Searching for an identity

Akkash Mondal was 16 years old when he left his home close to the India-Bangladesh border in 2006. He wanted to go to Delhi in search of a job. But he had travelled only a few kilometres when personnel of the Border Security Force (BSF) arrested him. Mondal was “trespassing into Indian territory,” they said. He was taken to Kolkata, where he spent three years in the Alipore Jail.

Eight years later, the youngster still can’t get over the incident. “I was born and brought up here. It never occurred to me that I was an outsider in this country till I was dumped in the jail,” says the now 24 years-old Mondal.

Mondal lives in Madhya Mashaldanga, a Bangladeshi ‘enclave’ in Cooch Behar district of West Bengal. An enclave is a portion of a country that is surrounded by the territory of another country. There are 51 such Bangladeshi enclaves in Cooch Behar. And each of their 14,215 residents (according to the Parliamentary Standing Committee) faces the same identity crisis as Mondal. When the BSF personnel stopped him, Mondal had no document to prove his Indian citizenship. His family tried to keep its son out of jail by arguing that they were not citizens of Bangladesh either. But that didn’t work. That is when the reality dawned upon them - they had no country to call their own.

Like the Mondals, there are 37,344 state-less people living in Indian enclaves in four districts of Bangladesh. They too face the same predicament as the Mondals. A total of 51,549 people live in 162 enclaves on either side of the 100-km-long India-Bangladesh border in Cooch Behar.

Enclaves are a reminder of the hasty Partition of the country in 1947 based on the Radcliffe Award, named after Sir Cyril Radliffe. The British architect was responsible for demarcating the line between India and Pakistan. In 1947, Bangladesh was known as East Pakistan, until its independence in the aftermath of the 1971 war.

Apart from the enclaves, the Partition also left behind ‘adversely possessed land’ (APL), which runs contiguous to the international border in West Bengal, Assam, Meghalaya and Tripura. But there is one crucial difference between the enclaves and the APL. Residents in APLs are citizens of the country were the land is located. They, unlike the Mondals, have an identity.

The division had interesting consequences, including an Indian ‘counter-enclave.’ The Indian counter-enclave exists within a Bangladeshi enclave in Madhya Mashaldanga.

The counter-enclave consists of a single Indian family surrounded by houses of nearly 500 Bangladeshis!

A typical enclave - locally referred as Chhit - is a no-man’s land, without any sign of an administration. There are no schools or hospitals, no electricity. There is not even a law-enforcement agency like the police. The entire population is left to fend for itself.

There are many versions of the genesis of these enclaves. The popular one goes that the rulers of Cooch Behar and the neighbouring Rangpur (now in Bangladesh) used small parcels of land as stakes to play Pasha , a board game. Some historians say that these areas were a result of a “confused” treaty between the Mughal rulers and the Cooch Behar kings in 1713.

After the Partition in 1947, Rangpur went to East Pakistan and later in 1950, Cooch Behar became a district of West Bengal. The enclaves too were divided accordingly. The human tragedies in the aftermath of Partition made the transition chaotic. Inhabitants of some of the enclaves in India chose to swap places with their counterparts in Bangladesh. For instance, Paschim Bakhalir Chhara, a 150-acre Bangladeshi enclave in Cooch Behar was Muslim-dominated. After Partition, the Muslims swapped properties with the Hindus in Indian enclaves in East Pakistan. Today, the 74 households at Paschim Bakhalir Chhara are Hindus.

The chaos could have been avoided. But the governments of India and Pakistan were occupied with post-Partition complications. A solution was further delayed by the 1971 war between India and Pakistan that led to the formation of Bangladesh. Though an accord was reached in 1974 (see box), it took another 37 years for New Delhi to sign an agreement with Dhaka in 2011. Finally, the Modi government has initiated steps to ratify the Land Boundary Agreement that will legalise the enclaves and give citizenship to the likes of Mondals.

But it might take some time before the wounds of the last seven decades heal.

For a newcomer in these parts, it is difficult to discern an enclave from an Indian village. As a local says, “You could be standing with your left leg in India and the right in a Bangladeshi enclave.” But a closer look will show the difference.

