmedia to gain popular upport. he ruling ongress I), as in other

years t east ince 1977,played n fears f mpending ational isin-tegration nd portrayed tself s the sole party apable of avertingbalkanizatioh. ongress I) s series of political ommercialsmostlycentered round he physicalmapof ndia.The ads,whichwerepub-lished widely n leading newspapers nd magazines nd which n-cludedregional-languageersions, ammered ome this heme f thenation n danger.14he invocation f the mapof ndiaand the notionsof anxiety nd dangerweremade obvious perhaps oo obvious asreflected n one of the more dramatic osters hat ueried: Will hisbe the ast ime you ee India n this hape?

As the physicalmap of ndia gainsubiquity s an iconic representa-tion of the bodypolitic, t becomes he terrain or ompeting ffortsto define, nd possess, he elf. n response, pposition arties ut outtheir wnversions f ndia, lso n the form f a map. Listing litany







Sankaranrishna 511

of their omplaints gainst the ruling party, he opposition maps weredominated by a narrative hat contrasted the normal and the patho-logical.The utility f such a trope n discussions f the body politic hasa long genealogy15nd was represented n this nstance by iterally n-scribing he problems of the nation across the maps. The BJP's mapsfocused on the territorial losses of the Congress government, n ar-gument underlain by an implicit reference to the Hindu fundamen-talist deas of Akhand Bharat (Undivided India).16 The theme showedthe body politic being diminished, on the one hand, by oss of terri-

tory, nd on the other, by disease and impurity.The theme of a perceived ndispensability f secure or inviolateborders for national development, n fact for nationality tself, s notlimited to politics. n Indian society, t is a recurring heme. A typicalcomment regarding borders runs:

According opolitical cientists ne of the prerequisites or he or-dered growth f modern ation tate ssettled oundaries. nce acountry as welldefined orders, heplanned development f thevarious ectors f he conomy ecomes asier nd predictable. lso,asa member f the comity f nations t willhavemore redibility, fnot onfidence, n ts elations ith ther ationswhen t knows hatits nternationally cceptedborders annot draw t nto the mire fterritorial hauvinism. . . After lmost 0 years s an independentcountry, ndia still has undefined orders with wo of its neigh-bours.17

The theme s repeated in news reports nd editorials. Physicalpreser-vation of the borders has become synonymous with the state of theunion.

What these invocations regarding the sanctity f the body politicusually push to the margins s the violence that produces the border.A classic instance of ust such a production of borders s ongoing inthe conflict between India and Pakistan over the Siachen Glacier.Interestingly, hispart of the Indo-Pakistan border was left unmappedat Partition ecause the cartographer onsidered definition o be un-necessary: the terrain was so inhospitable and the details so sketchythat t was not anticipated the area would become a matter of con-tention.18 ince April 1984, the two sides have lost well over two thou-sand soldiers, 97 percent of them killed by the weather and theterrain. Only 3 percent have been lost to enemy fire. The glacier be-gins at 12,000 feet above sea level, in the Sal toro Range of theHimalayasand ascends to 22,000 feet. Byway of comparison, Mount







512 Cartographic nxiety: Mapping heBodyPolitic n ndia

Everest, hehighest oint on earth, s a little ver 29,000feet high).Mostof India's soldiersmanning he station re in the base camp;Pakistani oldiers re n the valley elow. he Indians ake urns erv-ing at the forward osts, ituated etween 8,000 nd 22,000feet nthe glacier. ne in two oldiers osted oSiachenwilldie, and at anymoment n time, ver wo housandmen re stationed t Siachen. Onaverage, oldierswho return live have ost from to 12kilograms nweight uring heir hree-month tint. heyundergo ne of the mostharrowing hysical nd psychological xperiences onceivable. hefollowingengthy xcerpt rom report onveys senseof the urrealviolence t this rontier.

