From Curzon to the Northeast: How Colonial Borders Still Shape India
In 1907, two years after retiring as Viceroy of India, George Nathaniel Curzon delivered the prestigious Romanes Lecture at Oxford. His chosen theme was Frontiers.
Curzon argued that the idea of rigid, well-guarded national borders was essentially a European invention. Outside Europe, he said, boundaries were far more fluid — they shifted with the power of rulers and faded into neighbouring domains without sharp lines.
That observation rings true when we look at India today. Almost every modern border of India is a colonial legacy, drawn not by local rulers but by the British Empire.
Colonial Lines That Still Define India
Consider a few examples:
- Radcliffe Line (1947): Divided India and Pakistan.
- McMahon Line (1914): Still contested with China.
- Durand Line (1893): Partition-era boundary with Afghanistan.
Even earlier, the British were busy carving boundaries:
- Treaty of Sugauli (1816): India–Nepal border.
- Pemberton-Johnstone-Maxwell Line (1834): Manipur–Burma boundary.
So when we talk of “India’s borders,” we are, in fact, talking about British-drawn maps.
Natural vs Artificial Boundaries
Curzon also distinguished between two types of borders:
- Natural boundaries — rivers, seas, deserts.
- Artificial boundaries — lines drawn by conquest or treaties (most modern borders).
But today, even the idea of “natural” boundaries is fading. Just think of the endless disputes over maritime zones.
The British Playbook: Suzerainty & Protectorates
The British didn’t always annex territories outright. Instead, they invented the concept of suzerainty — keeping princely states formally independent but tightly controlled.
Protectorate states like Tibet became buffers against rival European powers such as Russia in Central Asia and France in Indochina. Curzon proudly described this as a three-layered buffer system. For Britain, it was strategy; but for the region, it was the start of future border disputes.
The Forgotten Populations of the Northeast
One of colonialism’s biggest blind spots was its treatment of what scholar James C. Scott calls “non-state-bearing populations.”
These were small tribal communities in upland Southeast Asia (including much of today’s Northeast India). Living off shifting cultivation and hunting, their loyalties were to clans and villages, not to states. The British annexed Assam in 1826 but left the surrounding “wild hills” largely unadministered, except for occasional punitive expeditions.
To formalise this divide, the Inner Line Regulation of 1873 drew a line separating the taxable plains from the untaxed hills. Over time, these became known as Excluded and Partially Excluded Areas — an administrative model later exported to Burma and Manipur.
Post-Colonial Fallout: Insurgencies & Borders
Fast forward to modern India: many of these tribal populations, once outside the state system, now find themselves divided across hard national borders. Unsurprisingly, this has fueled insurgencies and ethnic conflicts in the Northeast for decades.
The current protests against fencing the India–Myanmar border and scrapping the Free Movement Regime (FMR) are part of this story. Communities divided by colonial lines are resisting today’s hardened borders.
Enter the Westphalian State
Why can’t we just go back to open borders? The answer lies in Europe’s own bloody history.
The Treaties of Westphalia (1648) ended centuries of wars by agreeing that:
- National boundaries define sovereignty.
- Citizenship is based on domicile, not ethnicity or faith.
- States run on taxation and provide services in return.
This model spread worldwide, including to India. And in today’s global system, hard borders are unavoidable.
The Northeast Dilemma
Here lies the contradiction: many Northeast states depend heavily on central transfers rather than their own tax revenue. This weakens the basic tax–citizen relationship that underpins the Westphalian model. Add ethnic loyalties and cross-border ties, and you get today’s tensions.
Still, acknowledging the reality of modern nation-states is crucial. A secular state — where ethnicity and religion are private matters — is not just an ethical position, but a practical survival strategy for diverse societies like India.
The Road Ahead
India may have little choice but to fence parts of its borders, especially with the crisis in Myanmar and China’s growing influence. But fences need not mean walls. Borders can be permeable yet accountable, allowing communities to maintain ties without undermining sovereignty.
Curzon’s century-old reflections remind us that the lines we take for granted were once unknown. Colonial maps have become our modern reality — and navigating that legacy remains one of India’s toughest challenges.
