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Histories of Belonging(s): Narrating Territory, Possession, and Dispossession at the India-Bangladesh Border*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 November 2011

JASON CONS
JASON CONS*
Affiliation:
Department of Development Sociology, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY 14853, USA Email: jc162@cornell.edu
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Abstract

This paper offers a history of belonging in Dahagram, a sovereign Bangladeshi enclave situated within India but close to the India-Bangladesh border. I recount Dahagram's post-Partition history, focusing particularly on the long and localized struggles between 1974 and 1992 to open the Tin Bigha Corridor, a land bridge through Indian territory that links Dahagram to the Bangladeshi mainland. Drawing on the memories and experiences of residents, I examine Dahagram's past(s) as narratives of postcolonial belonging: to fragmented conceptions of state and nation, to surrounding areas, and to the enclave itself. I focus on the overlapping tensions between national and local struggles to ‘claim’ Dahagram as Bangladeshi or Indian territory, and uneven processes of political inclusion within and around the enclaves and within the Bangladeshi State. I use ‘belonging’ as a double-entendre, as these tensions are all intimately linked to possession of land/territory, goods, and access to markets. The notion of belonging(s) helps to illuminate Dahagram's historical and contemporary cultural politics and political-economy, as well as its articulations with broader events in postcolonial South Asia. Yet, belonging is also an analytic for understanding how history is remembered and articulated as a claim to territory, rights, and membership in unstable places.

Type
Research Article
Information
Modern Asian Studies , Volume 46 , Issue 3 , May 2012 , pp. 527 - 558
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2011

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References

1 The official name of the enclave is ‘Angorpota-Dahagram, denoting two separate but conjoined enclaves. By shortening the name to Dahagram, I am following conventions adhered to by residents.

2 This paper deals primarily with the history of Dahagram. The literature on the chhitmahals is limited, but for more on enclaves beyond Dahagram see VanSchendel, W. Schendel, W. (2002). Stateless in South Asia: The Making of the India-Bangladesh Enclaves, The Journal of Asian Studies, 61: 1, 115–147Google Scholar; Whyte, B. (2002). Waiting for the Esquimo: An Historical and Documentary Study of the Cooch Behar Enclaves of India and Bangladesh, University of Melbourne School of Anthropology, Geography, and Environmental Studies, Melbourne; Butalia, U. (2003). ‘The Nowhere People’ in J. Bagchi and S. Dasgupta. The Trauma and the Triumph: Gender and Partition in East India, Stree, Kolkata; Jones, R. (2009). Sovereignty & Statelessness in the Border Enclaves of India and Bangladesh, Political Geography, 28: 373–381CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Jones, R. (2010). ‘The Border Enclaves of India and Bangladesh: The Forgotten Lands’ in Diener, A. and Hagen, J. (eds). Borderlines and Borderlands: Political Oddities at the Edge of the Nation-State, Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, New YorkGoogle Scholar; and Sen, A. 2002. The Insiders Outside, Humanscape, November.

3 See, for example, Ahmed, I. (2006). Bangladesh-India Relations: The Context of SAARC and the Emerging Global Scenario, Asian Affairs, 28: 2, 46–62Google Scholar and Ahmed, I. (2007). The Indo-Bangla SAARC Puzzle, Himal South Asian, 14 July, who identifies the enclaves as one of the seven persistent barriers to amicable relations between India and Bangladesh.

4 See Chatterji, J. (1999). The Fashioning of a Frontier: The Radcliffe Line and Bengal's Border Landscape, 1947–1952, Modern Asian Studies, 33: 1, 185–242CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

5 See Van Schendel, Stateless in South Asia, especially pp. 117–128.

6 By ‘sensitive’, I mean a political process that both regulates knowledge about sensitive spaces and structures actions, behaviours, and possibilities within them. The ‘sensitivity’ of the enclaves has tangible effects not just for residents of these fraught areas, but also for government officials, security forces, and researchers seeking to understand them. See Cons, J. (2011) The Fragments and their Nation(s): Sensitive Space Along the India-Bangladesh Border, Doctoral Dissertation, Cornell University, Ithaca, New YorkGoogle Scholar.

