Authors

Discussion

The meeting point of the Himalayas, Hindu Kush, Tian Shan, Kunlun, and Karakoram mountain ranges, forming the Pamir knot, was also where imperial interests crossed paths. Most famously, the British, Russian, and Qing ambitions collided, eventually leading to efforts to demarcate their control by drawing boundaries around the mountainous terrain. While much has been written about these imperial convergences and rivalries, less attention has been paid to how the inhabitants of the region interacted, navigated, and re-formulated the transforming space. By incorporating imperial decrees, colonial reports, and scientific surveys, this paper attempts to focus on the way the Pamiri borderland communities moved across constructed divides. Such mobilities, especially those deemed unauthorised and spontaneous, caused immense frustration to the officials in the metropoles as proof of the latter’s inadequacies at obtaining full control and, subsequently, disrupting their confidence in a sovereign state. While zooming into the Tsarist-controlled parts of the Pamir, this paper concentrates on how the indigenous itinerant bodies, at times, evaded borders while, at others, utilised them to their own advantage.