This chapter explores the history of postcolonial criminalisation in the Punjab borderland. It investigates first the social organisation of contraband trade and the ethnic constitution of the ‘smuggling community’ in the Punjab border. It then examines both individual actions and the structured system of contraband trade. The chapter graphs a typology of blackia— a term that covered a range of activity from involvement in the black market to smuggling—from the ‘small fry’ to the ‘gold kings’ as per the roles they performed in the smuggling operations and their intertwined relationships both at the border and transnationally. Drawing upon both local archival sources and Punjabi border ballads, this typology helps us to clarify how the smuggling economy, in general, operated at the Punjab borderland. How did local groups relate to larger organised flows of smuggling and what roles did they play? How were they entrenched and connected? To what extent did the milieu of gold smuggling affect the border dwellers? Which social groups constituted an emerging blackia or ‘smuggling community’? Who were the ‘gold kings’ of the Punjab borderland and how best could their actions be understood? Did they stimulate entrepreneurship and popular empowerment, or promote criminality and exploitation? Finally, to what extent was Lahore's post-independence development affected by the wealth of smugglers? A remarkable finding of this exploration is the emergence of a new borderland elite who grew rich by seizing opportunities to smuggle large amount of goods and human cargo.

Recent studies have shown that opportunities are brought about by ‘border effects’ in the social, political and economic landscape along and related to borders. Their realities on the ground are not simply outcomes of national policies on each side but instead outcomes of a creative interaction between opportunities and constraints, which Nugent has referred to as ‘a single package’. Borderland societies, especially those with shared cultural affinities, are often skilful at appropriating, subverting and posing astute challenges to border authorities and policies of the state. Nugent criticises the conventional wisdom about African boundaries that focuses solely ‘on the constraints side of state borders’. ‘Apart from opening up new trade routes, the smuggling complex summons forth a new breed of entrepreneurs whose very livelihoods depended upon the perpetuation of the international boundary.’