Last fortnight, e were witness to the funeral of the latest victim,Chandra Bhan, 28, a sepoy of the Rajput Regiment tationed at theforward post of Pahalwan (20,000 feet) which often comes underconcentrated Pakistani artillery ire.Bhan, however, id not die be-cause of enemy action. The cause of death was pulmonary em-bolism a blood clot in the lungs caused by the rarefied ir. . . .Bhan had actually died 18 days earlier. His body waslaboriously ar-ried down

the steep snow-covered lope to Zulu (19,500 feet), theonly post in the area with helipad. . . . Eventually, ilots . . bravedgusty ail winds of over 60 kmph to land the fragile Cheetah heli-copter on the narrow, now-covered elipad. Bhan's body proved toobig for the Cheetah. His legs had to be broken to ferry t to BaseCamp. . . Bhan's widow expecting his third hild - will get onlyan urn of her husband's ashes and his ribbons, ncluding a grey ndwhite one awarded to all Siachen veterans. She is fortunate. Manyothers won't even get that. The bodies of their menfolk who weretrapped n crevasses, uried under avalanches, or lost n blizzardshave never even been recovered.19

The Indo-Pakistan order, ere as elsewhere, s literally eingdrawnin blood.Suchviolence s routinely inessedn news eports bout ifeon the frontiers reports hat ewritet nto moral conomy f sac-rifice or hegoodof the nation. eanElshtain asnoted, Topreservethe arger ivicbody,whichmust be 'as one', particular odies mustbe sacrificed. 20perating ut of this xculpatory arrative, retiredIndian diplomat verred: The publicwillhave to be educated ntounderstanding hat he bloodywar . . and the miscellaneous rontierclasheswhich ave ed to the oss of ifewouldbe

amply ecompensedif ndia can be assured f ecure nd nviolable orders n the decadesto come. 21







Sankaranrishna 513

Recently, he anxiety over incursions from Pakistan has reached anew high. Subversives re allegedly trained n Pakistan to foment un-rest n India's provinces of Punjab and Kashmir. To circumvent heerosion of ts borders with Pakistan nd Bangladesh, ndia has createda scheme for security elt along the whole of ts northwestern ndnortheastern rontiers. Moreover, n May 1993, the Union cabinet ap-proved a plan to issue identity ards to all border area residents nthirty-three istricts n nine states. A leading newspaper, n a schizoidreading of this plan, supported t at the beginning of an editorial but

ended pessimistically:On the faceof t the Centre's ecision o ssue dentity ards o peo-ple living n 33border istricts ordering akistan nd Bangladeshwillhelp remove thorn n the side of ndia's bodypolitic.On thewestern order he cardswill e a deterrent othe nfiltrator rmedwith uns nd secessionist houghts. n the eastthe card s expectedto help stem he tide of millions f Bangladeshimmigrants lowinginto ndia. . . Cards re ikely obe ust nother nsuccessful,argelysymbolic xercise n futility ike the planned border ence nd theodd

policecombing peration.Withoutmore

maginativedminis-

trative hinking nd greater olitical will he dentity ardwill e lit-tle more han n expensive uccessor o the ration ard.22

In a way, hiscontradictory eading s a result of the narrow discursivespace within which most news coverage of security matters n Indiaoperate. The concluding invocations of political will and imagina-tive administration eveal both a chafing at the limits of this spaceand lack of vision or vocabulary to transcend t. In this, as in manyother nstances, the hegemony of realpolitik iterally arrates the na-

tion.The preoccupation with borders nd with alien nfiltration oundsespeciallydisingenuous when India is faced with numerous secession-ist threats rom within. Many of these ethnic, inguistic, nd religiousmovements an hardly be wished awayas arising olely out of exter-nal meddling n domestic ffairs. he operation of the inside/out-side antinomy erves not so much to prevent foreign nfiltration sit does to discipline and produce the domestic ated) self.







514 Cartographicnxiety: appinghe ody oliticn ndia

Everyday Life on the Borderlines

What the map cuts up, the story uts across.- De Certeau.

Despite the efforts f states and theorists f politics to present thepost-Westphalian world of territorially overeign nation-states s atimeless ssence, this world order is historically ontingent, iolentlyproduced, and contested. Along the borders of India, Pakistan, and

Bangladesh are people whose lives are abstracted by the discourses ofcitizenship, sovereignty, nd territoriality. heir recalcitrances andcompromises re not to be read exclusively n a register f heroism orromantic vasions, or even as instances of everyday esistance.Rather,quotidian realities can reveal how cartography roduces borders, thearbitrariness nvolved n the creation of normality, nd the fluid defi-nitions of space and place that prevail n the midst of efforts o hege-monize territory.

