India v Pakistan: The High-Kicking Championships

Every night, on the Indo-Pak border, just west of Amritsar, thousands of people gather to watch the closing of the border ceremony. Catie and I went, along with an Israeli fellow named Ido and a Finnish fellow named Olli, who I ended up traveling with for a few days. The crowd gathers outside the gates to the complex until 6:30, when the Indian troops usher people down a cement path that runs around the military buildings and along the border. Then, the people take their seats in the bleachers.

Catie and I agreed that when we had been picturing the border, we had imagined something like the Oakton High School football field, except on a dusty plain and with a barbed wire fence running down the middle. Instead, the grass is well-cut, the trees are luscious, the buildings are well-maintained, and there is no trash on the ground. In short, it is like nowhere else I've been in India. The landscape is deep green, the sky is a gorgeous pastel blue, and the signs of poverty, prevalent and intense all the way from Amritsar, are tucked neatly out of sight.

Our group of white people sits in the VIP section with all the other white people and foreign-resident or well-connected Indians. Then, a thin, good looking man with a healthy mustache starts warming up the crowd, like a stand-up comic before the taping of a sit-com (he's actually the same guy they use for "Life with the Chatterjees"). He encourages drunken Indian men to dance spastically, and leads various cheers in Hindi, brandishing his microphone proudly. "Hindustan! Hindustan!" the crowd chants with him. Loud Hindi pop-songs blare from the speakers.

A few hundred meters away, on the other side, the Pakistani crowd is doing more or less exactly the same thing. I couldn't see too well, because the setting sun was in my eyes.

"Pakistan really has better seats for this," I said to Ido.
"Yeah, but you know they switch sides every night," he replied.


The next item on the agenda (on both sides of the border, which as you may recall, is kinda disputed in some places) was the running of the flags. Lucky contestants from the stands were brought down to the road, two at a time, and handed huge Indian and Pakistani flags, which with they sprinted all the way to the gates and back to the cheers of their respective sides. This went on for a half an hour or so. More music and dancing followed.

Then, finally, the main even; Indian troops step out from behind the barracks, fully uniformed; the tall, thin men wear an Indian head-wrap of their choice, with a peacock feather-flourish of red and gold accenting their height. Their tan military suits are freshly pressed, and white flares extend down from the bottoms of their pants to their shoes.

Catie pointed out that all the soldiers seemed to have very long legs. Do they stand on platforms beneath the white flares? We were unable to discern. In any case, when the soldiers start marching triple time toward the border, with fierce expressions and bold stature, arms swinging widely. Their high kicks, which sent their shiny black boots all the way up to their foreheads, are made extremely impressive by the length of their gangly lower appendages.

And then, we see through the gate the Pakistani soldiers marching up to meet them. The Pakistani soldiers are dressed exactly like the Indian soldiers except with darker uniforms, and green and white plumes in their headdresses rather than red and yellow ones. The crowd is going nuts at this display of their nation's greatness. Men in the crowd occasionally start up the cheers, and they are echoed around the bleachers by people waving their 5 rupee Indian flags and wearing their 5 rupee Indian flag visors.

Finally, the culmination: two flags billow atop identically tall flag poles. A soldier on each side begins the torturously slow process of bringing down the flags, inch by inch, such that neither flag ever has an advantage over the other. The lotus and crescent creep towards the earth, as the enthusiastic Indians, and enthusiastic Pakistanis, and baffled foreigners, watch. Then, everyone gets up to leave. Some people press against the gate to get a glimpse of the other side, but most file out, wading through the crowd of vendors selling DVDs of the border ceremony highlights, popcorn, and beer.

The whole thing felt like a cross between a day time talk show and a military ceremony. This cross seriously freaks me out, but making militarism more palatable via good marketing is all too common. Military recruitment propaganda is the US is bizarre and misleading, and dressed up the horrors of war in supposed virtues: courage, masculinity. And, furthermore, attempts to generate patriotism in the US tend to be attempts to produce support for military operations. By playing strongly upon one part of a person's identity, people in power can induce populations to violence based on a supposed difference. (This is the thesis of Amartya Sen's aptly named "Identity and Violence," and a theme dealt with by the fantastic "War is a Force that Gives us Meaning.")

At the border closing ceremony, the links between identity, patriotism, and militarism were bluntly on display. “Come cheer for your India and feel proud of its army as it faces off with the army of Pakistan, the Enemy, the Other!” The atmosphere of the ordeal wasn't tense; the soldiers weren’t about to start shooting. At one point, the gates swung open, and an Indian soldier and a Pakistani one actually shook hands. But, sitting on different sides of a line on a map, cheering for their respective militaries, were groups of people from two different that easily could have been one. This division is one that has killed people, and continues to do so--why are we celebrating it?

"Do you think it's weird that Pakistan and India can agree on the uniforms and ritual for this border closing ceremony, but that they're occasionally on the brink of nuclear war?" Catie asked. I think the reason for this total absurdity is that it benefits the people in power to reinforce borders (geographical and cultural) in the imagination of the electorate (or non-electorate, in the case of Pakistan). Then it's easier to get people to do horrible crazy things to another group of people if the occasion calls for it.