India's Volatile Borders: A legacy Of British Rule

The sun set on the once powerful British Empire nearly 78 years ago. Yet, the borders hastily drawn by British officers, often conceived to best serve the colonial rulers, continue to haunt South Asia and keep the region in a perpetual state of tension. Contested borders don’t just divide nations—they split histories, cultures, and families and take a heavy toll on ordinary lives. The ghosts of the empire have shaped the destinies of India and Pakistan, as well as India and China, feeding nationalist fires and aggressive military build-ups often resulting in war.

The partition of India in 1947 unleashed an unforeseen communal bloodbath, with neighbours and friends turning against each other. The partition was the handiwork of Lord Cyril Radcliffe, a British lawyer who had never set foot on the subcontinent and knew nothing of its geography, politics, or culture. Ironically, he was chosen precisely because of his ignorance of the region—his lack of prior involvement was seen as a guarantee of neutrality.

Radcliffe was given the near-impossible task of drawing the boundary line between India and Pakistan in just five weeks. The resulting Radcliffe Line partitioned Punjab in the west and Bengal in the east, leading to the birth of the two nations—Pakistan and India—on August 14 and 15, 1947, respectively.

The partition triggered mass displacement, with an estimated 14 million people forced to migrate across the new borders. The communal violence that followed claimed hundreds of thousands of lives. The reverberations of Partition—in terms of trauma, border tensions, and fractured identities—persist till this day.

The first India-Pakistan war took place soon after Independence when Pakistan tried to wrestle the princely state of Kashmir from Maharaja Hari Singh, who had been reluctant to join either nation. Unable to protect his state, the Maharaja quickly signed the Instrument of Accession and joined India. A ceasefire brokered by the United Nations came into effect in January 1949. The ceasefire line divided Kashmir between India and Pakistan. After the 1971 war, and the signing of the Simla Agreement, the ceasefire line was renamed as the Line of Control (LoC).

In Kashmir, families live on either side of the LoC, which, for all purposes, acts as the provisional border between the two Kashmirs. Divided families of Kashmir are cut off from each other by landmines, and tough visa regimes that operate according to the whims and fancies of the governments in Delhi and Islamabad. When the going is good, visas are easier to get, but most often, when the two arch-rivals are at daggers drawn, separated families bear the brunt. For villagers living along the LoC on both sides, the boom of the artillery fire was a common occurrence till the 2021 agreement stopped the cross-border fire. It was resurrected during the four days of hostility following the April 22 Pahalgam massacre. Thankfully, that has now stopped with the ceasefire. Civilians were caught in the crossfire on both sides during the current flare-up. Some were killed and homes and livelihoods were destroyed.

The former princely state of Kashmir is now divided into three parts—India’s Kashmir, Pakistan-occupied Kashmir, and the Aksai Chin area that was given to China by Pakistan, but which is uninhabited.

Eastern Border

In the east, the upheavals of partition first tore families apart when the region was carved into East Pakistan, only for history to repeat itself with the birth of an independent Bangladesh in 1971. Along the India-Bangladesh border, enclaves and fragmented territories once forced entire communities into a stateless limbo, trapped without basic rights, until a land swap in 2015 offered substantial relief.

The partition also divided families in the northeast and Bengal. The northeastern states of Manipur, Mizoram, and Nagaland share a border with Myanmar. Tribal communities with strong kinship often don’t respect the artificial boundaries imposed by nation-states.

The ongoing civil war in Myanmar and military crackdowns in Chin State—right next to Mizoram—have pushed thousands of ethnic Chins to flee across the border. They’ve found shelter among their own, welcomed by Mizoram’s residents who share deep ethnic and cultural ties with them. This was despite clear orders from the Narendra Modi government in New Delhi to keep the border shut to those escaping the conflict. But the Mizoram government went ahead anyway, opening its arms to the refugees. Interestingly, the Centre didn’t push back—perhaps knowing that official resistance doesn’t count much when kinship is the driving force.

Similarly in Pakistan’s northwest, the Durand Line with Afghanistan remains a frontier, dividing Pashtun tribes whose loyalties and lineages predate both states.

The Line Between India and China

The India-China dispute has deep historical roots and Beijing refuses to accept the McMahon line as the international boundary between the two major Asian powers. China rejects the line drawn up by the British colonial power as far back as 1914, much before India’s Independence. The boundary line was drawn between British India, China and Tibet with the Simla Convention. It was named after Henry McMahon, British foreign secretary of India at that time, to demarcate the boundary between Tibet and the British Indian state of North-East Frontier Agency (NEFA), now India’s Arunachal Pradesh. China claims that the entire Arunachal state is a part of South Tibet. In 1962, soldiers of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) poured into Arunachal, overran the ill-prepared Indian forces, and were reaching the plains of Assam, when China abruptly pulled back its army and declared a ceasefire. The brief border war left deep scars in both nations’ strategic psyche—and no clear resolution.

Thanks to the fact that the border between India and China is not demarcated, the PLA troops have often crossed the Line of Actual Control (LAC) to enter Arunachal. Often, it has led to skirmishes between the two armies. China has pushed its claims by changing local village and town names to Chinese in Arunachal. Four lists have so far been released by China for Zangnan, the Chinese name for Arunachal.

