Of Territorial Borders and Test Cricket: Exploring the Boundaries of the Postcolonial State

This article explores two notably different representations of the border that has divided India and Pakistan since Partition in 1947. I begin by discussing the Ambala Tribune's coverage of the 1955 India-Pakistan Test cricket series. During this series, an estimated 20,000 Indians were given permission to attend the Third Test in Lahore creating what one newspaper described as "the biggest mass migration across the frontier since Partition". I then examine the role the same border plays in Saadat Hasan Manto's 1953 story, "Toba Tek Singh". Here, rather than facilitating non-coercive international movement, the border becomes a repressive mechanism of the state, a cordon sanitaire designed to prevent the "warm handshakes and cordial embraces" that would eventually take place in 1955, In this article I attempt to account for the differences between these two narratives and for the fluctuating modalities of the border they describe. I also offer some thoughts on what such differences might tell us about Indo-Pakistani relations more generally, and about the nature of the border separating these postcolonial nation-states.