This chapter examines what is commonly referred to as the borderland in the Kashmir context and the epistemological consequences of this conceptualization. It focuses on the border spaces on both sides of the LoC and the conditions for political life there. Borderlands have been broadly defined as zones located on both sides of an international border (the edge) where the social dynamics are largely affected by the existence of this border, which regulates interactions between the two sides. Borders are institutions; they are the result of multiple activities of government and thus people's interactions have to be considered within the constraints of these institutions. As institutions, they produce norms that regulate social actions within a specific space, even in contexts where borders are contested – which brings up the question of enforcement. Although borders are relatively persistent and stable over time, the norms that regulate them are continuously challenged from outside (i.e., by grassroot-level movements) or from within the state, leading to the border's transformation. The border creates the borderland, in which the rupture caused by the border is ‘stitched together’ again through new societal arrangements and processes.

The borderland

Borderlands have commonly been examined through the lens of the state's periphery: they are considered to have evolved from a process of territorialization in which the areas known as borderlands end up on the edges of power centres. This spatial perspective implies an epistemology of the study of borderlands as peripheries, based on the pre-eminence of the nation-state as a normative category.