An important interview with Willem van Schendel of the University of Amsterdam, a doyen of Bangladesh Studies, conducted by the scholarly Priyam Paul, appeared in the Daily Star recently. In that interview, van Schendel played down "the assumption that the state is a fixed spatial unit of sovereign rule, that the state acts as a container of society and the economy, and that there is a sharp division between the domestic and the foreign". This is the "territorial trap" that Bangladesh Studies need to avoid by focusing on the concept of borderlands, habitats that real people actually inhabit. "Using a borderland lens to observe the actual working of state institutions, the mindsets of elites, and the fate of struggling communities opens up a very different perspective on the multitude of people whom we think of as 'Bangladesh society."'

In examining the Bangla borderland, van Schendel declares: "I do not think it is helpful to consider East Bengal from an 'empire' perspective - whether North Indian or British Indian - because this approach starts from the assumption that this was a peripheral region. It is much more helpful to understand historical Bangladesh as a core component of a large region between Kolkata and Kunming in Yunnan, China. For millennia, routes have connected people, goods, and ideas here, crisscrossing borders that came and went over time."

That was interrupted by colonialism and its aftermath, decolonisation. "The mid-twentieth century saw the birth of an experiment that continues today: obstructing these old connections and flows in the name of national sovereignty. We now think in terms of modern states - Bangladesh, (north-east) India, and Myanmar - and we have largely lost our ability to think across them. As a result, we find it hard to recognise that these cross-border flows are continuing in modified form. States try to regulate them by means of import-export licences, passports, visas, and restrictions on digital communication - and they criminalise flows that they cannot control by defining them as 'smuggling', 'unauthorised migration', or 'subversion'. But they cannot stop them completely."

Of course not. However, this inability ironically leads to a wider sphere of ability: Why not imagine Bangladesh beyond its borders, as a borderland state? Obviously, border controls cannot vanish, and economic interactions will be securitised ultimately. How else would Bangladesh deal with the Arakan Army, for example? True, but what is demanded of all states is to think, behave and believe beyond themselves. That does not mean giving up on themselves but imagining themselves as part of a greater entity, a greater ecological, geographical and historical unity. So, for Bangladesh.

Kolkata and Kunming are parts of two states, India and China. Bangladesh belongs to neither state but to itself. It is a state. Its statehood will have to deal always with the two great powers of India and China. Between them, Bangladesh inhabits a zone of contestation. It is a possible buffer state that mediates between the contending spheres of Indic and Sinic influence and contributes to the evolving balance of power between Delhi and Beijing in South Asia. This is good. Bangladesh is a swing state where India and China are concerned: That is why those countries take Bangladesh's elections so seriously. Which way will Dhaka tilt? The point is that the "Dhaka tilt" is important precisely because sovereign Bangladesh can choose to tilt either way, or neither. It has to think of America, Russia, Europe and others as well.

Now, given that Bangladesh is the indispensable South Asian state, is it possible for it to assume its pre-colonial role as a borderland area that does not lie at the periphery of someone else's geographical empire?

Why not? Bangladesh's geography includes West Bengal and parts of North-east India as much as it does western Myanmar. Speaking politically, Bangladesh is hemmed in on its east and constrained on its west. But geography speaks through and beyond history.

It would be good if the Bay of Bengal were to contour the diplomatic geography of Bangladesh, to start with. As the world order cracks up and 500 years of the Western imprint on Asian history come to a likely end, the only frontiers are those that are new. Bangladesh can benefit from this new human geography.

The possibilities are immense. They require imagination, which is abundant among Bengalis. Van Schendel and Priyam Paul are the harbingers of the new Bangladeshi imagination.

The writer is Principal Research Fellow of the Cosmos Foundation. He may be reached at epaaropaar@gmail.com