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Business News/ Politics / Policy/  India-Bangladesh land swap: A tale of counter-enclaves
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India-Bangladesh land swap: A tale of counter-enclaves

Religion and access to state facilities such as power, education, healthcare, divide people in enclaves and counter-enclaves

Chitta Das, the head of the lone Hindu family in Chhit Sheoraguri counter-enclave. Photo: Indranil Bhoumik/MintPremium
Chitta Das, the head of the lone Hindu family in Chhit Sheoraguri counter-enclave. Photo: Indranil Bhoumik/Mint

For Chitta Das, there is no freedom to be achieved this Saturday, but even so, he has to cough up 5,000 as contribution for the celebrations at the Madhya Mashaldanga enclave in West Bengal’s Cooch Behar district.

Das, the 50-something head of a Hindu family that lives in a counter-enclave—an enclave within the Madhya Mashaldanga enclave—isn’t quite sure if his nationality is going to change as India and Bangladesh exchange their outlying territories.

“If the Bangladeshis are going to become Indians, are you sure we are not going to become Bangladeshis?" he asks, his eyes roving around his 7.5-bigha (2.5-acre) estate. He is intimidated by the thought of suddenly turning into a Bangladeshi holed up within India.

His fear is baseless: counter-enclaves are not exchangeable. Das is already an Indian—he votes in Indian elections—and will remain so after the enclaves are swapped between Delhi and Dhaka during the night of Friday-Saturday, capping a 68-year struggle since Independence.

Yet, he takes every assurance with a pinch of salt, and from his disbelief emerges the genesis of his fear. “Why then did they tell me that we are going to become Bangladeshis?" he asks. “Is it a ploy to drive me from my land, so that they could grab it?"

The people he is referring to are his neighbours, who actively took part in the movement for enclave exchange—the beneficiaries on both sides of the international border are mostly Muslims. “And if there is nothing in it for me, why should I have to pay 5,000 for their celebrations?" he asks. “It was their movement, not mine."

Until now, Das had little to complain about. He has an electricity connection at home; his children could go to school without having to conceal their identity; and his grandchildren weren’t born at home. Treated as foreign nationals, enclave dwellers do not have access to these facilities. What’s more, Das has more land than he can till on his own—his son, a construction worker, has now returned home from Delhi to help with farming.

However, his problem is that his is the only Hindu family completely surrounded by a Muslim neighbourhood. Being the lone Indian in a sea of stateless people, he had the comfort of state protection unlike his neighbours, but with the imaginary lines separating the dominions about to disappear, he feels threatened.

Religion alone doesn’t divide the people of the enclaves from those of the counter-enclaves they surround. Because they have access to state facilities such as power, healthcare and education, the people of the counter-enclaves are, as a rule, seen as more privileged, and undeservedly so.

There are around 20 counter-enclaves within India, and three within Bangladesh. There’s even a counter-counter-enclave—there’s only one such in the world—in Bangladesh. These started to form more than 300 years ago when the chieftains of Mughal and Cooch Behar rulers laid siege to isolated territories in defiance of their bosses.

An hour’s drive from Das’s home, in Chhit Madnagura—another counter-enclave with a predominantly Muslim population—there are some 450-500 voters. Every home has a power connection from the state-owned grid, and the DTH receivers on their roofs show quite a few families have bought television sets.

But for the past couple of weeks, there’s been no power in the village. The outage has been blamed on a transformer breakdown that no one has yet tried to fix, local people say. Even without outage, the power supply isn’t stable and voltage often drops to levels where television sets do not work.

“Even so, they have power... we don’t," says Mohammad Ali, an elderly resident of the neighbouring Bhatrigachhi enclave. “In our village of 239 families, we have to burn diesel to run generators for our shallows (irrigation pumps) and to charge our mobile phones. They get subsidized kerosene for 10; we pay 50 for a litre." Ali goes on with a long list of privileges that the counter-enclave dwellers have enjoyed through the years.

A visit to the rundown primary school in the Chhit Madnagura counter-enclave, however, reveals it has only two teachers to tutor some 200 students. To be sure, it doesn’t refuse admission to any child from the counter-enclave, but its doors are firmly shut to those from the surrounding Bhatrigachhi enclave.

“Our village (Chhit Madnagura) is populous enough for political leaders to visit us before every election," says an elderly man, seated in front of his brick-and-mortar home, a sign of prosperity in his neighbourhood. “They make tall promises every time... now that we are all going to get integrated, let us see if they are going to keep their promises."

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Published: 31 Jul 2015, 12:05 AM IST
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