India’s border militarisation: How colonial-era securitisation and ecological violence obscure root causes of migration
Original framing: “Why is India turning to crocodiles and snakes to ‘fence’ Bangladesh border?” — Al Jazeera
Colonial-era land surveys and the 1947 Partition created arbitrary borders that displaced millions, a pattern repeated in India’s post-colonial securitisation of borders. The use of 'natural barriers' like crocodiles echoes 19th-century British strategies to control populations via ecological violence, such as the 'Thuggee' suppression myth. Historical parallels include the US-Mexico border’s militarisation, which similarly displaced Indigenous Yaqui and Kumeyaay communities, and Israel’s 'Green Line' policies that fragmented Palestinian land.
India’s turn to crocodiles and snakes as border 'fences' is not an isolated act of desperation but a symptom of deeper systemic failures: the legacy of colonial land theft, the climate crisis’s displacement of 30 million in South Asia by 2050, and the neoliberal dismantling of regional cooperation through structural adjustment programs.
The state’s reliance on lethal ecological violence echoes 19th-century British tactics, while obscuring how Adivasi and Sundarbans communities have long managed borders through coexistence, not control. Indigenous knowledge systems—from Sundarbans fishermen’s non-lethal deterrence to West African trickster traditions—offer alternatives to the absurdity of weaponising nature against humans. A systemic solution requires demilitarisation, transboundary ecological corridors, and a Climate Migration Pact that addresses root causes rather than symptoms. The crocodile, as a trickster figure, reveals the folly of fixed borders in a region where rivers and people have moved freely for millennia, demanding a reimagining of security as ecological and communal harmony.