‘Cartography of Self-assertion'

This chapter probes the historical processes of border-making in the India–Myanmar borderland and the response from an indigenous community whose social and cultural space has been divided by the superimposed international boundary. It gives particular emphasis on the Zo (Chin-Kuki-Lushai) ethnic community who straddle the India–Myanmar borderlands, occupying almost the southern half portion of the 1643 km boundary between India and Myanmar. Drawing from Laura Nenzi’s ‘cartography of self-assertion,’ which is being used by the indigenous people as a counter-argument against colonial and postcolonial borders, the chapter examines the failed attempts made by colonial rulers, who divided Zo-inhabited areas into different administrative units, to ‘amalgamate’ on the one hand, and by the Zo people themselves to ‘re-create spaces’ through the production of maps in the postcolonial times, on the other. It argues that without decolonising the map it is not possible to understand the collateral damage done by the superimposed boundary on the ethnic solidarity and social and cultural space of the Zo in the India–Myanmar borderland.