[Mr. Ali, however, exists in a no man’s land. The patch of earth here on which he lives and farms is part of an archipelago of villages, known as enclaves, that are technically Bangladeshi territory but sit entirely surrounded by India, stuck on the wrong side of the border.]
By Lydia Polgreen
 |
MADHYA MASALDANGA, India — Mohammed Idris Ali’s watery
rice paddies shimmer in the monsoon breeze just like his neighbors’. His
tepee-shaped stacks of jute, ready to be soaked, stripped and then turned into
rope, stand as tall as the ones across the rutted footpath.
But the
house across the footpath sits in India, and its owner, Chitra Das, has all the
trappings of citizenship: a voter ID and a ration card that entitles him to
discounted rice and wheat at a government shop. His children go to local
schools and have access to Indian government hospitals.
Mr.
Ali, however, exists in a no man’s land. The patch of earth here on which he
lives and farms is part of an archipelago of villages, known as enclaves, that
are technically Bangladeshi territory but sit entirely surrounded by India,
stuck on the wrong side of the border.
“The
Indians say we are not Indian; the Bangladeshis say we are not Bangladeshi,”
Mr. Ali said. “We are nowhere.”
There
are 50 other Bangladeshi enclaves like Mr. Ali’s inside India; there are 111
Indian enclaves inside Bangladesh.
The people of the enclaves are orphans, citizens of no country.
For
decades, neither the Indian nor the Bangladeshi government has taken
responsibility for them. Their villages do without basic public services like
electricity and roads. Parents must forge documents to send their children to local
schools. They cannot vote. Without identity documents they face arrest and
imprisonment as illegal immigrants.
“We
were born like this,” said Abdul Mutalib, of Madhya Masaldanga. “Our fathers
were born like this. Neither side claims us. But our land is here. What else
can we do? Where can we go?”
Under
the agreement, the 37,334 nominal Indians living inside Bangladesh will become
Bangladeshis, if they wish, and the 14,215 Bangladeshis on the Indian side of
the border will become Indians. Anyone who wants to move across the border will
be permitted to do so, but officials on each side say any major movement is
unlikely.
People
living in the enclaves are cautiously hopeful that their citizenship will
finally be settled, but this is hardly the first attempt so solve a bedeviling
problem.
India’s
borders are some of the world’s most hotly contested: disputes on its frontiers
have led to war with two of its neighbors, Pakistan and China. The
Bangladesh-India border is, for the most part, starkly marked: a fence
bristling with concertina wire separates the two nations. Heavily armed
sentinels prowl it to keep illegal crossers at bay, and hundreds of
Bangladeshis have been killed by Indian security forces, rights groups say.
The
lush, river-laced borderlands here include hundreds of barely marked,
lesser-known frontiers, results of a quirk of royal and imperial geography
known to map makers as “adverse positions.” The enclaves are marked by weathered
stone pillars that stand about three feet tall, seemingly at random and often
in the most inopportune place: a farmer’s field, a backyard, the middle of a
footpath.
Local
legend holds that the patchwork of villages in the enclaves is the legacy of chess
matches between the maharaja of Cooch Behar and the faujdar of Rangpur, who
traded the pieces of land like poker chips.
But the
truth is more prosaic — the enclaves resulted from 18th-century peace treaties
between the conquering Mughal emperors and the maharaja of Cooch Behar,
according to a 520-page historical study of the enclaves completed by Brendan R. Whyte at the
University of Melbourne in 2002.
When
British India was split in two, the region known as Rangpur went to Pakistan.
The princely state of Cooch Behar, which like other princely states had not
been part of British India, joined independent India in 1949 and was absorbed
into the Indian state of West Bengal.
But the
villages, known as chhitmahals, remained marooned. The first failed attempt to
resolve the issue came in 1954, when Bangladesh was still part of Pakistan. In
1974, Indira Gandhi and Bangladesh’s prime minister, Sheik Mujibur Rahman,
agreed to sort out the border problem, but Mr. Rahman was assassinated before
the agreement could be carried out, and the pro-Pakistan government in
Bangladesh never followed through. A third attempt in 1992, between India’s
prime minister P. V. Narasimha Rao and Khaleda Zia, then the leader of
Bangladesh, also went nowhere.