7 I use the convention of italicizing quotations and discussions from my fieldnotes. Quotations from recorded interviews are not italicized.

8 I have changed the names of my informants to protect their identity.

9 The Emergency was declared after months of political chaos leading up to the general elections. On the Emergency Administration's goals see M. Ahmed. (4 April 2007).The Challenging Interface of Democracy and Security, The Daily Star. On the suspension of democratic liberties during the Emergency, see See Odhikar Report. (12 March 2008), Due Process of Law Must be Followed, Odhikar: www.odhikar.org/documents/14monthsofstateofemergency.pdf [Accessed 20 October 2011] and Freedom House. (29 April 2008). Freedom of the Press 2008—Bangladesh, UNHCR Refword: http://www.unhcr.org/refworld/docid/4871f5ee2.html [Accessed 20 October 2011].

10 Upazilas are Bangladesh's second smallest administrative unit in Bangladesh above the Union Parishads [councils] and below Districts. In this case, Patgram Upazila is a sub-district in Lalmonirhat District. The UNO is the Upazila's chief executive officer.

11 On 8 September 2011, the Governments of Bangladesh and India signed a protocol to keep the Corridor open 24 hours a day. On 19 October 2011, as this paper was going to press, this protocol was put in place to a great fanfare within the enclave. See The Daily Star 8 (September 2011): ‘Dahagram Celebrates While Other Enclaves Unhappy’; Habib, H. (2 November 2011), ‘Freedom from Virtual Captivity’, The Hindu.

12 Aggarwal, R. and Bhan, M.. (2009). ‘Disarming Violence’: Development, Democracy, and Security on the Borders of India, Journal of Asian Studies, 68: 2, 519–542CrossRefGoogle Scholar. especially p. 521. I draw from concerns within this exhaustive literature on ways to understand the relational production of state, society, security, and identity in borderlands. See Baud, M. and Schendel, W. Van. (1997). Toward a Comparative History of Borderlands, Journal of World History, 8: 2, 211–242CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and the collections of essays in Wilson, T. and Donnan, H. (eds). (1998). Border identities: Nation and State at International Frontiers, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, especially pp. 1–30CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Donnan, H. and Wilson, T. (ed). (1999). Borders: Frontiers of Identity, Nation, and State, Berg, OxfordGoogle Scholar; KumarRajaram, P. Rajaram, P. and Grundy-Warr, C. (eds). (2007). Borderscapes: Hidden Geographies and Politics at Territory's Edge, University of Mennesota Press, MinneapolisGoogle Scholar; Diener, A. and Hagen, J. (eds). (2010), especially pp. ix–xxxix. Borderlines and Borderlands: Political Oddities at the Edge of the Nation-State, Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, New YorkGoogle Scholar; and Zartman, I. W. (ed). (2010), especially pp. 1–33. Understanding Life in the Borderland: Boundaries in Depth and in Motion, University of Georgia Press, Athens, especially pp. 1–20Google Scholar.

13 And not one that need necessarily always be cast in the negative. See Walker, A. (1999). Legend of the Golden Boat: Regulation, Trade and Traders in the Borderlands of Laos, Thailand, China and Burma, University of Hawai'i Press, Honolulu, pp. 5–17Google Scholar.

14 See Arendt, H. (1968). The Origins of Totalitarianism, Harcourt Brace, New York, pp. 240–303Google Scholar.

15 See, for example, essays in Hansen, T. B. and Stepputat, F. (eds). (2005). Sovereign Bodies: Citizens, Migrants, and States in the Postcolonial World, Duke University Press, DurhamGoogle Scholar.

16 See Agamben, G. (1998). Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life, Stanford University Press, Palo AltoGoogle Scholar.

