Against partition Arguments for partitioning contested territories when secessionist violence has effectively established de facto borders, are as compelling as those against it. The partition argument is compelling because it purports to officialize already bloodily established ethnic borders in territorial terms. On the other hand the anti-partition argument recognizes that territorializing identities is a form of ethnic cleansing, particularly in regions where peoples of diverse culture have shared a common public space as in most part of South Asia. What the partition conundrum elides is that partition is not the only viable solution to conflicts which have reached a level of violence which appear to preclude the time honoured federal options which both partake of and seek to mitigate the jealous logic of the modern national-state. Rather it partakes of the same ethnic logic.
Partition is a hard border, inevitably ethnic, inevitably state centric.
Though it seems to mark and solidify borders and identities which already exist it actually invents hard ethnic identities. That is why it seems a solution to a conflict. Yet the evidence is that partition usually hardens differences because within the nation-state system partition entails armed and fortified borders, that require passports or other official travel documents to cross. In short, partition implies the fixing and territorialization of identity, usually ethnic. It also entails the dismantling of older trade and migratory routes of identity.