Consider the following ignette rom veryday ife along the Indianborder with Bangladesh, as was reported n a Calcutta newspaper.

HosebAli,a resident f Nabinnagar illage n Nadia (a district nWest engal, ndia), sat n his courtyard, it bidi nd gently ossedthe matchstick way. he matchstick, till mouldering, anded inBangladesh. Uncle, ome over, havesomething o tell you, heshouted.24

Hoseb Ali- as the report went on to reveal wascalling his maternaluncle, Emdadul, to discuss the upcoming village-level lections beingheld in the state of West Bengal. They were neighbors, but it so hap-pened that he nternational oundary between ndia and Bangladeshcut across their courtyard endering them citizens of different oun-tries. The border at this point was marked by a makeshift ence anuisance more than a frontier. t various other points, he border wasa three-foot-tall amboo fence, and elsewhere there wasn't even that.

Emdadul, irritated by the efforts f the Border Security Force(BSF- an Indian paramilitary rganization) and the Bangla DeshRifles BDR) to keep the border a reality t least for the duration ofthe local village elections, asked querulously: How can you segregateus?We have grown up together nd belong to the same family.We willcross what you people call the 'border' and visit ach other. Can theBSFor the BDRkeep a constant watch on us? The sector commanderof the BSF, Balbir Singh Shahal, was similarly rritated. He asked:







Sankaranrishna 515

How can we stop the infiltration? We do not understand Bengali.These people speak the same language, wear similar lothes and lookno different. t is impossible to differentiate etween a Bangladeshiand an Indian. Also, many ive in houses adjacent to each other. nhis own words, the arbitrary nd violent production of a border bythe Border Security orce becomes transparent. n the face of a real-ity hat does not allow him to distinguish Bengali Indian from aBengali Bangladeshi, the commander is forced to rely on the pro-

duction of an alternative order that of the nation-state nd of citi-

zenship. Commander Shahal angrily oncludes that Indians shouldbe issued identity ards immediately. Given the impossibility f pro-ducing difference ut of religious, regional, linguistic, nd physicalcharacteristics, e plumps for nationality. et, n the subcontinent aselsewhere), the differentiation f nations supposedly rests upon somecombination of precisely hese essen ialized characteristics.

In the meantime, people on both sides were operating within amoral economy that had comfortably nternalized the border intotheir veryday ives.This was evident n the elections n Petrapole, an-other villageon the border. All three candidates vying or the last seatin the grampanchayat village-level dministration) were well-knownsmugglers whose main trade was in illegal immigrants. hitta Sardarwas the Congress (I) candidate, Khagen Mistry epresented the BJP,and Atiar Sheikh wasfrom he Communist Party f ndia (Marxist), orCPI(M). In a very matter-of-fact ay, ardar laid out his main differ-ence with Sheikh: Just because his family wns the land right n theborder we have to pay him 'ghat duty' [a transit fee] to transportBangladeshis, he complained. Mistry oted that up to one thousandBangladeshis a day could be transported cross the border, t a cost of

Rs30per person. Mistry's roblem was that while the Bangladeshis didall the work, Sheikh gave them only 10 percent of the proceeds andkept the rest for himself. Winning the ocal election was thus mainlymatter f controlling he smuggling peration.25

The organization upposedly charged with maintaining he border,the BSF,is also thoroughly mplicated n this economy. An officer fthe ocal bank that operates accounts for BSFpersonnel revealed thattheir repatriation of earnings to home villages far exceeded theirsalaries. n other words, border transgression s good business for theBSF.Meanwhile, n Mudafat, village that has seen many BangladeshiHindus cross over and settle n this predominantly ower-caste rea,resident Amai Sarkar noted that there wasno tension among the resi-dents. In fact, their panchayat had been adjudged the best for the1990/91 year n its district or mplementation f poverty lleviation







516 Cartographicnxiety: appinghe ody oliticn ndia

schemes.26 udafat ffortlessly ives ie to the discourse of danger thatinvariably ccompanies reports n Bangla infiltration nto India.

