Contested Flights: The Perplexity of Intruding “Spy Pigeons” at the India-Pakistan Border
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Despite the invention and sophistication of drones and unarmed aerial vehicles, satellites, and more recently, cyber espionage, “spy pigeons” remain a serious threat at the India-Pakistan border. The entanglement between flying pigeons for “sport” and capturing pigeons for “espionage” is critical to construe multiple meanings of more-than-human border intrusion in South Asia. Such an incursion not only endangers long-standing values of human-pigeon companionship but also moots a perplexity of intrusion that lies between the ethical acceptance of the more-than-human intruders and necessary resistance to their hostile infiltration. Explored through the geopolitically complex experiences of intrusion that have shaped the India-Pakistan relationship since Partition, intruding spy pigeons provide a critical perspective on distrust, animosity, and espionage in South Asia.
Key Questions
What does it mean for a pigeon to be captured as a spy?
What does it particularly mean at the India-Pakistan border, a region that remains contentious and sensitive to the threats of espionage and panics?
Inspirational Texts
Bayly, Christopher Alan. 1999. Empire and Information: Intelligence Gathering and Social Communication in India, 1780-1870. 1. Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press.
Verdery, Katherine. 2018. My Life as a Spy: Investigations in a Secret Police File. Durham: Duke University Press.
Inspirational Quotes:
“The amusement which His Majesty derives from the tumbling and flying of the pigeons reminds of the ecstacy [sic] and transport of enthusiastic dervishes: he praises God for the wonders of creation. It is therefore from higher motives that he pays so much attention to this amusement. ”
“What, after all, do securişti think a spy is? How can we develop a cultural understanding of it for this case? Some of my officers will address this question later, but for now I would say it is an enemy, whether the class alien, the foreigner, the anticommunist, anyone whose purposes are different from theirs. It reflects an incapacity to deal with difference, a fundamental premise that “different” equals “opposed to our interests.” A spy does not have Romania’s interests at heart.”