BJP rejects Indo-Bangla land swap idea

[Tiki Tam Tam]

LIVING WITH A BORDER IN THE BACKYARD
Denied the markers of citizenship such as the vote or the ration card, the idea of nation remains fuzzy for the inhabitants of the Indo-Bangladesh enclaves, writes Ipsita Chakravarty

he pillar was in the backyard, dwarfed by a bamboo fence. Three feet of worn concrete surrounded by wicker baskets and a crumpled jerry can. This was where odds and ends came to stay. Life was lived elsewhere. It was August and the countryside was under a carpet of jute. Jute stalks stacked together and stood on end by the road; bundles of jute left to rot in ponds and streams before the fibre could be separated; golden jute fibre drying on every available surface and a raw, dank smell of jute that always hung in the air. The carpet was everywhere. Only the pillar planted in the back of the yard, in the back of the mind, suggested that this, Fallanapur enclave in Sitalkuchi block in Mathabhanga subdivision of Cooch Behar district, was somehow different. That the surrounding countryside was somehow alien to it.

The pillar suggested, in fact, that Fallanapur was part of Bangladesh. It is a chhitmahal, or a Bangladeshi enclave lodged within Indian territory. Together with Jongra and Nalgram, it is part of an enclave cluster that lies a few kilometres from the Bangladesh border in North Bengal. An enclave, as Willem Van Schendel describes it, is “a portion of one state surrounded completely by the territory of another state”. Most of the enclaves in India are concentrated in the district of Cooch Behar. Figures vary, but according to the latest estimates by the government of India, there are 51 Bangladeshi enclaves in India and 111 Indian enclaves in Bangladesh. They show up on the map as perforations on either side of the border, rupturing the territorial continuity of both nations. But then the chhitmahals are imprints of a history that is much older than India or Bangladesh, perhaps even older than the idea of a modern nation.

There are two stories about how these enclaves came to be, although one need not contradict the other. People in Cooch Behar believe that the chhitmahals were stakes in games of chess played between landlords of Cooch Behar and of Rangpur, sometime in the 18th century. Once a pocket of land in Cooch Behar was gambled away to a landlord in Rangpur, the inhabitants of this area would have to pay taxes to him, and vice versa. When India was partitioned in 1947, Rangpur went to East Pakistan, which later became Bangladesh, and the chhits in Cooch Behar became foreign territory. A few years later, when the princely state of Cooch Behar joined the Indian Union, the chhits owned by its landlords in Rangpur became parts of India.

Scholars like Schendel, however, see in the enclaves the conflicting legacies of Mughal and British rule. The Mughals expanded their empire to Bengal in the late 17th century, but were unable to occupy Cooch Behar. A few powerful landlords in Cooch Behar even managed to hold on to scraps of land, or chhits, within the newly expanded Mughal empire. Conversely, certain Mughal landlords owned chhits within Cooch Behar. Then the British arrived in India, the Mughals fell and their empire became part of British India. But Cooch Behar never came under direct British rule; the colonizers recognized it as a “friendly state” and installed a British “political agent” there. When the Partition plan of 1947 was drawn up, it included only the territories ruled directly by the British. Former Mughal territories, now part of British India, were partitioned; the state of Cooch Behar was not. Part of the erstwhile Mughal territories, still dotted with Cooch Behar’s enclaves, went to East Pakistan. When Cooch Behar joined India two years later, its enclaves in East Pakistan became Indian territory. Meanwhile, the chhits owned by the Mughal landlords remained embedded in Cooch Behar. In 1947, they became Pakistani enclaves and after 1971, Bangladeshi ones.

This means that in the last 60-odd years, the inhabitants of Fallanapur have had three successive nationalities without actually going anywhere. Bijendranath Burman, who lives in Fallanapur, says he owns Indian, Pakistani and Bangladeshi title deeds for the same plot of land. “How this land became Bangladesh, we do not know,” he says, bewildered. His family had lived in Fallanapur for generations, only to be told one day that they were citizens of another country. The border pillar suddenly marked them out as different. Yet the people of Fallanapur grow tobacco, paddy and jute, just like farmers in the district surrounding them. They fish in the waters of the Buradholla river, which runs through enclave and Indian village alike. Nations, for them, live very far away. The international enclaves were created by some of the most intense national movements of the last century. But the inhabitants of Fallanapur say it does not really matter which country they belong to. Nationality is equated with citizenship — something that they know only by its absence.

The people of the enclaves cannot vote, they do not have birth certificates or ration cards — nothing marks them as the citizens of a particular nation. Moreover, cut off from their nation’s mainland without passports or visas, they are unable to leave the chhits legally. In the last six decades, both States have retreated from the enclaves on either side of the border. No official working for the government of India is allowed to step inside the chhits and since the 1950s, people from these areas have been left out of census counts in both countries. It was only in 2011 that the two countries held a joint census in these areas. According to the results of the census, an estimated 51,000 people live in the chhitmahals, a nameless, Stateless population that both countries have tried to wish away. In the decades since Independence, there has been occasional talk of exchanging the lands and merging each enclave with the territory of the nation it is surrounded by. The Nehru-Noon Agreement was signed in 1958 and the Indira-Mujib Agreement in 1974, but neither of these was implemented. Both countries evaded the question of the enclaves for fear of stirring other territorial disputes. What they did instead was tactfully look away.

