Date: 13 February 2021

In May 2020, the Indian police captured an alleged spy pigeon from Pakistan. After a few days, a Pakistani pigeon fancier appeared on media, urging Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi to return his “innocent” pigeon, which he claimed crossed the border in a routine flight. In this talk, I use a socio-historical perspective to discuss what makes a pigeon “a Pakistani bird” and “a Pakistani spy”, and how it transforms from a symbol of “peace, love, and tolerance” to an embodiment of “threat”. Particularly tracing different historical roles of pigeons in pre-colonial and colonial India and Europe, my talk explores how ethical is it to govern animals’ mobility, to make them respect human-enforced borders, and to associate them with a particular nation-state?