Becoming India's First Female Soldiers

Obstacle training at Khatka camp. State of Punjab, 2009. © Poulomi Basu/Courtesy The Half King Photography Series

Dancing in the barracks at Attari, the Indo-Pakistan border aka the “Berlin Wall of Asia.” The most popular tourist attraction in Punjab, it is also Infamous for drug and people smuggling, and underreported, extra-judicial killings by the army. January 2011. © Poulomi Basu/Courtesy The Half King Photography Series

Alpha company, comprising 118 women, wait at dawn for their training to begin. Khatka Camp, Punjab, June 2009. © Poulomi Basu/Courtesy The Half King Photography Series

Sona Singh and Kamal Dar of the Border Security Armed Force in their barracks, Kharkan, Punjab, July 2009. © Poulomi Basu/Courtesy The Half King Photography Series

Shabbo Kumari at Attari, the Indo-Pakistan border of Punjab. October 2011. © Poulomi Basu/Courtesy The Half King Photography Series

Soldiers take their stance in a line of defense. Kharkan, September 2009. © Poulomi Basu/Courtesy The Half King Photography Series

Two soldier girls enjoying an intimate moment behind the mosquito net at night. Many women forge lesbian relationships in the camp, despite a strict Don't Ask, Don’t Tell policy. Kharkan camp. August 2009. © Poulomi Basu/Courtesy The Half King Photography Series

Storm at the border in Udhampur. Indo-Pakistan border of Jammu & Kashmir, October 2009. © Poulomi Basu/Courtesy The Half King Photography Series

Parachute flares light up the nighttime firing training exercise in the Kharkan boot camp. Kharkan, Punjab. October 2009. © Poulomi Basu/Courtesy The Half King Photography Series

Invisible soldiers standing under the moonlight. Boot camp in Kharkan, Punjab. August 2009. © Poulomi Basu/Courtesy The Half King Photography Series

From 2009 through 2014, photographer Poulomi Basu followed India’s first female soldiers deployed at the India-Pakistan border in Punjab, Jammu and Kashmir. “Stationed on a critical border, they try to come to terms with their new responsibilities while patrolling barren lands,” Basu wrote in a February 2011 article for Guernica magazine. “This transformation is intense; it is impossible to recreate or restore what they’ve left behind.”

Basu’s project, “To Conquer Her Land,” tells the stories of these women through photographs and diary excerpts. She hopes to publish a book of the work, but in the meantime, images from the series are currently on display at the Half King in New York City. For more, please visit the website of the Half King Photography Series.