In this chapter I discuss border space transformations near the LoC. I argue that the ambivalent legal nature of the LoC as a border, rather than preserving the status quo, is an essential part of this transformative activity. The limited opening of the LoC in 2005 for separated families and the exchange of goods was framed as part of a broader understanding by the governments of India and Pakistan that viewing borders as barriers is no longer sustainable because of the pressure of globalization. However, this mobility is still ‘filtered’ through bureaucratic procedures and new technologies of surveillance and control. I maintain that the opening of crossing points is itself a bordering process, by which the two states attempt to gain control over the edges of their polity where state sovereignty is uncertain. These edges are currently held through exceptional legal means and authoritarian politics, but the aim is to incorporate them into the rest of the state's territory through economic and infrastructural interventions. Unable to negotiate the political dissent that arises in such disputed territories, the state attempts to ‘normalize’ life there by making them, materially and symbolically, into ‘normal’ state spaces.

The opening of the LoC

On 7 April 2005, the inauguration – amid great security – of a fortnightly bus service linking Srinagar and Muzaffarabad symbolized the first ‘formal’ opening of the LoC since 1949.