The 'modern' guarding forces of India's borders test

India’s geographical reality is framed by the Himalaya, the Pamir Knot, the Karakoram and the Hindu Kush to the north and northwest, the Thar desert to the west and the mountainous jungles of Northeast India. India is a peninsula, flanked by the Arabian Sea to the west and southwest, and by the Bay of Bengal to the east and southeast, as it extends south into the Indian Ocean. The population of South Asia is nearly 1.9 billion, or about one-fourth of the world’s population, making it both the most populous and the most densely occupied region in the world.

Mountains in the Indian context tend to exemplify an incorrect vision of a monolithic mountain range, whereas the ranges differ dramatically from sector to sector, ridge to ridge. The Himalaya are a great mountain system that forms the barrier between the Plateau of Tibet and the offshoot ranges that descend to the alluvial plains of India. The Himalayan range includes the highest mountains in the world, with more than 110 peaks rising to heights of 24,000 feet or more above sea level. The soaring height of the Himalayan mountain range has steep-sided jagged peaks, a high altitude desert in eastern Ladakh, deep valleys and river gorges like the river Brahmaputra, and alpine glaciers such as the Siachen. This topography is deeply cut by erosion.

The Himalayan mountain range appears as a gigantic crescent with a continuous snowline, also constituting the sources of most of the Himalayan rivers. A large part of the Himalayas on the Indian side is below the snow line with offshoots of lower mountain ranges, widely varying levels of precipitation, and a typology of forest cover. Templating mountains in a generic manner is fraught with immense pitfalls.

Official lines

Contextually, while a boundary is well-defined and regulated by law, a border is a specific edge of the country or an area, something that can be clearly marked. A border is usually an official line that marks where one country/area begins and another ends. On the other hand, a front or frontier is something more general, not a specific line, but an area near the border. A “front” can thus be a politico-geographical area, lying beyond the defined borders of a state, but in its proximity, into which expansion could take place, implying maybe a dynamic entity. 

The protection of this sovereignty is a source of national pride and is often invoked by leaders as a matter of honour to be defended at all costs. Indeed, borders also relate to demographies on both sides, of the movement of goods, services, capital, people and ideas. Borders are also exploited by inimical elements through cross-border terrorism, illegal migration, and the trafficking of narcotics, drugs, and smuggling.

In the Indian context, each neighbour across the border is like chalk and cheese.

Navigating neighbours

India, by virtue of its strategic history, has antagonist relations with Pakistan and China and lately, even Bangladesh. Myanmar has been fractured by a large number of militant groups. India is hence placed in an adversarial environment. As a nation with unsettled, disputed borders, India's borders have a rapidly militarising environment. The Line of Actual Control (LAC) is the disputed demarcation line of the border between India and China, in which China occupies Aksai Chin in the Ladakh Union Territory and has claimed territories in Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand border, Sikkim, and Arunachal Pradesh.

The Line of Control (LoC) with Pakistan is a hot border, with armies facing each other. A ceasefire is in place  from February 2021  but often breaks, as in Operation Sindoor. The LoC with Pakistan is one of the most militarised borders. Cross-border terrorism that includes persistent threats from Pakistan-based terror outfits (for example, Lashkar-e-Taiba, Jaish-e-Mohammed) necessitate round-the-clock surveillance at the border.  The 2016 Uri attack, the 2019 Pulwama attack and the 2025 Pahalgam attacks were carried out by these terror groups. The India-Pakistan border, stretching over 3,323 km, includes between 740 km and 776 km of the LoC and around 200 km of the international border in Jammu and Kashmir — a region frequently targeted by infiltration and cross-border terrorism. 

The India-Myanmar border with undulating hills runs over 1,600 km through Arunachal Pradesh, Nagaland, Manipur, and Mizoram. It is impossible to tell where one country ends and the other begins. Villages spill across the line; families are divided by it yet bound by blood. The Free Movement Regime (FMR), instituted decades ago, allows tribes living along the border to cross up to 16 kilometres (km) into either country without a visa. The border was not a barrier but a conduit for arms, narcotics, and insurgents. Myanmar Army’s instability and armed ethnic groups have created a new flux, with the spillover of refugees into Mizoram and Manipur, the presence of Indian insurgent camps across the border, and the growth of narco-terror networks are fresh challenges.