India, Bangladesh settle dispute by exchanging border enclaves
NEW DELHI — Tens of thousands of stateless people who were stranded for decades along the poorly defined border between India and Bangladesh can finally choose their citizenship, as the two countries swapped more than 150 pockets of land at the stroke of midnight Friday to settle the demarcation line dividing them.
Television images showed people bursting firecrackers and raising an Indian flag in the Masaldanga enclave, which became part of India.
On the other side of the new border, thousands of people who have been living in the enclaves in Bangladesh cheered, danced and chanted “Bangladesh, Bangladesh.”
They lit 68 candles and released 68 balloons, then marched through the village of Dashiarchhara, highlighting that it took 68 years to settle the border dispute. The village in Kurigram district is 150 miles north of Dhaka, Bangladesh’s capital.
India’s External Affairs Ministry described July 31 as a historic day for both India and Bangladesh as “it marks the resolution of a complex issue that has lingered since independence” from British colonialists in 1947.
The British divided their holdings in the Indian subcontinent between predominantly Hindu and Muslim regions. After independence, the regions became known as India and Pakistan. Bangladesh was originally a part of Pakistan.
“We are very happy, our children will no more need to hide their identity to go to schools,” said Bashir Mia, 46. Many people posed as Bangladeshis to get their children admitted to schools in Bangladesh.
“We are free now, we are Bangladeshis,” he said.
Nearly 37,000 people lived in 111 Indian enclaves inside Bangladesh, while 14,000 lived in 51 Bangladeshi enclaves in India. They now get citizenship of their choice as a result of the agreement between the two countries.
Relations between India and its smaller neighbor have significantly improved since Bangladeshi Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina promised that her administration would not allow India’s separatist insurgents to use the porous 2,500-mile border to carry out raids in India.
Aided by India, Bangladesh gained independence from Pakistan following a bloody nine-month war in 1971. The boundary dispute has been lingering since British colonialists carved Pakistan out of India in 1947, and granted independence to the two countries.
None from Bangladeshi enclaves within India opted for Bangladesh, while 979 people from Indian enclaves living inside Bangladesh applied for Indian citizenship, said Akhteruzzman Azad, the chief government administrator for Bangladesh’s Kurigram district.
The shifting of the people to the Indian side will be completed by November this year.
Several television news channels in both countries broadcast the celebrations live.
“This will end nearly seven decades of deprivation the people living in the enclaves have had to suffer being virtually owned by no one,” said the Bangladeshi English language Daily Star newspaper.
The two countries are implementing the Land Boundary Agreement in line with a deal signed in 1974, and approved by India’s Parliament recently.
For curious cartographers and others obsessed with geopolitical oddities, however, it’s an end of an era.
The exchange between India and Bangladesh means that the world will not only lose one of its most unique borders, but it will also lose the only third-order enclave in the world — an enclave surrounded by another state.
It’s confusing. Dahala Khagrabari, the third-order enclave in question, was a part of India, surrounded by a Bangladeshi enclave, which was surrounded by an Indian enclave, which was surrounded by Bangladesh.
The strange set-up along the India-Bangladesh border made it not only difficult for people to access state amenities, it made things as simple as a trip to the market a potential problem. In theory, someone who lived in an enclave would need a visa to enter the foreign country that surrounded the enclave.
However, the only way to get that visa was to travel to a major city in the main body of their country, something that was impossible without illegally entering the foreign country.
Attempts to rectify the situation along the India-Bangladesh boundary have stalled for decades: An agreement for a land swap was reached in 1974, but India did not ratify it. In 2011, however, a new agreement was reached, which, after some stalling, was finally ratified in June.
The enclaves will become territory of the states that surround them and the citizens who live within them will get to decide whether they want to stay put and accept new citizenship, or whether they want to keep their original citizenship and be relocated.