Salt Wounds Of India-Pak Border: Gujarat Since Partition

Sitting on an ancient-looking khaat (traditional bedstead) with carvings distinctively belonging to Sindh, the Pakistani province across the Sir Creek tidal estuary that separates it from Gujarat’s Rann of Kutch, the 77-year-old Senaji Alya Goyal, in the middle of narrating how he became a resident of Kapoorashi, a border village on the Indian side, recalls a poem he once wrote. Glimpses of a village in Pakistan come swimming in the septuagenarian’s words that etch a compelling image—eyes at the end of a cave that split the poet’s memory of being alive—which stays long after Senaji’s done reciting his poem. His eyelashes are moist with the memory of migration but his lips slowly curl into a smile as he looks at what is now his “may be home”. His story doesn’t let him delete the “may be”, for the uncertainty and tentativeness of any settlement remains its overriding theme—just like the marshy terrain in the Rann wetlands, which, with its creeks and streams changing shape and course with the weather and the seasons, blurs the otherwise neat line between India and Pakistan quite treacherously as it nears its southern end.

“Pakistan se humara koi lena-dena nahin hai (We have nothing to do with Pakistan),” Senaji’s 14-year-old grandson interrupts his reverie. Senaji smiles and says, “Humara toh tha pacchis saal ka (But we did have a lot to do with Pakistan, for 25 years).” Rubbing an old foot full of blisters on its wrinkled skin that seems to hold time in its folds, Senaji cuts straight to Bartala in Sindh, Pakistan, where he lived until 1971—the year of the war that led to the end of the erstwhile East Pakistan and the formation of Bangladesh. The village was just three kilometres from the international border between India and Pakistan.

“I had land there as well as loving neighbours,” he recalls, and then looking at his son rues that he has no clue who owns the land now. As the bugles of war were blown in 1971, the entire village just packed up and left. Asked why their ancestors hadn’t moved out of Sindh during Partition in 1947, when Pakistan was carved out of British India, Senaji says, “I don’t know why they did what they did, but you cannot divide the border, can you? A border can divide a country into two, but what can divide the border itself?”

He was 24 in December 1971, and newly married. The family walked miles, crossing the Thar desert to reach Suigram camp that was set up by the then Indira Gandhi-led central government. They lived in the camp for nearly eight years until 10 acres of land in Gujarat’s Kachchh (formerly Kutch) district was allotted to Senaji. During the few years after 1971 when people could cross the India-Pakistan border easily, he, too, grabbed the opportunity once to visit his old village that had been his world for two and a half decades. All he could bring back was the khaat with Sindhi carvings on which he now proudly sits. “I used to sleep on it when I was a child,” he says as the smile returns once more to his lips.

“I was in India, then suddenly I was in Pakistan and soon after I was back in India again,” says Senaji. “If India-Pakistan clashes such as what followed the Pahalgam terror attack forces us to move again, then the whole village will move together like we had done in 1971 to whichever place becomes our next destination.” From the snow-capped mountains of Kashmir to the scorching plains of Gujarat, the life of people in the border regions is determined largely by the line dividing one nation from another even as the question that haunts many is which is their country and which isn’t. The long stretch of festering conflict runs all the way to Gujarat’s Nadabet Seema, a border post now promoted as a tourist destination despite remaining a militarised zone, heavy with the weight of history.

A large section of the security forces patrolling the border running through the Rann of Kutch is stationed around Sir Creek, the 96-km-long tidal estuary. This patch of earth and water is more than just geography—it is a question mark dangling between two nations. The area remains hotly disputed due to differing interpretations of the maritime boundary. One of the subcontinent’s richest fishing grounds, Sir Creek is believed to contain untapped oil and gas reserves. The Border Post Office at Lakhpat—said to be the last village of India in the Rann—stands afar, with the Kori creek in between. Everything here feels like it is under threat, yet somehow peace prevails. The villagers who have been settled on the very brink of cross-border tension live with a quiet acceptance of uncertainty.

