Making the Margins Viable

Abstract This article argues that the British colonial state used the idea of “waste lands” to manage the vast, sparsely populated, and difficult terrain in the political and ecological borderlands of present-day West Bengal, Bangladesh, Northeast India, and Burma. The utilization of these waste lands as strategic reserves, served to fulfill the core raison d’être of colonial state-making: accommodation of corporate/capitalist interests. The category of waste lands became particularly useful in the creation of reserved spaces, that is, lands held as strategic reserves, for this state-private partnership in the colonization process. For those living in or near these waste lands, the designation of traditional communally accessible lands under this category meant dispossession in the longue durée and making way for new land occupants. The article examines the function of the strategic reserves of waste lands through the analysis of three sites: Sundarbans (Bengal), Assam (Northeast India), and Arakan (Burma). In the case of Assam and Arakan, the operation of waste lands had a particularly consequential demographic impact. The present-day postcolonial Rohingya crisis in Arakan and the alienation faced by the Miya population in Assam can be directly traced back to the operation of these waste lands.