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Beyond Lines of Control: Performance and Politics on the Disputed Borders of Ladakh, IndiaPublisher:Durham, NC: Duke University Press
Copyright:2004
Pages:ix + 305
Review:
Ravina Aggarwal’s book is a fascinating account of the performances of power at the Line of Control that separates India and Pakistan and of the efforts of border communities in Ladakh to negotiate and contest power through performance. Her ethnographic account is based, among other things, on observing rituals and performances such as theater, archery, songs, and festivals among Ladakh’s multiple ethnic and religious communities. In these performances, Aggarwal reads democratic desires and the everyday forms in which border communities speak their truths in the face of militant nationalism, occupation, and war.
The book begins with an account of how Indian Independence Day in Ladakh is celebrated, with leaders of various political stripes attempting to “colonize” the region’s mythical natural beauty and assimilate it into narratives of India’s glory and pride. In reality, the skirmish between India and Pakistan that was fought in 1999 in Kargil, one of the provinces of Ladakh, revealed disunity and acrimony among Ladakhis toward an event that otherwise tended to be celebrated in India as a reflection of national military might. Communities within Ladakh were equally divided among themselves over the meaning of the Kargil war and its significance for them, with accusations of pro-Pakistani and pro-Indian sentiments attributed to different political groups. Aside from the mutual suspicion and conflict generated by living in the shadow of war, boundaries between “insiders” and outsiders who are suspected as spies can often be fraught. Indeed, Aggarwal’s sensitive ethnographic account also reveals the challenges she faced as a U.S.-based Indian anthropologist engaged in fieldwork in a terrain marked by fears of spies and sabotage. Performance is a trope running throughout this book, through which readers can view the gendered lines of border making. Filmic representations of Ladakh reinforce notions of a masculine center that controls and secures and a feminized and ethnicized (exoticized, in this case) border that must be guarded. In a chapter titled “Border Games,” Aggarwal analyzes archery matches, which are games played at two levels in Ladakh—as a match and as a performance of identity—on “political fields shaped by colonial and national gazes of fear and desire” (p. 182). These archery contests, such as the now-obsolete Argon Dartses, were once carnivals of music and celebrations of romance, fertility, and masculine virility. Their end came about, Aggarwal was informed, because of increasingly strained relations between Buddhist and Muslim communities in Ladakh. In revealing communalism within Ladakh, but also paying attention to its pluralist traditions, Aggarwal goes a long way toward demystifying Ladakhi culture and rescuing it from the obscurity of nationalist romanticism. Despite its many strengths, the book concludes on a somewhat predictable note, arguing that, whereas grandiose visions of peace dominate high-level discussions between India and Pakistan, local governments neglect the cultural complexities of border communities and the desires for autonomy and self-assertion that are revealed through closer attention. Border performances, she argues, convey alternative meanings and contestations of power not merely against warring states but also along lines of gender and ethnicity showing us the way to hybrid cultural possibilities not easily visible through the lens of nation-states. Aggarwal suggests that such performances may yet offer symbolic resources to communities that are sidelined in the chess game of nation-states. If only that were so; alas, readers are left wondering whether the fragility of borders results precisely from their vulnerability to the performances of power rather than those of resistance. If so, we want to know much more about the political significance of the performances that are emphasized in the book. [photographs, map, notes, references, index.]
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