Changing Dynamics of Bangladesh-India Border Relations

This essay argues that the Bangladesh–India border is not merely a line of control but a contested socio-economic, cultural, and geopolitical space where sovereignty, identity, and everyday survival intersect, and it reviews three outstanding books that re-conceptualize how mobility, citizenship, state power, and marginality interact with border and security regimes in the post-colonial contexts of Bangladesh and India. It evaluates the extent to which these new scholarly contributions have been able to take border studies in certain new directions of research. The essay shows how all three books are important contributions to the study of Bangladesh-India borderlands. The three authors trained in qualitative and ethnographic research methods are quite aware of contemporary border issues and challenges on the grounds and this does not noticeably come through the prisms of securitization approach and quantitative methods. These works are indispensable in making sense of the border and its economic, social and geopolitical role in Bangladesh-India relations.