Dangerous Borders: A Journey across India and Pakistan

Updated Monday 28th August 2017

On Monday 14th August, a new three-part series, ‘Dangerous Borders: A Journey across India and Pakistan', begins on BBC2 at 9pm to mark the 70th anniversary of the Partition of India.

Journalists Adnan Sarwar and Babita Sharma travel either side of the 2000 mile border, 70 years after the partition of India and the creation of Pakistan, to discover the realities of the lives of those living there.

Read more about the series on the BBC's programme pages, or explore borders in more detail below.

Copyright: October Films
About the TV series

Read more about each of the 3 episodes in the series.
By ramesh_lalwani via Flickr under Creative Commons BY 4.0 license
Explore borders

Learn more about borders, their creation, and the roles they play in conflict and peace.

Episode 1

Journalists Babita Sharma and Adnan Sarwar are beginning their epic journey along the still-contentious border that divides India and Pakistan. 70 years after the Partition of India and the creation of Pakistan, the pair are travelling either side of the 2,000-mile border to discover the realities of the lives of those living there. Beginning in Adipur, which started life as a refugee camp for Hindus fleeing the newly created Muslim state of Pakistan, Babita discovers a town which now intriguingly hosts the only Charlie Chaplin Festival in the world. Gandhi, who was born here in Gujarat, met Chaplin in Britain in 1931 and the memory of this unlikely friendship is kept alive today by this event.

On the other side of the border, Adnan explores the cultural life of the metropolis of Karachi. Creatives are often at the forefront of social change, whether through art which questions social norms or fashion which is creating a role for itself on the 21st-century international catwalk. Women in both countries are challenging how they have been traditionally constrained, from the women bikers who Babita meets in India to the female artist in Pakistan who asks potentially dangerous questions about female sexuality and a young woman who believes that she will win Pakistan's first gold Olympic medal for boxing. Adnan also meets members of the Sheedis, a little-known African community who have lived on the Indian subcontinent for over 800 years and who are now fighting discrimination in Pakistan. Babita travels north into the salt flats of the Rann of Kutch, whose residents are held back by the caste system. Here, lives have barely changed since partition and there seems little will to make these people's lives better.

The journeys both end in the mighty Thar Desert, which was split between the two countries and which has been the scene of conflict as recently at 1999. Whether Indian or Pakistani, this is a virtually uncrossable border. Partition left searing scars and divided families that, 70 years later, are still not reconciled.
Episode 2
Episode 3

"Hungary-Serbia border barrier", by Bőr Benedek, via Flickr under Creative Commons BY 4.0 license
What are borders?

The cause of national identity, or the result of it? Created, or natural and pre-ordained? Our exploration of borders starts here.

Read now ❯What are borders?

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The creation of a conflictual border: India-Pakistan

A pen and paper exercise which barely took account of actual geographies: border creation between India and Pakistan brought about chaos, bloodshed and an enduring distrust between the neighbouring states.

Read now ❯The creation of a conflictual border: India-Pakistan

By ramesh_lalwani via Flickr under Creative Commons BY 4.0 license
Peace movements in contemporary India and Pakistan

What chances are there for peace between Pakistan and India? What can be done to improve relations? A look at the positive steps that are being taken along the road to peace.

Read now ❯Peace movements in contemporary India and Pakistan

Copyright free: Public domain
The Partition of British India: Timeline

Track the key events during British colonial rule leading to the emergence of the independent nation-states of India and Pakistan in 1947.

Read now ❯The Partition of British India: Timeline

Copyright: October Films
Go further with the OU

Courses and qualifications for you to take your learning further.
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Meet the academics

The OU's expert academics who helped bring this series to life.

