Psycho-Social Impact of Border in Two Indo-Pak Frontier Villages of Jaisalmer, Rajasthan

The paper introduces the psycho-social impact of Inda-Pak border in two frontier villages of Jaisalmer namely Sultana and Nehdai. Both the villages are at a close proximity and not very far away from India-Pakistan international border of Jaisalmer yet Sultana is considered as a core village while N ehdai is taken as hinterland village for obvious reason. Purposive and stratified sampling method is used with sample size of one hundred forty six. The main objective of this study is to know the role of border area situation and their main habitants like the Rajput, Meghwal and Bhil in core and hinterland villages in order to understand Inda-Pak border centric psychological pictures like the social distance, value conflict and personality traits. The present study reveals that 'Social Distance' and 'Depressive-Non-depressive trait' of personality is more affected in core area. Irrespective of any border area, 'Social Distance', some value system i. e. 'Hate-Love' and 'Fear-Assertion' and some personality traits i. e. 'Emotional Instability-Emotional -stability' of personality trait is mainly affected by the fa ctor of ethnicity. As a joint effect of border area situation and ethnicity result shows that Fortitude, self-reliance of value conflict, passivity and trusting of personality trait are found to be significantly higher in the Bhil of hinterland area than that of the Bhil of core area while the Meghwal of core area are different from the Meghwal of hinterland area in the terms of social distance, self-reliance and depressive trait. There are not much significantly difference between the Rajput of core area and hinterland area in the terms of the psychological parameters stated above. Social and cultural reasons for such changes are also dealt with. Keyword s: border, distance, personality, value, village . • Address for correspondence: Tilak Bagchi, Assistant Keeper, Anthropological Survey of India, Western Regional Centre, Pratap Nagar, Udaipur-3 13001 (Raj.), E-mail: tilak_bagchi@yahoo. com 162 Tilak Bagchi , Rana Chakravorty, Arsi Prasad Jha and et al. INTRODUCTION The village 'Sultana' is situated in Indo-Pak border. Basically three communities like the Rajput, Meghwal and Bhil are residing in this village. The Rajput claimed for establishment of this village for collection the revenue of land. Thereafter the Meghwal came in this village. During the separation between the India and Pakistan, some Bhil left from Pakistan and settled in different villages of Jaisalmer, Barmer, and so on. They also came in Sultana and neighboring villages . Other outsider especially from the district of Barmer, Bikaner, Ganga N agar, Hanuman Garh of Rajasthan settled in the fringes of the village for cultivation, business and also as agricultural serf. The Rajput is the only caste of higher social order as per the social hierarchy. The Meghwal is also settled here and they enjoy the constitutional status of scheduled caste but they are numerically less dominant than the Rajput. However, the Bhil is spread in different Morubas (cultivated place) and a number ofBhils are living separately with their family in the fringes of Sultana village. The above ethnic information confirms that the Rajput, Meghwal and Bhil is main ethnic group of this village and their social and constitutionally status are of higher social order, scheduled caste and scheduled tribe respectively. This village is also situated more nearer to border than that of the hinterland village i . e . Nehdai. So there is a chance that their value systems and personality formation may be affected and constructed by the factor of own ethnic affiliations on core area situation or both are interlinked. Besides levels of social dist ances and intimacy with Pakistani is also supposed to be important after the creation oflndo-Pak international border. Since hoary past, especially the north direction of Sultana village is last outpost of Jasailmer state of India. But, now 2-3 villages and some Dhani (Moruba ) are formed between Sultana and Indo-Pak border for agriculture, livestock rearing and business in order to cater the need of security personal. These lands are mostly owned by the people of Sultana and few other adjacent villages before the arrival of Indira Gandhi Canal. One additional village 'Nehdai' for hinterland area is selected for the comparison of psychological data. This place has no border in any direction. This village is situated around 36 km. from Indo-Pak border and about 10-12 km. away from Sultana. This place is safer in every angle from the security point of view. The village has not witnessed any attack from Pakistan as revels from oral history. Some people from Sultana settled in Nehdai during the IndoPak wars of 1965 and 1971 for safety and settled till the end of wars. Nehdai is more easily connected from neighboring urban areas than that of Sultana. Hence N ehdai is considered as hinterland village while Sultana is taken as core village for assessing the psychological impact of border in two Indo-Pak frontier villages of Jaisalmer. For the present study, Social Distance Scale (Dewedi and Bhatnagar, 1992), Value Conflict Scale (Bharadwaj , 2001 ) and Dimensional Personify Inventory J ournal of the Anthropological Survey of India, 67 (2) : (161-184), 2018 Psycho-Social Impact or Border in Two lndo-Pak Frontier Vi llages of . Jaisa lmer. 163 (Bhargava, 2015)are used for assessing the level of social distance (includes social intimacy), value conflicts, personality traits within different communities like the Rajput, Meghwal and Bhil of core village (Sultana) and hinterland village (Nehdai ). Some brief information of psychological parameters used in the present treaties is given below.