ABSTRACT
A curious folktale is recounted with great regularity throughout Kachchh, a border district in the western Indian province of Gujarat. The theme of mobility, and the relative positioning of Kachchh vis-a-vis an ‘outside’, are recurrent themes both in the way the history of Kachchh is told by its people as well as in the way contemporary social life is structured within it. Ethnographic vignettes from within Kachchh reveal alternative notions of place making, sovereignty and belonging. State formation and religious identification come together analytically in this work if people look at them once again through the prism of boundaries. The anthropology of the state is still a relatively under-explored subfield, despite some recent noteworthy additions to the genre. Perspectives from subjects who either live along the border or have crossed it in recent memory give people nuanced accounts of a highly variegated and not always consistent policy of state formation along this border.