17 See Basaran, T. (2008). Security, Law, Borders: Spaces of Exclusion, International Political Sociology : 2, 339–354CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Jones, R. (2009). Agents of Exception: Border Security and the Marginalization of Muslims in India, Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 27: 5, 879–897CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

18 Butler, J. and Spivak, G. C.. (2007). Who Sings the Nation-State?, Seagull Books, Kolkata. pp. 42–43Google Scholar.

19 Moore, D. (2005). Suffering for Territory: Race, Place, and Power in Zimbabwe, Duke University Press, Durham, p. 2CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

20 Whyte, Waiting for the Esquimo, especially pp. 30–34.

21 Cons, Fragments and Their Nation(s), especially pp. 85–96; Whyte, Waiting for the Esquimo, especially pp. 50–66.

22 Numerous other enclaves, particularly those falling between the districts of Jalpaiguri and Cooch Behar—both districts within West Bengal, India—posed few administrative problems and were eventually simply absorbed into their bounding district.

23 Princely States were nominally given a choice as to which state—India or Pakistan—they wished to join at Independence. In practice, this choice often boiled down to territorial contiguity. On the accession of Cooch Behar, see Ghosh, A. G. (1993). ‘Problem of the Integration of Coochbehar State with Indian Union’ in Ray, N. R.. Dimensions of National Integration: The Experiences and Lessons of Indian History, Punthi Pustak, Calcutta, pp. 407–419Google Scholar.

24 Van Scehndel, W. (2005). The Bengal Borderland: Beyond State and Nation in South Asia, Anthem Press, London, pp. 44–48Google Scholar.

25 Van Scehndel, W. The Bengal Borderland, pp. 55–56.

26 In other words, in the period following Partition, in which Bengal was split into West Bengal (in India) and East Pakistan and before the Liberation War in 1971 in which East Pakistan gained independence from West Pakistan and became Bangladesh.

27 Cooch Behar, like other indirectly ruled Princely States during the colonial period, had a nominal choice as to which state (India or Pakistan) it would join following Partition. After a brief period of political struggle and indecision, Cooch Behar opted for India. For more on this process in Cooch Behar, see Ghosh. The Problem of the Integration of Cooch Behar State.

28 Indeed, the passport agreement made specific provisions for Enclave residents, though in practice this freedom was short-lived. See Whyte, Waiting for the Esquimo, Appendix 1–22.

29 See Chatterji, The Fashioning of a Frontier, pp. 232–233; Murayama, M. (2006). Borders, Migration and Sub-Regional Cooperation in Eastern South Asia, Economic and Political Weekly: 8 April 1351—1359; and Rahman, M. and Van Schendel, W.. (2003). ‘I Am Not a Refugee’: Rethinking Partition Migration, Modern Asian Studies, 37: 3, 551–584CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

30 See numerous accounts in the Home Political Confidential Records from 1948–1960 in Bangladesh National Archives: Home Political Office Confidential Records (CR) List 119 bundles 1–52.

31 Van Schendel, The Bengal Borderland, pp. 87–117. These paramilitary groups were the predecessors of and were eventually superseded by the East Pakistan (later Bangladesh) Rifles in East Pakistan and the Indian Border Security Forces (BSF).

32 Van Schendel, Stateless in South Asia, p. 127.

33 Though I have not been able to verify the exact date that this camp was put in place, residents agree that it was before 1965 and after 1958. This suggests that the camp was initially established by the West Bengal Rifles, before they became incorporated into the new, national border security force, the BSF, in 1965.

34 No residents of Dahagram that I spoke with made any distinction between the BSF and the various paramilitary groups that preceeded their formation.

35 Interview, Dahagram, 8 February 2007.

36 As Whyte notes, residents of the enclave could frequently get a better price for agricultural products in East Pakistan as prices in India were fixed. As such, there was a double incentive to make the crossing to Patgram Thana.

37 For a detailed exploration of the 1965 war, see Gupta, H. (1967). India-Pakistan War 1965, Vols. 1 and 2, Hariyana Prakashan, DelhiGoogle Scholar.

