The Narendra Modi dispensation in India has quite surprisingly decided to settle the tricky issue of enclaves — the slivers of land situated on both sides of Indo-Bangladesh border — once and for all. Incidentally, Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has consistently opposed any deal with Bangladesh by way of which these isolated territories of one country located inside the sovereign boundary of another can be exchanged.
There are 111 exchangeable Indian enclaves (out of a total of 130) measuring 17,178.2 acres in Bangladesh and 51 Bangladeshi enclaves covering 7,110.2 acres in India. An estimated 50,000 internally displaced people (IDP) live in the Bangladeshi enclaves and 150,000 in Indian enclaves, a sizable number of whom (as this author learned reliably) however had crossed over to India after the signing of 2011 Indo-Bangla Land Boundary Protocol. These enclaves, which survived as autonomous areas during British colonization, are a fascinating quirk of South Asian political geography.
Since 1947 it has been a prolonged struggle with apathy for the residents of these scattered lands that world maps never show. The BJP, meanwhile, has given a communal twist to this purely humanitarian issue, albeit tangentially. The party has let it known in no uncertain terms that the very decision to give the virtually identity-less enclave dwellers a right to choose their nationality is unacceptable. Rahul Sinha, BJP’s provincial chief in Bengal, the state most affected by this crisis, had declared publicly not so long ago that his party will politicize this trans-border land exchange issue and exploit it nationally. According to Sinha, BJP is worried over the flexible citizenship clause incorporated in the land boundary agreement. “By losing 10,000 acres of land, we will gain over 100,000 in our population. The population density in present Bangladeshi enclaves is very high and it is unacceptable,” asserted Sinha. One wonders whether the BJP — as enunciated by Modi in pre-election speeches — wants to accommodate only Hindus settled in Indian enclaves.
Despite BJP’s frequent flip-flop there is no doubt whatsoever that Modi’s change of heart will at least help rectify a horrendous sin committed during the partition of the Indian subcontinent. Indeed, life inside a no-man’s land is far from what we describe as dignified. In fact, for far too long, hundreds and thousands of people cut off from their birthplace (because of imperial politics) have been deprived of political, economic and socio-cultural rights that any normal citizen of a civilized nation deserves to enjoy. Today’s enclave dwellers do have a nationality, but that too in the loosest sense as they find themselves locked in a prison-like situation. These hapless people of nowhere cannot even travel to the country of their origin without a special identity card. They do not possess passports — the principal citizenship document recognized globally — because no authorities are ready to provide these people, left in a stateless state of abandonment, with valid documents of birth and address proof. While it may be easy for practitioners of vote bank politics to perceive these human beings as potent tools in the pursuit of power, it has to be acknowledged that the powers that be have deliberately ignored the real human consequences of confining a large number of people in pockets of abject poverty with little or nothing in the way of public services. These victims of crazy partition-day-map-drawing have no access to infrastructure or essential services. They are forced to live in subhuman conditions in places where there are no paved roads, electricity, drinking water supply, health care facilities and even educational institutions. Worse still, in times of emergency they are even deprived of aids.
“We have lived here for decades but nobody bothered about us. We are human beings and yet they do not keep that in mind,” laments an elderly dweller of an enclave who is no better than a destitute living on a roadside pavement. That these enclave residents are not allowed to enter their country of origin without a proper visa bear testimony to the brutality inflicted on them for years together. They cannot reveal their true identity and are compelled to indulge in deceit whenever they sneak out of their dwelling places to seek work, mostly as contract laborers. These are the very people who according to the media’s projection are illegal infiltrators.
Modi too is guilty of exploiting these very people’s despair as he consciously used this subject as a handle to hammer the Congress party during pre-general election campaigning. In meeting after meeting Modi deliberately identified the then Premier Manmohan Singh’s land swap attempt with that of the Congress’s historical softness toward illegal Bangladeshi immigrants.
Now that the same Modi is pursuing the exchange formula vigorously, hopefully, the Muslim dwellers of Bangladeshi enclaves in India will not be forced to pack their bags. Once the land exchange bill is ratified in Indian parliament, residents of 130 Indian enclaves in Bangladesh will become Bangladeshi citizens while those in the Bangladeshi enclaves will be lawfully treated as Indians. The real game begins here. Ideally, India would like to maintain the status quo — vis-à-vis population — to continue. But India’s comparative prosperity will tempt the dwellers of both Bangladeshi and Indian enclaves to opt for Indian citizenship. A sociopolitical churning is therefore inevitable, particularly because of the BJP’s antipathy toward Bangladeshi Muslim immigrants.
Will the Hindutva brigade ever understand that compassion and accommodation is the need of the hour to set a group of people (irrespective of faith) free from a slavery-like situation?