But
there are reasons to be more optimistic now. Bangladesh is more stable and
prosperous than ever, its economy growing at about 6 percent a year. India’s
government, meanwhile, has tried to improve relations with Bangladesh, not
least because it has testy relations with almost all of its neighbors, which
include territorial disputes.
Muhammad
Nazir Hussain, who lives in the enclave of Nalgram, certainly hopes that the
question of his citizenship will soon be settled. He lives on land his family
has farmed for generations and considers himself Indian. But his village is
officially part of Bangladesh. His cousin’s house a few hundred yards away is
in India, though half his fields lie in Bangladesh. Even the pond that borders
Mr. Hussain’s rice paddy is divided between the two nations, though the ducks
that skimmed it did not seem to notice.
“It is
a very complicated problem,” he said, with considerable understatement.
Mr.
Hussain’s younger brother, Manik Mia, has an Indian voter ID card because he
was able to register at the home of a relative in an Indian village. Every
family, it seems, is divided in this way.
“If we
had been in India, we would have been connected to the road, we would have had
a school, health facilities, electricity,” Mr. Mia said. “But we have none of
that. At times I wonder, are we human beings or are we animals?”
They
are certainly not treated like Indians. In 2006, four men from Madhya
Masaldanga were arrested and charged with immigration violations. They had been trying to travel to the
northern Indian city of Dehradun to work in the booming construction industry,
but they were stopped by the police in a neighboring town. When they could not
produce identification they were arrested and eventually convicted and jailed
for two years.
Even
when they had completed their sentences, the men were not immediately released
— the local police told them they were awaiting identity papers for them from
Bangladesh. Only after other residents of Madhya Masaldanga mounted a protest
were the men released.
One of
them, Mohanned Amir Hussain, said that he was born in Madhya Masaldanga, but
had no way to prove it. When asked his nationality, he did not hesitate.
“I am
Indian,” he said.
Deeptiman
Sengupta, a local activist who has been trying to help enclave dwellers get
identity documents, said someone must take responsibility for them.
“India
says it is the world’s biggest democracy,” Mr. Sengupta said. “Bangladesh is
also a democracy. Yet these people are truly stateless.”
Comment(s)
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Ananta De <anantain@yahoo.com>
Date: Tue, Oct 11, 2011 at 1:29 AM
Subject: Re: AT INDIA-BANGLADESH BORDER, LIVING IN BOTH, AND NEITHER
To: The Himalayan Voice <himalayanvoice@gmail.com>
From: Ananta De <anantain@yahoo.com>
Date: Tue, Oct 11, 2011 at 1:29 AM
Subject: Re: AT INDIA-BANGLADESH BORDER, LIVING IN BOTH, AND NEITHER
To: The Himalayan Voice <himalayanvoice@gmail.com>
Almost every day Bangladesi people enter into our country. It is known to everybody. They are coming, within short time they become our citizens either by getting voter ID card or by ration card. They are coming and getting jobs easily at Indian house-holds as maid servants etc. while the other male folks are getting jobs as labourers at different promoters, contractors or employers. And sometime later, they buy our land. In our residence only there are many maid-servants from Bangaladesh. Just 6 months back one came here and managed to get voter ID card from Sunderban locality and became Indian citizen.
But it is a paradox that my wife at her father's house, had voter ID card. Now she is married to me and came to our house, her voter's ID card has been cancelled by the local party office. This means she can't vote again; she has lost her voting right. We both hail from Kolkatta. This makes her as if she is not an Indian Citizen !
Too many people are arriving in Kolkatta. These arrivals increase our population and so do crimes also. They are engaged in criminal activities just for survival.
But who cares ?
|
Sunderban, Kolkatta,
India