The 2020 Galwan Valley clash, in which soldiers fought hand-to-hand with improvised weapons, marked the bloodiest encounter in decades. It resulted in both sides amassing troops on the border and remains a sobering reminder that the absence of gunfire doesn’t mean the absence of war. The border intrusions will continue to be an irritant till the two countries come to a political agreement. But the two sides are no nearer to a solution after 23 rounds of negotiations over the 3,488-km border between the two countries. The border has become much more dangerous as China’s economic and political clout has grown, and it aims to become the paramount military might in Asia. Armed with modern technology, infrastructure, and hardened military postures, both sides undertake aggressive patrolling, tethering close to a dangerous high-altitude face-off.

Across the world, divided borders have their own sad stories to tell. Whether it is Korea where generations of families remain separated by barbed wire fences in what is supposedly the most militarised border on Earth—a remnant of the Cold War ideological battle between Capitalism and Communism. In Cyprus, the Green Line continues to split Greek and Turkish Cypriots. The Russia-Ukraine war is also about territory, language and ideology. The expansion of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) by the US and its allies—though the Cold War was over with the coming down of the Berlin Wall and the integration of East Germany—rang alarm bells in Moscow and led to military action against Ukraine.

In West Asia, Israel refuses to submit to the two-state solution and wants to integrate the Biblical promised land to create a greater Israel. This obduracy of successive Israeli leaders has resulted in groups like Hamas resorting to terror strikes. Israel’s orthodox religious leaders are bent on extending the frontiers of the Jewish state by taking over Gaza and extending settlements in the West Bank. Meanwhile, Israel is bombing and starving the civilians of Gaza. The liberal order turns a blind eye to Israeli atrocities as the West attempts to compensate Israel for the killing of six million Jews by Hitler.

It is not just land that is contested, but territorial waters and airspace that also trigger tension between nations. China’s claim to all of the South China Sea is a major factor in the geopolitics of the Indo-Pacific region. Countries like the Philippines, Thailand, Vietnam, Malaysia, Taiwan and Brunei also claim part of the waters. China wants to assert its military might to get the other claimants to submit to its demand. The formation of groups like Quad—made up of the US, India, Japan, and Australia—is to push back against China in the region, and the defence agreement between Australia, the UK, and the US (AUKUS) is aimed to counter Chinese submarines and warships in the Asia-Pacific.

China’s claim over Taiwan is another flashpoint. Beijing uses airspace to cower down Taiwan. Airspace incursions over the Taiwan Strait, with Chinese fighter jets regularly holding sorties and brushing dangerously close to Taiwan’s airspace, is a regular feature in this region. The PLA’s navy warships add to the tension with standoffs in the South China Sea, underscoring how air and sea have turned into areas of strategic brinkmanship. One small miscalculation could plunge the region into a crisis.

India and Pakistan too have issues with territorial waters. There is the contentious maritime boundary in the Arabian Sea, particularly around the Sir Creek tidal estuary. The absence of a clearly marked maritime border, coupled with fishermen using home-grown boats with poor or no navigational tools, lead to vessels crossing the oceans into each other’s territory. Fishermen from Gujarat and the adjoining Pakistani province of Sindh often get picked up by the coast guard and naval ships. Fishermen are arrested and imprisoned for inadvertently crossing into enemy territory. As with everything else, when it comes to relations between India and Pakistan, the issue gets complicated by political tensions. What would otherwise be a routine exchange of fishermen of both sides sometimes takes years to resolve, thanks to the diplomatic deadlock between the two countries. In the past, both sides often freed fishermen around Independence Day or on New Year’s Day, but these are now few and far between, more so after 2008, when Pakistani terrorists reached Mumbai on boats. Surveillance has been ramped up by the Indian Coast Guard and the Navy.

The Palk Strait separates Tamil Nadu from Sri Lanka’s Northern Province. Traditionally, Tamil fishermen from both sides of the Strait shared common fishing rights of the surrounding waters. But after the maritime boundary agreements of 1974 and 1976, India fishermen were banned from fishing in Sri Lankan waters, especially when Katchatheevu Island was ceded to Colombo. During the ethnic conflict on the island, fishing on the Palk Strait was forbidden by the Sri Lankan authorities as the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) often used small fishing boats to bring arms to Jaffna peninsula.

Once the war was over, fishing rights were restored. Despite the ban on Indian fishermen, boats continue to cross over to Sri Lankan territorial waters, where the catch is plentiful. The use of mechanised trawlers by Indian fishermen has added another layer of complication. Trawlers are said to damage the fragile ecosystem. Various rounds of bilateral talks, proposals for regulated fishing practices, phasing out of trawlers, and even joint working groups have not led to a solution. The Sri Lankan Navy often arrests Indian fishermen, resulting in a political outcry in Tamil Nadu. The issue remains unresolved and leads to frayed tempers on both sides, as national sentiments take over.

Seema Guha is a senior journalist covering foreign affairs

This article is part of Outlook Magazine's June 11, 2025 issue, 'Living on the Edge', which explores India’s fragile borderlands and the human cost of conflict. It appeared in print as 'Borders On The Boil.'