ABSTRACT
The northern landscapes of Kachchh, shading into Sindh gradually and relatively imperceptibly but for the pillars that mark out the territorial border between India and Pakistan, are constituted primarily by the Great Rann of Ivachchh, a unique barren, desert-like formation. Patches of slightly elevated islands of grassland are frequented by nomadic pastoral populations that have settled over the centuries into semi-permanent villages on both sides of the border. The Greater Rann of Kachchh is one such space. The Rann of Kachchh attracted a good deal of attention from nineteenth century English visitors who reiterated that they had never seen anything quite like it. The nature of the Rann was a hotly contested topic in the 1950s and 1960s when the newly postcolonial states of India and Pakistan came to dispute its ownership. The Jatts as a whole have a somewhat elusive presence in documented history.
