Beyond Lines of Control

Abstract

The Line of Control stretches for over 435 miles, separating the deserts, pastures, peaks and valleys that India holds from those controlled by Pakistan.Carved into the Himalayan and Karakoram ranges, it designates most of the western and northwestern boundaries of the State of Jammu and Kashmir, where Ladakh is politically located.Drawn and redrawn by battles and treaties, the line is identifiable by traces of blood, bullets, watchtowers, and ghost settlements left from recurring wars between India and Pakistan.On international maps, it appears as a sequence of ellipses, the breaks in form symbolic of the rupture between the two neighboring nations as well as their troubled but shared histories.For many of us who were educated in India, the Line of Control was not an obvious spatial marker.On the maps we drew in geography classes, the borders were undisputed and clear.From Kashmir to Kanyakumari, we were taught, did the territorial sovereignty of India extend.Kashmir was the popular abbreviation for the State of Jammu and Kashmir.The name of Ladakh, the State's largest region, did not feature anywhere on our maps.By erasure or inclusion, the Line of Control (loc) has been materially and ideologically resurrected in systems of education, discourses of development and defense, and strategies for organizing government and managing citizens in the homeland.This book redirects standard plots about the loc that are transmitted through national imaginaries and state practices by placing cen-Map of Jammu, Kashmir, and Ladakh.

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