In Settlers, Saints, and Sovereigns, Farhana Ibrahim presents an ethnographic study of the border separating Kachchh and Sindh. Ibrahim investigates the ways in which the border has become a meaningful distinction for those whose lives intersect this border. She shows the inherent tensions between, on the one hand, the state-making projects of India and Pakistan and, on the other hand, the ways in which people make the places of their lives meaningful. Different state regimes impose themselves on territories and people differently. Ibrahim provides a richly textured ethnographic account of how different communities respond to these changing regimes.

In Ibrahim's account, the border is created not only by state formation but also through a complex mix of national, regional, and religious discourses. By framing the study with a critical reappraisal of Gujarati asmitā, Ibrahim highlights the tension between the regional and the national. Asmitā roots Gujarati pride outside of the national project that policed the boundary between Kachchh and Sindh. Universalizing discourses of religious identification have also provided a lens through which identities have been articulated. Ibrahim's cases show the ways in which these universalizing discourses are embraced and challenged.

In one of her ethnographic cases, Ibrahim focuses on the pastoral Sunni Muslim Jatt community whose experience and understanding of the region encompasses both Sindh and Kachchh. A pastoral community, the Jatts have longed played an important role in trade routes that lead to a different understanding of national borders. The Jatts, who move along and over the border (both symbolically and materially), frame their mobility through the lens of hijrat, casting their everyday lives in opposition to the political forces that structure the land. Through this framing, “movement is valorized as a religious and cultural ideal” (p. 64) that counters the dominant state making perspective of fixed borders and settled communities. The Jatts subjective experience of the region includes both Kachchh and Sindh, for example Ibrahim shows how “Poetry and ajrakh [cloth] become ways in which Sindh becomes present in an everyday sense for the Jatts” (p. 75). The Jatt understanding of the territory puts them squarely in tension with the dominant narrative of Gujarati asmitā which locates Kachchh as part of Gujarat, clearly separating it from Sindh.

In another case study, of the Meghwal Harijans, Ibrahim shows how the border is a social boundary as well as a geographic one. In the case of the Meghwal Harijans, who crossed the border from Sindh to Kachchh during the 1971 war, Ibrahim shows how a community used the increasingly policed and politicized border to their own advantage. Once they were on the Indian side of the border, they were firmly positioned within a dominant Hindu identity. While this move maps “nationalist concerns in the area” Ibrahim sees this move as motivated by “a desire to break away from the low caste status traditionally ascribed to them” (p. 96). As such, they have found favor with the state even though they have had difficulty assimilating into the everyday life of the villages.

One of the strongest contributions of Ibrahim's work is her analysis of the complex relationships between political and religious authority in the process of state making. She looks at two cases, Sānkarwāra Dargāh and Hājī Pīr, to illustrate the different ways that political and religious powers complement and sustain each other. In the case of the Sānkarwāra Dargāh, she shows how the religious authorities mediated the relationships between the princely state of the Jadejas and the nomadic pastoralists of the Banni grasslands. The shrine served as the de facto revenue collector, thus providing a moral legitimacy to state control over the territories. In the case of Hājī Pīr, and in particular the Hājī Pīr Melā, she shows how the state associates itself with cultural practices in order to establish a presence in out of the way, but strategically important, regions.

Ibrahim also provides an account of how collective memories transmitted orally within a community can subvert the dominant narratives of the state. The Garāsi Jatts narrate their history in a way that closely ties their presence in the Kachchh with the princely state. Ibrahim presents these narratives as a critical commentary on the present day state, especially the articulation of Gujarati identity through the dominant discourse of asmitā.

In Settlers, Saints, and Sovereigns, Farhana Ibrahim shows how communities along the border encounter religious, national, regional-linguistic, and other social and cultural forces. Her ethnographic narrative brings out the ways that different communities creatively adapt and respond to these forces articulating distinct senses of place. This work provides much insight into the making and meaning of borders. In particular it contributes to our understanding of interaction between political and religious authority and interactions between the national and regional.