Reading Between the Lines: What Popular Literature Reveals About Our Borders

Once we come to understand that borders are beyond geography, and the nation-states outlined through them are human-made ideas, it becomes important to ask how people see and feel these changes. It is usually the lives of the elite that get attention, hidden behind political treaties and talks. It is the masses, the subjects of subaltern history, who are impacted the most. Popular literature from times of active change, violence, and resistance tells us about the pain and protests of those who lived through these moments and shaped their thinking around what they saw and felt. Writers like Mahmoud Darwish, Fadwa Tuqan, and Pablo Neruda, along with Saadat Hasan Manto and Amrita Pritam, help us hear the voices of the people whose stories are often left out of official history. Through these, we begin to see another kind of map; one shaped by memory, shaped by how people remember the places they lived in or were forced to leave.

Palestinian Resistance

In Palestine, two powerful poets helped people and continue to inspire them to speak out – Mahmoud Darwish and Fadwa Tuqan. Mahmoud Darwish was forced to leave his home as a child, and much of his writing is about missing his homeland and fighting for his people. In one of his famous poems, Identity Card, he writes, “Write down, I am an Arab!” as an anaphora. This simple line became a strong way for Palestinians to say they still exist, even when they are not seen or heard. His poems were read at protests, shared in schools, and painted on walls. They gave people hope and helped them feel proud of who they are. Fadwa Tuqan also wrote about Palestine, but from the viewpoint of a woman living under occupation. Her poem Hamza, describes the land as a woman who is alive, hurt, but still resistant. She wrote about her brother’s death, her anger, and her love for her home. Her words showed that being a woman and a Palestinian were both part of the same struggle. During war and curfews, people turned to her poems to understand their feelings and to keep going. Both Darwish and Tuqan gave people a way to remember their past and speak about their pain. They helped people believe that even when they were separated from their land and freedom, their voices still mattered.

Street art in Ramallah in memoriam of Darwish

Indian Partition and the Communal Divide

During the Partition of 1947, violence erupted between religious communities, and writers like Saadat Hasan Manto and Amrita Pritam captured that horror in deeply truthful ways. Manto’s story “Thanda Gosht” describes how a man abducted a woman to rape her, with the “aim” of seeking revenge for the violence committed against his kin, only to discover she was dead. Manto faced a criminal trial for obscenity because of this story, but he stood his ground by saying, “We live in unbearable times”. His writing refused to assign blame to one religion and instead showed how people from both sides dehumanised each other as enemies. 

Meanwhile, Amrita Pritam’s poem “Ajj Aakhaan Waris Shah Nu” calls on the Sufi poet Waris Shah to rise from his grave and witness the bloodshed in Punjab, talking about how “the rivers are full of poison” and “corpses lie in fields”. Pritam, who was herself displaced from Lahore, used the imagery of poisoned rivers to reflect how communal hatred tainted life after the Partition. Both writers allowed readers to feel the pain of this divide deeply, making their words a form of resistance. Their stories and poems were read in refugee camps and shared across communities. They offered an emotional blueprint of the times, showing how communities lost trust in each other and how violence crossed the borders of religion. Literature became a way to remember what official history tried to erase and label as a peaceful negotiation.

A poster of the Indian film, “Manto” (2018)

Latin America: Pablo Neruda and the Poetry of Protest

In Latin America, Pablo Neruda became one of the strongest voices against injustice. A poet from Chile, Neruda, did not only write about love or beauty. He wrote about salt miners, farm labourers, and the violence that came about as a result of greed and war. In Canto General, he retold the history of Latin America from the eyes of the people who were silenced and forgotten. He wrote, “Rise up with me, against the organisation of misery,” calling people to stand against cruelty. His poetry refused to separate art from politics. Neruda was openly Communist and often criticised those in power, which made him a threat to many. After the military coup in Chile in 1973, he died under mysterious circumstances. But his funeral turned into a protest. People read his poems aloud, and it became one of the first moments of public resistance under the new regime. His words were carried by students, workers, and women across cities and villages. His poems gave people the courage to feel anger and the strength to believe in something better. They told people that their suffering was not invisible. 

He was, however, not perfect. In his memoir, Neruda described forcing himself on a cleaning woman in Sri Lanka. This part of his past cannot be ignored. Today, many feminist movements have questioned the way his legacy has been celebrated. Even as people remember how powerful his poetry was, it is also important to ask who gets remembered and why. Poets like Neruda had access to certain spaces, resources, and freedoms that shaped how they were seen. These privileges helped build their public image, sometimes without holding them accountable for their actions. Remembering both the impact of their work and the limits of their ethics allows for a fuller understanding of history and resistance. Writers like Neruda could talk about love, revolution, and pain, yet still be protected by the very systems they criticised. This makes us ask harder questions: who gets to tell stories, who gets to be forgiven, and whose voices get lost. 

The poet Pablo Neruda in a file photo and a feminist protest in Valparaíso, Chile, with a placard that reads, ‘Neruda, you shut up’ (from EL PAÍS English)

Who is the Storyteller?

When one looks at how popular literature speaks to people who live through division and loss, they start to see how deeply stories affect how they feel, remember, and fight back. These writers gave people the strength to hold on to memory and to hope. But this also brings up a harder question. Who gets to tell these stories, and how do they choose to tell them? Some writers spoke for the people, but they were not always free from power themselves. Some were men writing about pain they never experienced firsthand, and some had the privilege to speak, while others stayed silent. As much as literature reflects truth, it also shows the imperfection of the human predicament. They are in whose voices get heard, and whose pain gets left out. Maybe real resistance is not only about telling stories, but also about asking who is missing from them.