Published in Open magazine in May 2015
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| Residents of Bangladeshi enclaves in Cooch Behar, West Bengal |
Edit: On 6 June, 2015, a land swap finally amalgamated
border enclaves of India and Bangladesh into each other’s territories—14,000
Bangladeshis overnight had a choice to become Indians and 37,000 Indians, Bangladeshis.
A report on what it means to live in a country surrounded by another country and how those affected see their change of citizenship
After a five minute ride
from his house, Majid ul-Hussain stops his motorcycle on the side of an
embankment and gets off. I join him as he makes his way towards a thicket where
a cluster of ghurnim trees, shooting up through bushes that grow
wantonly around them, loom ahead of us.
It is mid-afternoon and we
are at Poaturkuthi, a small village in Cooch Behar district of West Bengal.
Clad in a vest and pair of pants, 35-year-old Hussain, a mason by profession,
had offered to take me around the fringes of his village.
“That’s the one,” he says,
pointing at a stone column planted at the turn. Over the years, the top half of
the column has steadily chipped off and turned into an algae nest.
Nevertheless, the letters are still visible on one side: ‘B.P.’ or Boundary
Pillar, locally referred to as ‘Bharat-Pakistan’. I step over the pillar to
check if there is anything etched on the other side.
“Now you’re in Bangladesh,”
Hussain says. I look around, hoping to find Border Security Force (BSF)
personnel whose vehicles I saw plying the roads on my way to Poaturkuthi,
perhaps a fence or a checkpoint; some unsubtle indicator that I have crossed
over to another country. In response, rich paddies sway in the calm breeze,
stretching out as far as I can see.
I step back to where we
came from. “Now you’re back in India,” I am told.
We turn and make our way
out of the thicket. Gradually, the pillar disappears from sight. A couple of
locals have noticed us and understood what we are up to. Over the next few
hours, as we walk through labyrinthine pathways of the village spread over 590
acres, finding only a handful of similar posts, they stumble over one another to
tell me exactly when I have made incursions into another sovereign state.
In the week I have spent
travelling the countryside of Cooch Behar, I realise that this could happen
when one hops over a rivulet, crosses over from one farmland to another, or
strolls into the backyard of the house of one’s host. Perplexed, I once ask
locals if there is any way to know for sure. “Not for you,” replied one. “It
took us years to remember this.”
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| Locals at Batrigachh, a Bangladeshi enclave, point at an Indian enclave with Bangladeshi territory all around it |
Once upon a time, some
parts of Bengal were ruled by two kings: the Rajah of Cooch Behar and the Nawab
of Rangpur. A legend goes that the two were chess aficionados and often used
villages under their control as stakes for their match. As a result of their
spirited contests, around 162 chitt mohol, Bengali for enclaves, were
created on both sides such that they belonged to one king but were landlocked
by the other. Historians, however, say that this peculiar situation is the
result of peace treaties in 1711 and 1713 between the kingdom of Cooch Behar
and the Mughal Empire.
In 1947, three centuries
after the legend concludes, the Radcliffe Line was drawn and Pakistan was
carved out of India. As the fledgling governments fought over the ownership of the
princely state of Kashmir, the conflict in the fertile plains of Bengal lay
unheeded. Even as the princely state of Cooch Behar was inducted into West
Bengal and that of Rangpur into East Pakistan, only half-hearted attempts were
made to ensure the amalgamation of enclaves into the country they are
surrounded by.
Records show that in the
last 67 years, two agreements to this intent were signed by former Prime
Minister Jawaharlal Nehru and later, his daughter Indira Gandhi with their
respective counterparts of what is now Bangladesh. In addition to the enclaves,
the Nehru-Noon Agreement and Indira-Mujib Treaty also wanted to resolve the
issues of the disputed territories of Assam, Meghalaya and Tripura. However,
these pacts were put in cold storage and the residents of the enclaves
continued their existence as citizens of an inert state.