“The Rann cannot be easily crossed as it is full of marshland. But things didn’t go well during the 1965 war with Pakistan,” says Kanji, a 71-year-old from Kuran village near Khavda border who worked with the Border Security Force’s (BSF) ‘water wing’ for 17 years. When Pakistan attacked Kutch after Operation Gibraltar, in which it tried to incite an insurgency in Kashmir, the shock was seismic. “Until then, there was no BSF,” Kanji says. “The entire region was protected only by the state police.” The Pakistani army had penetrated deep into Indian territory, causing widespread destruction. Though the Indian Army managed to push the Pakistani forces back within four days, the realisation hit hard that India needed a stronger, permanent force dedicated to border security. This led to the formation of the BSF on December 1, 1965.

Memories of War: What Happens When The Guns Go Silent?

Sitting cross-legged on a worn-out charpai (four-legged string bed) at an outdoor gathering in Kaner village, a tiny hamlet just seven kilometres from Lakhpat village, Amar Singh Rathod grips his lathi (walking stick) like an old friend—steady, weathered and ever dependable. He has been denied the BSF pension that he considers to be his right. “If I must, then I can still fight the enemy with my lathi,” he says with a quiet conviction, his eyes fixed on the arid stretch that frames the horizon. In 1971, he had come to India with many others from across this very horizon.

“There were no roads back then, and no water and no food,” Amar recalls. “The military was desperate for help from those who knew the area well.” The first BSF batch deployed to this region was pulled in from Rajasthan. Though the ferocious heat eventually became familiar, the marshland proved to be an unforgiving enemy. All operational facilities were stranded in Dharamshala, an outpost in south Gujarat. The road connecting Bhuj, the headquarters of Kutch, to India Gate—the last inhabited zone before the frontier—was completed only in 1966. For the BSF jawans, stationed in the heat with little infrastructure, survival became a daily struggle.

Over the years, the BSF developed its specialised water wing that Amar joined. Its brief is to patrol the creeks and marshes of Kutch. Unlike traditional infantry units, these forces are trained in amphibious operations. Their duties were demanding—operating in tidal zones, navigating in boats through the estuaries and protecting a border that shifts with the tide.

In Kaner the air often hums with stories of the past—of borders defended, of enemies turned back, and of lives lived in harsh loyalty to land and nation. Most of the youth in the village now herd livestock, navigating the hard terrain more with instinct than hope. The legacy of military service, once a source of pride, has faded into neglect. Sitting beside Amar is Sawaj Raj Singh, his 30-year-old nephew, who looks at his uncle with a mixture of admiration and frustration. He occasionally translates Kanji’s words, not because his uncle couldn’t speak for himself, but because he fears the message might otherwise be lost. “People come here only when there’s war,” Sawaj says. “Why can’t we talk about what happens when the guns go silent and the cameras leave?”

Pointing at the cracked walls of the one-room school building nearby, Sawaj says, “There’s not even a proper school here. Those who wish to study beyond Class 8 have to walk or cycle to Dayapara, more than 20 km away. And that’s only if you could afford to stop working for even a day.” Sawaj has done his Masters in Arts, but is often seen rearing cows and buffaloes. “My uncle served the nation, but what did he get in return?” he asks. “It is not like we are asking for any­thing, but please solve the issues first. The army protects the borders, but who will protect the people who live here?” Kanji laughs at this and says, “How will the new generation understand that serving the nation is a matter of pride? I have moved the court for my pension, but at this age no one really cares.”

In Gujarat, personnel serving in the BSF’s water wing who were recruited after 2004 are not entitled to the traditional pension scheme. Instead, they come under the ‘new restructured defined contributory pension system’, or the New Pension Scheme (NPS). Under this model, both the employee and the government make regular contributions to a pension fund. Unlike the earlier system, where retirees received a fixed pension based on their last drawn salary, the NPS calculates post-retirement benefits based on the total contributions made and the returns generated through investments. As a result, pension amounts can vary and offer less financial certainty than the earlier system.

As the new system was introduced, the locals who had been pooled in to help the BSF navigate the harsh creeks were left out somehow. Also, those who had come from across the border didn’t have a clear idea of their ages. “I had no clue when I was born as the year had faded in my mind,” Amar says. “But what is undoubtedly true is that I helped the BSF a lot. On full moon days, when the entire creek was submerged in the high tide, our help was obviously necessary.”