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Steve Ovett, the famous British middle-distance athlete, won the 800-metres gold medal at the Moscow Olympics of 1980. Just a few days later, he was about to win a 5,000-metres race at London’s Crystal Palace. Known for his burst of acceleration on the home stretch, he had supreme confidence in his ability to out-sprint rivals. With the final 100 metres remaining,
[wptelegram-join-channel link=”https://t.me/s/upsctree” text=”Join @upsctree on Telegram”]Ovett waved to the crowd and raised a hand in triumph. But he had celebrated a bit too early. At the finishing line, Ireland’s John Treacy edged past Ovett. For those few moments, Ovett had lost his sense of reality and ignored the possibility of a negative event.
This analogy works well for the India story and our policy failures , including during the ongoing covid pandemic. While we have never been as well prepared or had significant successes in terms of growth stability as Ovett did in his illustrious running career, we tend to celebrate too early. Indeed, we have done so many times before.
It is as if we’re convinced that India is destined for greater heights, come what may, and so we never run through the finish line. Do we and our policymakers suffer from a collective optimism bias, which, as the Nobel Prize winner Daniel Kahneman once wrote, “may well be the most significant of the cognitive biases”? The optimism bias arises from mistaken beliefs which form expectations that are better than the reality. It makes us underestimate chances of a negative outcome and ignore warnings repeatedly.
The Indian economy had a dream run for five years from 2003-04 to 2007-08, with an average annual growth rate of around 9%. Many believed that India was on its way to clocking consistent double-digit growth and comparisons with China were rife. It was conveniently overlooked that this output expansion had come mainly came from a few sectors: automobiles, telecom and business services.
Indians were made to believe that we could sprint without high-quality education, healthcare, infrastructure or banking sectors, which form the backbone of any stable economy. The plan was to build them as we went along, but then in the euphoria of short-term success, it got lost.
India’s exports of goods grew from $20 billion in 1990-91 to over $310 billion in 2019-20. Looking at these absolute figures it would seem as if India has arrived on the world stage. However, India’s share of global trade has moved up only marginally. Even now, the country accounts for less than 2% of the world’s goods exports.
More importantly, hidden behind this performance was the role played by one sector that should have never made it to India’s list of exports—refined petroleum. The share of refined petroleum exports in India’s goods exports increased from 1.4% in 1996-97 to over 18% in 2011-12.
An import-intensive sector with low labour intensity, exports of refined petroleum zoomed because of the then policy regime of a retail price ceiling on petroleum products in the domestic market. While we have done well in the export of services, our share is still less than 4% of world exports.
India seemed to emerge from the 2008 global financial crisis relatively unscathed. But, a temporary demand push had played a role in the revival—the incomes of many households, both rural and urban, had shot up. Fiscal stimulus to the rural economy and implementation of the Sixth Pay Commission scales had led to the salaries of around 20% of organized-sector employees jumping up. We celebrated, but once again, neither did we resolve the crisis brewing elsewhere in India’s banking sector, nor did we improve our capacity for healthcare or quality education.
Employment saw little economy-wide growth in our boom years. Manufacturing jobs, if anything, shrank. But we continued to celebrate. Youth flocked to low-productivity service-sector jobs, such as those in hotels and restaurants, security and other services. The dependence on such jobs on one hand and high-skilled services on the other was bound to make Indian society more unequal.
And then, there is agriculture, an elephant in the room. If and when farm-sector reforms get implemented, celebrations would once again be premature. The vast majority of India’s farmers have small plots of land, and though these farms are at least as productive as larger ones, net absolute incomes from small plots can only be meagre.
A further rise in farm productivity and consequent increase in supply, if not matched by a demand rise, especially with access to export markets, would result in downward pressure on market prices for farm produce and a further decline in the net incomes of small farmers.
We should learn from what John Treacy did right. He didn’t give up, and pushed for the finish line like it was his only chance at winning. Treacy had years of long-distance practice. The same goes for our economy. A long grind is required to build up its base before we can win and celebrate. And Ovett did not blame anyone for his loss. We play the blame game. Everyone else, right from China and the US to ‘greedy corporates’, seems to be responsible for our failures.
We have lowered absolute poverty levels and had technology-based successes like Aadhaar and digital access to public services. But there are no short cuts to good quality and adequate healthcare and education services. We must remain optimistic but stay firmly away from the optimism bias.
In the end, it is not about how we start, but how we finish. The disastrous second wave of covid and our inability to manage it is a ghastly reminder of this fact.