So the nation, for the people of the chhitmahals, is a lived absence. With the State having retired, these people are deprived of basic public amenities. There is no water supply or electricity from the State, no schools or healthcare. The ailing are admitted to Indian hospitals under the names of relatives who live in neighbouring Indian villages. It was also common practice to send children to Indian schools under the names of Indian relatives. But now primary schools have started demanding birth certificates and the enclave dwellers have none to show. Reaching Bangladesh’s administrative offices means leaving the enclave, stepping into Indian territory and then crossing over into the Bangladesh mainland, all without travel documents. It is a perilous journey that few are willing to make. Even if they did manage, there was not much point, says Jagmohan Burman, another resident of Fallanapur. Who would give enclave dwellers jobs after they finished school?

The lack of documents means that the people of the chhitmahals have no legal existence. Residents of Fallanapur claim they can move about in the neighbouring villages quite freely and sell their produce in nearby Indian markets. But there have been numerous instances of enclave dwellers being arrested for straying into Indian territory. In 2006, five youths from an enclave were arrested in Dinhata, where they had gone for treatment. As of June 2011, they had still not been released. Once arrested, such people are liable to prosecution under the Foreigner’s Act, says A. Habib, an advocate based in Dinhata. Those charged with violating the provisions of the act may face a sentence of up to five years. But their ordeal does not end there. Once the sentence is served, Habib says, the Indian courts want to send the prisoners back to Bangladesh. But Bangladesh does not recognize them as its citizens, and they have no papers to prove they are. So the prisoners continue to languish in Indian jails, all for going to a market to earn a living or to a hospital for vital medical care.

With no legal existence, the enclave dwellers in India cannot take recourse to the law, be it Indian or Bangladeshi. And the enclaves, which remain inaccessible to State officials, are blind spots in jurisdiction. This has several repercussions, Habib explains. For instance, if one Indian national is murdered by another in an enclave, the relatives of the deceased may lodge a complaint in an Indian police station. The case may then proceed according to Indian laws. But with no access to the enclaves, the police cannot visit the place of occurrence, evidence cannot be gathered and the investigation fails to take its proper course. If an Indian murders a resident of the enclave, the relatives of the deceased cannot even file a complaint since they have no proof of identity. Bangladesh does not recognize them, and they would be illegally straying into foreign territory to reach police stations in India anyway. Needless to say, disputes between enclave dwellers cannot be settled by law either. This means that, effectively sealed off from the law, these enclaves have become a refuge for many criminals.

It also means that Indians and enclave dwellers can err with impunity in the chhitmahals. Habib recalls reports of soldiers from the Border Security Force raping women from the enclaves; no complaints were ever filed. The inhabitants of Fallanapur say that, till a few years back, they had to suffer Indian atrocities in silence. They remember Indians from neighbouring villages burning their crops, looting their houses, beating them up. Appeals to the National Human Rights Commission in Delhi produced no results. And then? The residents of Fallanapur smile grimly. And then the enclave dwellers grew stronger in numbers and the Indians were not so daring anymore.

Under siege for so long, the residents of Fallanapur, Nalgram and Jongra have had no choice but to organize themselves. The Chhit Nagarik Suraksha Committee, comprising members from all three enclaves, was formed in 2004, with Bijendranath Burman as “sabhapati”. The committee rules on land disputes and on other matters within the enclave cluster. A body formed in resistance seems to have forged a new identity for the people of Fallanapur. Or maybe it just articulates a very old one. This particular chhit, Burman claims, was established in 1846. He emerges from his hut with a xerox copy of a title deed bearing the name of Raja Jagath Dipendra Narayan Bhup Bahadur of Cooch Behar. He also produces another title deed. This one is much newer; it is written on stamp paper printed by members of the CNSC. Instead of “India” or “Bangladesh”, the judicial stamp says “Chhitmahal”. A pre-national identity seems to have fused with a post-national one. “We are people of the chhit,” says Burman.

But this year, talks for exchanging the Bangladeshi enclaves have been revived. The Bangladesh Enclave Exchange Coordination Committee has been pressing for their inclusion within Indian territory for some time now. Given a choice, the people of Fallanapur say they would opt for Indian citizenship. The CNSC has often written to the Indian government, asking for citizenship. They claim to have no ties with Bangladesh, many of their relatives live in India and they sell their goods in Indian markets. But it is a pragmatic choice, based on a need for the rights of citizenship.

Nation, nationality, everything that would suggest a sense of belonging and identity, have only served to displace the people of Fallanapur from the mainstream of history. If they belong to anything, it is to that secluded spot on the banks of the Buradholla, to the coils of golden fibre and to a history that is solely theirs.

Living with a border in the backyard

This will indicate the pitiable situation the poor people of the enclaves face each day, be it of India or Bangladesh.

They are human beings, but are deprived all facilities that you and I enjoy as citizens, because their existence is without a country in a manner of speaking.

This issue must be resolved and that is why so many Indian CMs are accompanying the PM to BD.

May good sense prevail over minor legalities.