When 14,000 Bangladeshis will become Indians and 37,000 Indians, Bangladeshis

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, looms ahead of us.

It is mid-afternoon and we are at Poaturkuthi, a small village in the Cooch Behar district of West Bengal. Clad in a vest and a 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 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, any 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 if one happens to hop over a rivulet, cross over from one farm to another, or even stroll into the backyard of the house of one’s host. Perplexed, I had once asked locals if there is any way to know for sure. “Not for you,” replied one, “It took us years to remember this.”

Once upon a time, some parts of Bengal were ruled by two kings: the Raja 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 matches; as a result of their spirited contests, around 162 chitt mohols, Bengali for ‘enclaves’, were created on both sides that belonged to one kingdom 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 later, the famous Radcliffe Line was drawn and Pakistan was carved out of India. As the new states’ 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 were 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 issue 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 119th Amendment Constitution 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 May 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 Parliament. It paved the way for the inclusion of 111 Indian enclaves (spread over 17,000 acres) in Bangladesh and 51 Bangladeshi enclaves (over 7,000 acres) in India.

Modi’s move was a U-turn from his party’s position on the issue. As a major opposition party until 26 May 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 what’s India until June, some 37,369 of them, will turn into Bangladeshi nationals overnight.

As fantastic as it sounds on paper, for most of the locals, it’s only a formality. As a soon-to-be-Indian-citizen tells me, “We were never Bangladeshi in the first place. It was only the Indian Government that refused to acknowledge us.”

Debarshi Dutta, Additional Superintendent of Police of Cooch Behar, confirms what many locals contend: the 51 enclaves set to join India, 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 details of the crime in these areas,” he says, “The incidents in Indian enclaves inside Bangladesh are never 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 schools, hospitals, local markets, even if all he seeks is a cup of tea. While the agrarian population is largely uniform in broad 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 a litre.

With no identification cards in their name, enclave dwellers are forced to lie about their residential address whenever they venture out and are frequently questioned by government authorities. Often, at the administrative machinery kicks in with brute 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 Hussain’s words, “I was waiting at the New Cooch Behar railway station when the [Indian] Government Railway Police noticed me and started to ask me questions about 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,” Hussain 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, a resident of an enclave inside India, what use would 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 or her ‘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 in jail. Last year, 136 such people were imprisoned by the Cooch Behar police, most of them alleged ‘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, Bangladesh. Released after a week, he 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,” Hussain says, “But I was never given any dinner in the Bangladeshi prison.”

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 can then go to Delhi, Mumbai and other places for employment.” It is this perception of India being better off that he believes is the reason 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’, a term for curious territorial anomalies involving an Indian enclave inside a Bangladeshi one. There are as many as 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 of 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 party.

When I visit Madan Kura, Miyan points at the electricity poles in front of his house. “Electricity came to these parts about two years ago,” he says bitterly. “As these poles were being erected, we saw it pass through our village to reach theirs and we were not 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 government presence in their village, from the implementation of official housing schemes to the distribution of foodgrain. 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 lines across 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 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 only 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 this, my father decided to pay up),” she tells me.

Some locals have found a way to make easy money off governmental neglect. With little watch being kept on activity within enclaves, farmers of some areas like Poaturkuthi have taken to growing marijuana. 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 but have been paid off to look the other way.

The enclaves also serve as a resting point for smugglers of cattle and much else. 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 on unabated over the decades, often resulting in skirmishes with security forces. In Cooch Behar, of about 550 km, only 300 km is fenced. With large tracts of the border being riverine and accessible, smugglers have it easy ferrying their wares. “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, “Since the land belongs to Bangladesh, we are not allowed to enter.” Apart from cattle, smugglers haul rice, electronic items, clothes and footwear across the border. “The BSF is the last barrier for smugglers, so the move to induct these enclaves into India will be hugely beneficial for us.”

At Karola village, Hamidul Sarkar, a farmer, recalls an evening 14 years ago when commotion was heard from the fields nearby. “My younger brother Hakim Ali decided to go to check what had happened. My mother warned him against it, but he said he’ll be back soon,” says Sarkar. A few minutes later, there were gunshot sounds, and, as he was wondering what had happened, he saw a man sprint towards him from the direction his brother had gone. “He said that the police were trying to shoot a few smugglers but had hit 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 a kerosene lamp at home, he lays out two yellowing photos, fraying round the edges, of a bare-backed 17-year-old lying on his side, a bullet mark visible 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 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 his 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 still share more with this place than we ever did with Bangladesh. This is home.”

About The Author

Omkar Khandekar

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