ABSTRACT
Postcolonial border drawing and political boundary making in South Asia and Southeast Asia had an impact on ethnic ties, connectivity and people perceptions on security along the international borders in the areas surrounding Myanmar and the vicinity of India’s eastern frontiers. State building in India and Myanmar failed to discern the complex patterns of historical mobility and construction of multiple identities in the peripheral regions of India’s Northeast and Myanmar. Using fieldwork narratives from two border villages in the Moreh district of Manipur, this chapter examines the persistence of a range of transborder connections, power narratives and socio-cultural boundaries. This chapter particularly looks at the establishment of border regimes and border pillars in India and Myanmar borderlands and ways in which village residents negotiate their ethnic identities. We use the literature on ethnic identity and borderland studies and examine the local politics embedded in the borderland experiences of militarization.
