Boundaries of Belonging: Localities, Citizenship and Rights in India and Pakistan

The 1947 Partition had a major impact on issues of citizenship and rights in India and Pakistan in the decades that followed. Boundaries of Belonging shows how citizenship evolves at a time of political transition and what this meant for ordinary people, by directing attention away from South Asia’s Partition ‘hotspots’ - Bengal and Punjab - to Partition’s ‘hinterlands’ of Uttar Pradesh and Sindh. The analysis, based on rich archival research and fieldwork, brings out commonalities, differences, and the mutual co-construction of the ‘citizen’ in both places. It also reveals the way in which developments across the border, such as communal violence, could directly impact on minority rights in its neighbour. Questioning stereotypes of an increasingly ‘authoritarian’ Pakistan and ‘democratic’ India, Sarah Ansari and William Gould make a major contribution to recent scholarship that suggests the differences between India and Pakistan are overstated.