The borders between countries are often arbitrary constructions, drawn onto a map of landscape by those unfamiliar with realities of life on the ground. And because they are arbitrary, borders are often porous and become sites of smuggling, immigration and local disputes over land ownership.
One way to deal with these issues is to build a wall, make what it’s effectively imaginary real and material. This is what India is in the process of doing along its 2,500 mile border to Bangladesh.
Begun in 1989, 1,700 miles of the double fenced, barbed wire wall has already been built, making it by far the longest border fence in the world.
The job of guarding the border is often a thankless one, and those who work on the wall are alternatively accused of brutality and being too lenient. Some are easily paid off by cattle smugglers, others spend their nights chasing down the same smugglers who are trying to outwit them.
Though interactions can turn violent, the border is home to villages and families whose histories straddle the line. Some homes have a front yard in India and a back yard in Bangladesh. To cross the border border in these places all you have to do is go through your neighbor’s garden.
It provides a stark contrast to the massive project that the wall is – and to official immigration policies that stipulate the only way for Bangladeshis to migrate to India is to marry an Indian.
India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi made the wall’s completion a key part of his campaign platform. While the wall is designed to prevent illegal immigration of all kinds, the sub-text is the prevention of specifically Muslim Bangladeshi’s. Those who are Hindu and cross the border are less persecuted, as are those who promise to convert to Hinduism, a process called “Home Coming.”
Indeed this is the sub-text for all borders in the world : the prevention of homogeneous national identities, while the sub-text for their security is keeping out those with a different way of life.
