Abstract
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.