Smuggling along the Punjab border was rampant in the years following decolonisation. Lahore and Amritsar constituted its key nodes, spinning together a regional economy, the spatial and functional limits of which, this chapter argues, exceeded the official trade between India and Pakistan. Most of the contraband flows were everyday household, consumer goods and commercial items. The Wagah–Attari crossing that divided the cities was pivotal for moving goods and movement of people. The main advantage of this route seems to have been that it was an area of pre-partition linkages of trade and communication. Besides, it had in the cities of Lahore and Amritsar—connected by trading networks, migrants and smugglers—a fairly safe route to Delhi. Despite the fact that the border administrative presence was stronger at the Wagah–Attari crossing than anywhere else along the Punjab border, this checkpost was the waystation for the traffics. The flow of ‘legal’ goods across the border provided a convenient cover to hide its ‘illegal’ counterparts in commercial cargo conveyances. What were the types of illicit movement of goods and how extensive were these activities and their effects? How did varying types of actors benefit from different types of contraband trades? What interactions did contraband commodities hold with the bazaars and urban consumers? Did these flows defy the state authority? Or were they minor flows that could be tolerated across the porous border? What were the reactions of society to contraband goods? Finally, what light do these practices shine on the early Pakistan state?

Informal border crossing is more frequently found than could be imagined from official accounts. Documents from the Lahore archives reveal that the contraband trade between Lahore and Amritsar had exceeded its ‘legal’ counterpart and it developed as an almost parallel economy with its own values and significance. Yet surprisingly, there is very little scholarship on the implications of smuggling in Punjab, although research on its Bengal counterpart has developed. This chapter investigates the role of the 1947 partition-related migrants in cross-border trades by focusing on the influence of consumer goods and considering the contribution of smuggling economy, which acted as an enabler of upward social mobility in the period immediately after Partition. It explores the wider social and cultural implications contraband trade had for the entrenchment of consumerism.