Even the armed forces of the two countries have become somewhatdomesticated in this context. In the neighboring state of Tripura(which also shares a border with Bangladesh) at Akhaura, the BSFcheckpost stands alongside that of the BDR. Every morning (andevening) the flags of both countries go up (and come down) at a sin-gle command issued by personnel on either ide of the border. Tradein staples such as fish, ggs, and clothing routinely move uninterrupt-edly across the border, while marriages between parties on either ideare quite frequent. As the ournalist reporting on the region notes:The bridegroom's party, ccompanied by band music, crosses the

border without hindrance and goes back with he bride and presenta-tions. Sometimes t's the other way bout. 27

Running through ll the above vignettes f daily ife along the bor-ders or in the places that, n maps, are bisected by a line - are therecurring hemes of discipline and abstraction. hey serve to acquaintus with a part of the world we have pulverized n our minds into aspace dominated by the concept, the border. vercoded with the dis-courses of citizenship, eopolitics, nd sovereignty, ife here is abstractin the most violent ense of that word.28 s Michel De Certeau notes nthe context of the transition rom he detailed and sensuous medievaltours and itineraries o the modern map, that ensemble of abstractplaces,

the map, totalizing tage n which lements f diverse rigin rebrought ogether o form he tableau of a state f geographicalknowledge, ushes way nto ts prehistory r into tsposterity, s ifinto he wings, heoperations f which t s the result r the neces-sary ondition. t remains lone on the stage.The tour describershavedisappeared.29

The Indian state attempts, with ts maps and its various surveillances,the production and dissemination of this geopolitical second natureagainst the unconsciously recalcitrant ractices of people along thefrontiers. he status of these peoples gets rewritten n the defence ofthe country. An example of such a rewriting, ith an interesting e-versal n the valorization f human and material resources, s seen inthe following xhortation oward border management sic):

For effective order management t s essential hat he peoplestay-ing n border reas be firmly ntegrated ith he rest f their oun-








tion of the self.Thus, to decolonize the self may mean denationalizingthe narratives hat embody space and time.

Notes

1. The letter /in the party name stands for the late Indira Gandhi.2. In the political universe of contemporary ndia, the Congress (I) has

portrayed tself s the champion of secularism as oppossed to the explicitlyHindu orientation of the BharatiyaJanata Party BJP) The BJP has seen asharp mprovement n its electoral fortunes, oing from relatively nsignifi-cant share of the popular vote in the elections of 1980and 1984to, followingthe general election of 1991,being the argest pposition party n Parliament.While the religious, ndeed fundamentalist, haracter of the BJP s in littledoubt, the Congress I)'s real commitment o secularism has recently een anissue of much contention.

3. See Etienne Balibar, The Nation Form: History and Ideology, inEtienne Balibar and Immanuel Wallerstein, Race, Nation, Class:AmbiguousIdentities, hris Turner, rans. London: Verso, 1991), pp. 86-106.

4. It is the dichotomous nature of this choice that, mong other reasons,led me to title this piece, Cartographic nxiety. he direct referent s Richard

Bernstein's Cartesian Anxiety, bout which he writes: Either here is somesupport for our being, a fixed foundation for our knowledge, orwe cannot es-cape the forces of darkness that envelop us with madness, with ntellectualand moral chaos. See Richard Bernstein, BeyondObjectivismnd Relativism:Science,Hermeneutics nd Praxis (Philadelphia: Univ. of Pennsylvania Press,1985),p. 18.Emphasis n the original. Foucault aphorized this famously s theblackmailof the Enlightenment nd it is a particularly ppropriate notion

in the context of discourses on citizenship. n the modern world system, a-tionality xhausts the discursive pace of identity nd impoverishes ur imag-ination for alternative, multiple, or layered understandings f selves. Hence,the sterile hoices presented are invariably f the order of nside/outside, pa-triot/traitor, ation list/communalist, nd so forth.

