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Urban boundaries have always determined the movement of its populace, wherein the porosity of the boundaries regulate the extent to which people are mobile or immobile, welcomed or unwelcomed, excluded or included. These boundaries may be symbolic or physical but nevertheless, impact the identity of urban people and their relational space-making and place-making in their urban environment. In this paper, we explore how physical and symbolic boundaries have influenced the identity of the natives of a small town called Bodh Gaya situated in Bihar, India. Bodh Gaya is unanimously identified as a city of historical significance with it being the birthplace of Buddhism. In 2002, it was also deemed as a World Heritage Site by the UNESCO. Against this backdrop, we trace the history of urban spaces in Bodh Gaya to understand the formation stories of both the physical and the symbolic boundaries, and then we ethnographically explore how these boundaries have impacted the identities of its natives. Furthermore, we understand how the international players of the Buddhist sanctum play their part in the formation of these boundaries and juxtapose them with the perception of the natives of Bodh Gaya regarding its geopolitics. Finally, we remark on how the urban governance of Bodh Gaya with its exclusionary systems with the confluence of Bodh Gaya’s history and geopolitics has influenced the porosity of the different urban boundaries created and how these boundaries have resulted in both the physical and psychosocial ‘othering’ of its natives.