This article examines the interaction of events in the Lahore and Amritsar borderland with the wider course of Indo-Pakistan relations in the early postindependence period. Its findings reveal the ways in which events in this sensitive borderland reflected, symbolized, and influenced wider Indo-Pakistan relations. The examination focuses on the 1951 War Scare and the Cricket Diplomacy four years later. In a foretaste of the use of cricket in 2004–2005 to normalize relations, the India-Pakistan Test Series of January–February 1955 provided an occasion for opening the Wagah border crossing. Here was evidence that despite the human tragedies surrounding Partition, the region of the Punjab could act as a bridge between India and Pakistan.