In December 2013, the
Congress-led Government decided to take up the issue for the third time. The
Constitution (119th Amendment) Bill sought to ‘give effect to an
agreement entered into by India and Bangladesh on the acquiring and transfer of
territories between the two countries on May 16, 1974.’ On 6 and 7 May this
year, ahead of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to Bangladesh in June, the
Bill was passed in both Houses of the Parliament. It paved the way for the
induction of 111 Indian enclaves in Bangladesh spread over 17,000 acres and 51
Bangladesh enclaves inside India spread over 7,000 acres.
Modi’s move was a U-turn
from his party’s position on the issue. As a majority party in the opposition
till 2014, the BJP had vehemently opposed the land-swap since it meant losing
10,000 acres of ‘Indian’ territory. But now, if all goes well and the Bill is
ratified by the President of India, one day in the month of June, around 14,215 residents of Bangladeshi
enclaves in Cooch Behar will wake up to find themselves recognised as Indian
citizens. Their counterparts in four districts of Bangladesh, nearly 37,369 of
them, will turn into Bangladeshi nationals overnight.
As fantastic as it sounds on paper, for most of the locals, it will be a
little deviation from their routine. As a resident tells me, “We were never
Bangladeshi in the first place. It was only the Indian Government that refused
to acknowledge us.”
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| A boundary pillar in Cooch Behar indicates where the Indian territory ends and an enclave begins |
Debarshi Dutta, additional
superintendent of police of Cooch Behar, confirms what many local residents
contend: the 51 enclaves, which account for around 0.5 per cent of the
district’s population, are blind spots for the civic, law and order, education
and healthcare agencies. The situation is no less bleak in the Indian enclaves
across the border. “I can’t even give you the details of the crime in these
areas,” he says, “The incidents in Indian enclaves inside Bangladesh are not
reported and those in Bangladeshi enclaves inside India are not recorded.”
Without basic facilities,
an enclave dweller has little choice but to venture out of his ‘country’ every
day, be it to the schools, hospitals, local markets, even if all he seeks is a
cup of tea. While the agrarian population is largely uniform in their socio-economic
status, people who live in the enclaves are susceptible to exploitation by
their Indian neighbours. For example, in the absence of electricity connections
in most parts, enclave residents use lamps for light, but the kerosene, bought
by ration card holding Indians for Rs 15 per litre from fair price shops, is
sold to them at Rs 40.
With no identification
cards in their name, enclave dwellers are forced to lie about their residential
address every time they venture out and are frequently questioned by
governmental authorities. Often, at these times, the administrative machinery
kicks in with a brute, unreasonable force. A decade-and-a-half ago, Hussain,
like several youth of his village, decided to go to New Delhi for work. “Around
6 pm,” in his words, “I was waiting at the New Cooch Behar railway station when
the Government Railway Police noticed me and asked where I was from.”
We are sitting on a bamboo
platform at the centre of Poaturkuthi, a Bangladeshi enclave. Like several
enclaves across the district, the tarmac ends at the doorstop of Indian
neighbours. To travel to these parts, one paddles over mud paths that coil
around idyllic settings involving jute, paddy and tobacco crops, the pungent
smell of which hangs thick in the air.
“Then they asked me to show
an ID proof,” he continues. It was a classic Catch-22: to get an identity card,
he would have had to go to Bangladesh and apply for one. But in the absence of
any documentation in the first place, there was no scope for obtaining a travel
visa. Also, if one stayed in an enclave inside India, what use will an identity
document of another country be? “I tried to explain my situation but they
called me a migrant from across the border and took me into custody.”
For those arrested under
the suspicion of being residents of another country, the onus rests on the
accused to prove his innocence. When they fail to do so, Dutta says they are
“automatically convicted” under The Foreigners Act 1946, which prescribes a
maximum punishment of up to five years. Last year, 136 such people were
incarcerated by the Cooch Behar police, most of them ‘Bangladeshis’.
As is the convention,
Hussain, after spending five weeks in the Cooch Behar district jail, was taken
to the land border crossing point at Changrabandha and handed over to the cops
of a country he had never set foot in. They dumped him in Lalmonirhat jail in
Bangladesh. He was released after a week and crossed the notoriously porous
Indo-Bangla border to get back here.