Displacement At The Border

There are many such villages in Kutch that quietly rest on the ruins and remnants of war. These are settlements that weren’t built on dreams or decisions, but based on displacement from place to place on the fragile ground that once trembled beneath the boots of soldiers and the weight of geopolitical decisions. These villages were born from the chaos of Partition, shaped by the confusion of boundaries, and raised in the silence that followed the gunfire. Many of them reflect the dice once thrown by Saadat Hasan Manto’s Toba Tek Singh in the eponymous story where borders cut through not just land, but minds, families and entire lives. “On one side, behind barbed wire, stood together the lunatics of India, and on the other side, behind more barbed wire, stood the lunatics of Pakistan,” Manto wrote, capturing the absurdity and pain of division.

That absurdity lives on in villages like Urayni, Navanagar and Solanagar—settlements strung along the India-Pakistan border that never asked to be on the frontline of history. Locals refer to them as ‘Batch 71’ as these villages were shaped during the 1971 war. But long before this war could bring some resolution to the post-Partition fractured identities, the region had already seen the fire of 1965, when Lal Bahadur Shastri, India’s then prime minister, ordered the establishment of a settlement for war refugees near the river Nara as a strategic and humanitarian measure. What rose from that plan became a quiet sanctuary for Sikh refugees who had fled the horrors of Partition in 1947.

The village, later named after the river itself, stands today as one of the greenest, most serene places in the region. But the calm is deceptive—it hides generations of sorrow and resilience beneath the shady canopies of its trees. Balbeer Singh, a second-generation resident, remembers his father’s stories vividly. “My father always said we didn’t choose this place, that this place chose us,” he says. “He used to tell me how they had to run from their village in Pakistan with no idea where they would end up. They spent months in refugee camps in Delhi, sleeping under plastic sheets and praying for a home. Eventually, they were moved to Firozpur in Punjab. And some families were sent from there to here when this place had nothing but marshy land and broken promises.”

Kalavant Kaur chuckles softly as she sits in the shade of a mango tree, the gold of the setting sun catching the creases of her weathered face. The 70-year-old’s eyes sparkle not just with age, but also with memory. “It was never we who chose this place. It was always the circumstances that chose us,” she says, a calm certainty in her voice. “I wasn’t married until I was 30. Can you imagine that in those days?” she asks and laughs a little at the digression. Her laughter is tinged with a trace of irony.

“My husband passed away a few years ago,” she says. “He was given a patch of land when his family moved here. We didn’t come here for opportunities. We came because we had nowhere else to go, and because someone up there decided we were needed here.”

The mass migration of Sikh families from Punjab to the border areas of Gujarat—particularly in Kutch—was not a spontaneous movement. It was part of an initiative by the government that began in the years following the 1962 India-China war. Faced with the urgent need to secure its vulnerable western and northern frontiers, the Indian government encouraged the resettlement of hardy, agrarian communities—those who could cultivate the land and stand guard when the time came—in the border regions. This is how Punjab quietly took root in Gujarat.

In contrast to the scorching, arid expanses of Kutch, certain pockets like Nara bloomed into oases of green—an accidental Punjab nestled on the edge of the Thar. Fertile patches were coaxed from the dry earth and, despite the inhospitable weather, farms flourished under the discipline and toil of their new custodians. Today, the land is largely owned by Sikh families who arrived decades ago, but the labour that sustains the agricultural rhythm comes primarily from Hajipur—mostly Muslims who come here looking for work. The villages here represent a quiet, functional coexistence built on necessity and mutual survival.

The only other significant Muslim population lives in Lakhpat, a place within the walls of an ancient fort that once guarded a trade route. Now, it holds fragile livelihoods. Most residents here are fisherfolk, dependent on the increasingly volatile tides of the Arabian Sea. With the rising militarisation of maritime zones and increasing climate unpredictability, these communities find themselves at the frontline of both geopolitical and environmental crises.

Kalavant lowers her voice as she leans in. “I went to Amritsar on May 4,” she says, brushing a fly away from her cheek, “but had to rush back sooner than I had planned. Things were getting tense again. You know how it is.” Glancing again in the direction of the invisible yet ever-present border, she concludes, “You never really leave the border behind. Not when it is inside you.”

Pritha Vashishth is Outlook’s Mumbai-based correspondent

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 'Lines Drawn In Blood.'