5. Studies that depict the emergence of the modern world of sovereign na-tion-states nd its accompanying deologies of nationalism, itizenship, over-eignty, nd security ave long commented on the synonymously eligious oreschatological character of these newest aiths. Certainly Marx, Durkheim,and Weber, to mention only three, were cognizant of this aspect of the dis-course of statism and citoyen. or a superb discussion, see Derek Sayer,Capitalism nd Modernity: n Excursus n Marx and WeberNewYork:Routledge,1991). In the specific ontext of ndia, the following uote from AshisNandymakes mypoint with brevity: Certainly n India, the ideas of nation-building,scientific growth, ecurity, modernization and development have becomeparts of a left-handed echnology with a clear touch of religiosity a mod-ern

demonology,tantra with built-in ode of violence. .. To

manyndians

today, ecularism omes as a part of a larger package consisting f many tan-dardized ideological products and social processes development, mega-sci-ence and national security eing some of the most prominent mong them.This package often plays the same role vis-a-vis he people of the society







SankaranKrishna 519

sanctioning r ustifying iolence against the weak and the dissenting thatthe church, the ulema, he sangha,or the Brahmans played in earlier times.See Ashis Nandy, The Politics of Secularism and the Recovery of ReligiousTolerance,** n R. B. J. Walker and Saul Mendlovitz, eds., ContendingSovereignties:edefining oliticalCommunityBoulder: Lynne Reinner, 1990), p.134.

6. A recent work hat presents genealogy of the contested production ofthe terrain alled Siam (Thailand) can be found in Thongchai Winichakul,SiamMapped:AHistory f heGeo-Bodyf heNation Honolulu: Univ. of HawaiiPress, 1994) and an exemplary ccount of this process n France can be foundin Eugen Weber, Peasants nto Frenchmen: he Modernization f Rural France,1870-1914 (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford Univ. Press, 1976). For a discussion ofthe production of national boundaries via a dialectic between the local andthe national see Peter Sahlins, Boundaries: he Making f rance nd Spain n thePyreneesBerkeley: Univ. of California Press, 1989).

7. J. B.Harley, Deconstructing he Map,**n Trevor .Barnes and James S.Duncan, Writing Worlds: iscourse,Text nd Metaphor n the Representation fLandscape London: Routledge, 1992).

8. Jawaharlal Nehru, The Discovery f ndia (Delhi: Oxford Univ. Press,1946).

9. See Jawaharlal Nehru, An AutobiographyLondon: John Lane, 1936).10. The ambivalent discourse of anticolonial nationalism s discussed in,

among others,Ashis

Nandy,The ntimate

nemy:oss and

Recovery fthe

SelfUnderColonialismDelhi: Oxford Univ. Press, 1983) and Partha Chatterjee,Nationalist hought nd the ColonialWorld: Derivative iscourse Delhi: OxfordUniv.Press, 1986). For a discussion focusing n Nehru and the production ofnational identity, ee Sankaran Krishna, Inscribing he Nation: Nehru andthe Politics of Identity n India,**n Stephen Rosow,Naeem Inayatullah, ndMark Rupert, eds., The Global Economy s Political Space (Boulder: LynneRienner, 1994).

11. Jawaharlal Nehru, Independence nd After: A collection of speeches1946-1949 (Delhi: Government f India, 1956), p. 247. Emphasis added.

12. As an illustration, onsider the following collage of newspaper andmagazine headlines: We will not cede an inch: PM**;To seal a porous bor-

der**; Bangla infiltration worries Center**; Identity-Cards or Border AreaResidents**;SpecialID cards soon on 33 border districts**;Borderline Case**;Laying Down the Line**; 'Live Borders' of the North-East**;The Border

Security Belt**;Charting ndia**;The Border Security orce: Battling t theSandy Frontier. hese headlines were taken at random from ecent ssues ofthe Statesman nd the Telegraphboth Calcutta-based English-language news-papers) and Frontline, newsmagazinepublished in Madras.

13. The yatra, nd its quixotic (in the original sense of that term) finale,was well covered by ndian newspapers. ee especially he Statesman Calcutta:January 5, 26, and 27, 1992).

