SOAS Research Online

Abstract

This thesis is a qualitative study that explores borders and bordering practices which have constructed, shaped and continue to reshape the contemporary Indian state of Assam. Using mixed methods including community-based research, the thesis critically examines Assam as a site of bordered citizenship girded by a bordering apparatus with historical antecedents which continue to shape Assam’s present. Drawing on an extensive body of literature which problematises traditional ideas of borders as being purely physical and/or geo-spatial, this thesis argues that conceptualisations of borders and border practices construct Assam as a place of shifting spatial imaginaries, while simultaneously shaping and reshaping it within bounded, bordered logics and technologies of control. Assam reflects multiple shifts in the socio-economic and political demographics of the region. The empirical work of this project builds towards a reconceptualisation of Assam as a space of bordering with multiple layers, including but not limited to the colonial plantation complex, and the legacy of commodity production - namely rice and tea - in the region, labour and migration patterns. A topographical landscape of rivers and valleys shape economic and social practices, and the geopolitical territorial maintenance and surveillance of boundaries surrounding and encompassing Assam over time. As this thesis argues, Assam has been an experimental site of bordering practices, more recently exerted through bounded notions of citizenship, manifested by the implementation of the National Register of Citizens and the Citizenship Amendment Act of 2019. Over time, the Indian state has pushed Assam to the front and centre as well as the peripheries in its experimentation with documentary citizenship. Through an analysis of data collected for this project, the thesis highlights the intersecting nature of class, caste, gender, religion and language dynamics, all of which have variously contributed to the shifts and transformations in bordering practices, and the resultant violence arising therefrom. Finally, the thesis also illustrates individual and community acts of subversion and transgression, which I analyse as acts of ongoing resistant responses. Understanding these dynamics contributes to our understanding of bordering as action and response, at multiple levels and microsites in Assam.