India’s economic development in the last two decades, coupled with government schemes such as NREGA that provide employment, has changed in the lives of villagers in Cooch Behar. They have metalled roads, schools, health clinics with doctors, and electricity to watch cable television. But enclaves, on the other hand, seem to be caught in a time warp. Development has skipped them.

Bankim Adhikary lives in Chhat Kuchlibari. In 1973, when Adhikary became the first from the enclave to finish high-school from the neighbouring Indian village of Upan Chowki (though they didn’t have citizenship, children from the enclaves were allowed to sit in schools), he wanted to study further. But with no citizenship; or to be more precise, with no Indian address, he couldn’t get admission in a college.

Nearly quarter of a century later, Debabrata Roy of Balapukhari enclave, is facing a similar predicament. Roy completed his graduation in 1997 and applied to join the Indian Army. “I wanted to be a soldier,” he says. The athletically-built Roy easily cleared the fitness test, but was disqualified after a check by the Army showed that he had no documents to prove his residential address. Now 37 years-old and jobless, Roy has lost hope.

Employment opportunities in the enclaves are few. Many of Roy’s peers work in farms. Some have managed to migrate to other parts of West Bengal and elsewhere in India, to work in farms or the construction sector.

But in a state where life is often defined by political ideology, residents of the enclaves have one thing that counts – votes. It doesn’t matter that the votes are fake. Local politicians often tour the enclaves during elections seeking votes. In return of their votes, the residents get voter identity cards (IDs) by showing fake Indian addresses. Because of political pressure, the administration looks the other way.

“Voter-IDs are our passports. We can use them to open a bank account or move freely,” says a young enclave resident who didn’t want to be named. He owns a fertiliser outlet in a neighbouring Indian village and needs an identity proof to buy stocks from the wholesaler.

Apart from running a business, a voter ID card helps get children admission to school, subscribe to a mobile phone service and healthcare. In Poaturkuthi enclave, parents give fake addresses to get their children admitted to government-run school at the neighbouring Indian village of Patharson.

Despite the change, the enclave residents realise that they remain as vulnerable as before. “We don’t vote for our rights. We go to the polling booth to fulfil our obligations to politicians for allowing us to survive,” says Bulu Sheikh (name changed on request) of Poaturkuthi enclave. Many of these residents allege extortion by police, Indian villagers and even smugglers. Mashaldanga and its adjoining enclaves are a corridor to the India-Bangladesh border and are often caught between the tussle between law enforcers and smugglers. “We would do well to keep our eyes and ears shut,” says Joynal Mondal from the Madhya Mashaldanga enclave.

Saddam Hussain, a post-graduate student from Poaturkuthi lays the principle for peaceful existence in enclaves: “Align with the local politicians without asking a question. And, be at everyone’s mercy”.

Any development that happens is mostly by accident. When local administration wanted to lay a metalled road up to Digaltari on the border, they wanted to route the new road around the enclaves. But when Indian villages resisted land acquisition, the road went through the enclaves, an unintended benefit.

Any ‘defiance’ from the enclave residents invites trouble. In October, residents of Bakhalir Chhara resisted a move by miscreants from a neighbouring Indian village to open a gambling den in the enclave.

In retaliation, the villagers prevented children from the enclave to attend school at Shimultala, another Indian village close by.

Sometimes though, they have managed to have their say. Last year, the local administration wanted to lay electric lines in Indian villages. Though the lines passed through Balapukhari and Chhat Kuchlibari enclaves, the houses there weren’t given power connetions. But when the politicians came to ask for votes for the recent panchayat elections, the residents of these enclaves took a stance.

“We were united. We told them unless the benefit (of electrification) was shared, we will not allow the transmission lines through the enclave,” says a villager who doesn’t want to be quoted. It worked and the local administration used false billing addresses to supply electricity to these areas.

But these victories are few and the residents of the enclaves are now desperate for a legal and real identity. “We are forced to live in a web of illegalities. We want to enjoy full rights of an Indian citizen. We are waiting for this for decades. Each day that they delay in ratifying the Land Boundary Agreement, it costs us opportunities,” says Anukul Roy, who claims to be the richest farmer in Chhat Kuchlibari. Once he get the citizenship, Roy wants to buy a car.

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