14. For the whole series of advertisements entering on various maps ofIndia, see Dilip Sarwate, PoliticalMarketing: he ndian ExperienceNew Delhi:Tata-McGrawHill, 1990), p. 157-163. The ads drew the wrath of many fortheir litism, retentiousness, nd highly melodramatic one. Needless to say,Indian cartoonists ad a field day and parodied the ads mercilessly. arwate sbook also includes some choice selections of these ripostes.








15. For a discussion of the notions of the normal and the pathological indiscussions centering on the body politic, see David Campbell, WritingSecurity: nited tates oreign olicy nd the olitics f dentity Minneapolis: Univ.of Minnesota Press, 1992), pp. 85-101.

16. In the BJP's desired cosmology, ndia's frontiers xtend all the way toAfghanistan n the West and Burma in the East, and would include Nepal,Bhutan, Tibet, and other neighboring countries. Maps of the so-calledAkhand Bharat served as the frontispiece or their publication, TheOrganiser,and are regularly sed in BJPpamphlets, posters, nd party iterature. khandBharat s the invariable benchmark from which the BJP riticizes he Congress(I) and (in an earlier time) wasthe reason for he assassination f Gandhi. Foran insightful nalysis of the Hindu right's origins nd its hypermasculinity sa complete internalization f the values and pathology of the colonizer, seeAshis Nandy, At the Edge of Psychology:ssays in Politics nd Culture Delhi:Oxford Univ. Press, 1980).

17. See Appan Menon, 'Time for Political Solution in Frontline Madras,May 16-29, 1987): 14.

18. See Ravi Rikhye, The Militarization f Mother ndia (Delhi: Chanakya,1990), pp. 24-27.

19. This, and much of the information n this section, is taken fromSiachen: The Forgotten War, a report by W. P. S. Sidhu and Pramod

Pushkarna, n India Today May31, 1992):58-71. Siachen, incidentally, meansRose Garden.

20. Jean Bethke Elshtain, Sovereignty, dentity, acrifice, in Millennium:Journal f nternational tudies 0, no. 3 (1991): 397.

21. N. B. Menon, LayingDown the Line, Frontline Madras, August 8-21,1987): 40.

Tl. See Borderline Case, editorial in the Telegraph Calcutta: May 27,1993).

23. Michel De Certeau, The Practice fEveryday ife, teven Rendali, trans.(Berkeley:Univ. of California Press, 1988).

24. From Aloke Banerjee's report n the Statesman Calcutta: May29, 1993),Where Two Nations Slip into Each Other. The remainder of this paragraph

and the next two paragraphs of text rely heavily n this report.25. See report by Diptosh Majumdar, 3 Smugglers Fight for PanchayatSeat, in the TelegraphCalcutta: May 27, 1993).26. Pijush Kundu, Decadence, privation nd politicking, n the Statesman

(Calcutta: May 19, 1993).27. Anil Bhattacharjee, Indo-Bangla Border, in Frontline Madras: May

3-16, 1986).28. Consider Lefebvre's xpansion on this heme: uThere s a violencentrinsic

to bstraction . . abstraction's modus perandi sdevastation, estruction. . . Theviolence nvolved does not stem from ome force ntervening side from atio-nality, utside or beyond t. Rather, t manifests tself rom he moment ny ac-tion ntroduces he rational nto the real, from he outside, by means of toolswhich strike, lice and cut and keep doing so until the purpose of their g-gression s achieved. Emphasis n original. See Henri Lefebvre, TheProductionof pace,Donald Nicholson, trans. Cambridge, Mass.:Blackwell, 991), p. 289.

29. De Certeau, note 23, p. 121.30. A.V. Liddle, The Role of Locals in Border Management, in D. V. L. N.







SankaranKrishna 521

Ramakrishna Rao and R. C. Sharma, eds., India's Borders: cology nd SecurityPerspectivesNew Delhi: Scholars Publishing Forum, 1990), p. 204.

31. Pierre Bourdieu, Outline of a Theory f Practice, ichard Nice, trans.(Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1977).

32. Carol Breckenridge and Peter van der Veer, eds., Orientalism nd thePostcolonial redicament: erspectivesrom South Asia (Philadelphia: Univ. ofPennsylvania ress, 1993).

cartographic anxiety

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