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BA (Honours) International Studies

Our world is divided into many different societies. Yet it is increasingly interconnected. Relationships between nations, companies, cultures and individuals extend across regions and the globe. The BA (Honours) International Studies enables you to explore the political, economic and cultural issues that these complex interconnections create. The core concerns of this degree course range from international politics, diplomacy, cooperation, war and security to international economics and development; from cultural and religious interactions between different societies to global environmental problems. Although International Studies at the OU has a particular emphasis on development and the issues and problems facing developing countries, this degree is also concerned with the overall political make-up of the international system and the sources of order and disorder within it. Throughout your studies, you’ll have specialist, subject-based academic support and the chance to join in online communities of other social sciences students for teaching, learning and peer support.

Learn more ❯BA (Honours) International Studies

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BA (Honours) Politics, Philosophy and Economics

Where do social order (and disorder) come from? How can we make ourselves richer, and does society always gain? What does justice mean, how do we define our rights? Politics, philosophy and economics (PPE) – and the ideas and values that inform them – are central to how modern societies are organised and governed. This degree explores fundamental questions of power and ideology, beliefs and values, and how income and wealth are produced and distributed. As well as gaining insight into debates that dominate the daily news, you’ll learn a range of skills and techniques to help you analyse and contribute to the discussion. You’ll also gain a deeper understanding of the way arguments (and public policies) are constructed in theory and tested in practice. These analytical and critical skills are highly valued by employers in a broad range of occupations, across the private and public sectors.

Learn more ❯BA (Honours) Politics, Philosophy and Economics

Glenn Halog under CC-BY-NC 2.0 licence under Creative-Commons license
BA (Honours) Combined Social Sciences

What causes riots? Is commercialisation eroding childhood? Does poverty lead to crime? Social science explores such questions and helps inform others – from police officers to civil servants to business executives – who want to base their decisions on the best evidence. The BA (Honours) Combined Social Science is designed to be very flexible, enabling you to develop a variety of knowledge and skills from a combination of subjects including psychology, sociology, social policy, criminology, geography, politics and economics. You can choose to follow a named specialism by concentrating on one of these areas, or create your own combination of subjects. This degree course will equip you with skills highly valued by employers, such as using IT for the retrieval and effective presentation of information and data; critical evaluation; and concise writing. You’ll have your own specialist, subject-based academic support as well as opportunities to join in online communities of other social sciences students for teaching, learning and peer support.

Learn more ❯BA (Honours) Combined Social Sciences

Dr Sandip Hazareesingh, Research Fellow in The Open University's Faculty of Arts and Social Science

The Open University under Creative Commons BY-NC-SA 4.0 license Born in Mauritius, Sandip has a PhD in History from Warwick and MA and BA degrees from SOAS and Kent respectively. he has taught at Birkbeck and Cardiff and previously worked for Save The Children Fund for a decade. This campaigning background has influenced his research interests which are focused on India and on the southern world, and he remains committed to radical perspectives in history writing.

Sandip joined the Open University in 2003 as staff tutor in Bristol and lecturer at the newly established Ferguson Centre for African and Asian Studies. He joined the History Department in 2008 and is a member of its Empire and Postcolonial Studies Research Group. He is also a member of the OpenSpace Research Centre, the research centre led by the Department of Geography in the Faculty of Social Sciences. He has been Director of the Ferguson Centre for African and Asian Studies from January 2016.

See Sandip's full profile

Dr Volker Patent, Lecturer in Psychology in The Open University's Faculty of Arts and Social Science

The Open University under Creative Commons BY-NC-SA 4.0 license Volker is a lecturer in the School of Psychology at The Open University, where he is Employability lead for Psychology. He obtained his PhD in 2015 from The Open University. He is a chartered Psychologist and has held faculty positions at Bedfordshire University and worked freelance as trainer, consultant and assessment specialist in industry.

His research interests focus on trust and personality, trust in selection/recruitment, mentoring and coaching, trust in individual and organisational decision-making and trust in politics. His research appears in the British Journal of Social Work, in Searle & Skinner (2011) Trust in Human Resource Management, and he has had conference papers accepted at FINT, EAWOP ENESER, and the International Congress on Assessment Center Methods.

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