That harrowing experience,
Hussain says, has not shaken his allegiance to India. He claims he hasn’t
ventured out of his enclave after he came back, save for occasional excursions
to gather essential supplies. But he has seen enough to make an informed
decision about his preference. “In the jail here, we used to get food twice a
day,” he says, “I could never have dinner in Bangladesh.”
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| In absence of electricity, the locals take to kerosene lamps to get through the night |
One of the more significant
aspects of the Bill is the provision that gives residents a choice of
citizenship of either country. In 2013, the Bharat Bangladesh Enclave Exchange
Coordination Committee (BBEECC), an organisation comprising representatives
from enclaves of both countries, conducted a survey to assess if one was to
expect an exodus when the Act came into effect. Speaking over the phone,
Deeptiman Sengupta, president of the BBEECC, says that of the total number of
‘Indians’ in Bangladesh, only 149 families—making up less than 2 per cent of
the total enclave population there—have expressed a desire to migrate. “While
148 of these families are Hindu, it is interesting to note that religious
identity is not the only decisive factor,” says Sengupta, “All of these families have land holdings of a size less than one bigha
[about a quarter of an acre]. Considering the economic prospects in India,
they want to come here so that they get an identity card of Indian citizenship
and then go to Delhi, Mumbai and other places for employment.” It is this
perception of India being better off that he says explains why the survey found
no single family willing to leave India.
While Human Development
Indices might make the choice of nationality obvious, the enclave dwellers
don’t have much to thank India for. The divide is particularly palpable when
one visits counter-enclaves, curious territorial anomalies involving an Indian
enclave inside a Bangladeshi one. There are 24 of them in the two countries,
one of them only as big as a football field.
Every evening, Manir
ul-Miyan looks wistfully as incandescent bulbs light up houses in Madan Kura,
the village across the street. The 26-year-old is a resident of Batrigachh, a
Bangladeshi enclave spread over 209 acres that envelopes Madan Kura. In stark
contrast to its surroundings, one can see satellite dishes propped on the
rooftops of houses in this counter enclave; borewells, a primary school and a panchayat
ruled by the Trinamool Congress.
When I visit Madan Kura,
Miyan points at the electricity poles in front of his house. “Electricity came
in this part about two years ago,” he says bitterly. “We saw it as they were
being erected, passing through our village to reach theirs, not being able to
do anything about it.”
Halim Byapari, a farmer who
stays in the Indian enclave opposite Miyan’s house, tells me about the vibrant
governmental presence in their village, from the implementation of housing
schemes to the distribution of foodgrain and during the election season comes
along. The conversation turns to cricket, and Byapari speaks of Batrigachh
locals dropping by to watch a match on his TV.
“And who do you cheer for?”
I ask.
“India,” they answer in
unison.
There are, however,
exceptions to this trend. Around two years ago, residents of Balapukhari
enclave in the Mekhliganj block managed to successfully persuade the
authorities that they, too, should be given electricity connections if the
Indian Government planned to erect power poles on their land.
Aware of the bureaucratic
blackholes faced by enclave dwellers, their Indian neighbours often try to help
them out. An electronics shop owner in the Indian village adjacent to Batrigachh
points at the ten plug points that he has installed at his outlet only to help
those in enclaves charge their mobile phones, sometimes at Rs 5 per handset.
Many of the students I speak to tell me that they had enrolled themselves in
schools by using the names of their relatives and acquaintances from Indian
villages in the vicinity. Some, like Noor Mohammad, a resident of Karola
enclave, share an electricity connection with their Indian neighbours across
the street.
But such bonhomie does not
always hold. In case of a conflict, enclave residents find themselves at a
disadvantage. Rafiq Patwadi, a tobacco farmer in Batrigachh, says he has spent
a fortune proving the ownership of land his family has owned for generations,
all because only two of the 10 acres he owns are on the Indian side of a line
on the map. “There were some members of a local political party who were aware
of this,” says the 40-year-old. “They encroached on my land saying that I
should surrender my rights over these eight acres of ‘enemy territory’ since I
wanted to avail facilities as an Indian.” It took 17 years in Cooch Behar’s
district court to secure a verdict in his favour.
While Patwadi’s might be a
one-off case, for most others it takes a marriage in an enclave dweller’s
family for all their deprivations to be laid bare, especially when a union is
to be solemnised with someone from an Indian village. In this patriarchal
society, dowry calculators develop snags in favour of the privileged Indians,
whether or not theirs is the groom’s side.
Sitting in the courtyard of
his tin-walled house in Poaturkuthi, Rafiq ul-Haq offers to explain how he was
shortchanged by the bride’s family, residents of the Indian village of
Durgapur. Ten years ago, owing to the absence of a TV set, refrigerator or fan,
things that his to-be-bride had been used to all her life, the two families
agreed on a dowry of Rs 25,000. “Considering the size of my land—around five bigha—I
could have received around Rs 3 lakh had I not lived here,” he says. His wife
Latifabibi Haq concurs with the assessment. “Tabhi bhi mere papa ne khushi
se diya (In spite of that, my father was pleased to pay up),” she tells me.
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| Noor Mohammad, a resident of Karola, a Bangladeshi enclave in India with his vehicle registered in the name of an Indian neighbour |
Some of the locals have
found a way to make money off the lack of governmental intervention. With
little watch being kept on activity within enclaves, farmers of some areas like
Poaturkuthi have taken to growing marijuana. On the condition of anonymity, a
relative of one such farmer says that it has spelt windfall gains for them. “At
the going-rate of Rs 3,000 per kg, the returns are ten times the investment,”
he says, adding that the police are aware of this trend that began a few years ago
but have been paid off to look the other way.
The enclaves also serve as
a resting point for smugglers, especially those ferrying cattle across the
border. Saddam Miah, a mobile shop owner and resident of the same enclave,
recalls an evening last year when he saw nearly 500 cows being led inside the
village. “I was returning home on my bicycle but had to get off the road only
to avoid getting crushed,” he says.
At nearly 4,000 km, the
border that India shares with Bangladesh is the fourth longest in the world. In
1992, the two countries decided to erect barriers in these areas to curb
smuggling that went unabated over the decades, often resulting in skirmishes with
security forces. In Cooch Behar, of a total 549.45 km, only a length of 300 km
is fenced. With large tracts of the border being riverine and accessible,
smugglers have it easy ferrying their wares.
“Since the land belongs to
Bangladesh, we are not allowed to enter inside. And while the locals in these
areas are largely peaceful, the chitt mohols have become a
hideout for smugglers,” says a commanding officer at a BSF post in Mekhliganj
block. Apart from cattle, smugglers haul rice, electronic items, clothes and
footwear across the border. “The BSF is the last barrier for the smugglers, so
the move to induct the enclaves inside India will be hugely beneficial for us.”
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| The photographs of bullet wounds in the back of Hamidul Sarkar's brother, resident of Karola enclave |
At Karola village, I meet
Hamidul Sarkar, a farmer. As we sit talking, he reminisces about an evening 14
years ago when commotion was heard from the neighbouring fields. “My younger
brother Hakim Ali decided to go to check what had happened. My mother warned
him against it but he calmed her down, saying that he will be back soon,” says
Sarkar. A few minutes later, there were gunshot sounds, and as he wondered what
was happening, he saw a man sprint towards him from the same direction his
brother had taken. “He told me that the police were trying to shoot a few
smugglers, but they ended up hitting my brother instead,” he says. With no way
of approaching Indian authorities, he called a photographer from a village
closeby to record the event. In the light of the kerosene lamp in his home, he
lays out two yellowing photographs, fraying around the edges, of a bare-backed
17-year-old lying on his side, a bullet mark in his spine.
Sarkar’s residence was
located less than a kilometre away from the fenced border. After his brother’s
killing, he says he tried sending a message to the Border Guard Bangladesh (BGB)
informing them of the incident through a farmer he could see working on the
other side of the barbed wire. There was no response.
After all these years,
Sarkar says he has made peace with the tragedy. He is clear about where he
wants to live after the exchange of territory is ratified by both countries.
“The Indian Government didn’t do much for us, but neither did the other,” he
says. “But we share more with this place than we ever did with Bangladesh. This
is home.”
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