38 Risky because residents could be arrested at any point while at market as opposed to only during the border crossing.

39 See The Pakistan Observer. (20 March 1965). ‘India Deploys Dogras, Jats, Rajputs Along Ranpur [sic] Border’.

40 There is a marked link between the Rann of Kuchchh and the enclaves. Both were areas of political and geographical ambiguity that emerged out of the post-Partition reshuffling of the Princely States. Both are areas of continuing ambiguity and intrigue. The ambiguous space of both the enclaves and the Rann have led to frequent violence both between border security forces and the communities living on either side of the border. Indeed, on 20th March, six days after the outbreak of the Dahagram War, fighting broke out in the Rann between India and Pakistan. The two regions are further similar in that they have both been the focus of intense negotiations over the meaning of space, identity, and nation and are critical sites in the construction of contested borders. For more on the Kachchhi frontier, see Ibrahim, F. (2009). Settlers, Saints, and Sovereigns: An Ethnography of State Formation in Western India, Routledge, LondonGoogle Scholar.

42 See The Pakistan Observer. (18 March 1965). ‘Pakistan Warns India Vacate Aggression in Dahagram’.

42 For a classic study of communal social conflict in Bangladesh around livestock, see Roy, B. (1996). Some Trouble with Cows: Making Sense of Social Conflict, University Press Limited, DhakaGoogle Scholar.

43 It is worth noting that there is some controversy over what exactly happened during the Dahagram War. Indian papers reported that Muslim residents burned Hindu residents’ homes, forcing them to flee the enclave. These reports claimed that the BSF entered the enclave in defence of or retaliation for this attack. See Whyte, Waiting for the Esquimo, pp. 113–115.

44 A breed of lentils grown widely in North Bengal.

45 Interview, Dahagram, 22 March 2007.

46 Though none of the newspaper coverage of the War that I was able to locate reported any casualties.

47 See The Pakistani Observer. (28 March 1965). ‘India Sternly Told: No Talks Without Restoration of Status Quo;’ and The Pakistan Observer. (18 March 1965). ‘Pakistan Warns India Vacate Aggression in Dahagram’.

48 See The Pakistan Observer. (20 March 1965), ‘India Deploys Dogras, Jats, Rajputs Along Rangpur Border;’ The Pakistani Observer. (19 March 1965). ‘Intruders at Kalirhat Driven Out;’ The Pakistani Observer. (18 March 1965). ‘Indian Forces Fire on Sylhet Border;’ The Pakistani Observer. (25 March 1965). ‘India Deploys More Troops Along East Pakistan Border;’ The Pakistani Observer. (28 March 1965). ‘Indian Troops Deployed Along Kushtia Border;’ and The Pakistani Observer. (29 March 1965). ‘In Patgram-Baura Sector: Indiscriminant Firing By Indian Troops’.

49 See The Pakistani Observer. (25 March 1965). ‘Fresh Influx of Refugees: Evictions from Cooch Behar’.

50 See The Pakistani Observer. (1 April 1965). ‘Cease Fire at Dahagram’.

51 Interview, Dahagram, 4 April 2007.

52 Interview, Dahagram, 13 April 2007.

53 See Ganokantha. (18 May 1974). ‘Ae Porajoyer Glani Dhakben Keamon Korey [How Will you Cover Up the Same of Such Defeate?]’; Ittefaq. (18 May 1974). ‘Jukto Ghoshonay Vashanir Protikriya [Vashani's Reaction to Joint Decision]’.

54 Ganokantha. (19 May 1974). ‘Shimanto Chukti o Jukto Ghoshona Proshongay JSD-er Oveemot: Desh ke Noya Uponibeshe Porinoto Korar Padokkhep [JSD on Border Treaty and Joint Declaration: Attempts to Turn the Country into a New Colony]’.

55 Ittefaq. (21 May 1974). ‘Berubari Shongkranto Reet Aebondon Nakoch: Apeeler Onumoti Daan [Writ Petition on Berubari Dismissed: Appeal Approved]’; Shangbad. (21 May 1974). ‘Berubari Shomporke Injunction Aabedon Supreme Court-ey Utthapito [Berubari Injunction Appeal Placed Before Supreme Court]’; Ganokantha. (30 May 1974). ‘Berubari Mamlar Churanto Shunanir Din 14-ey June [The Final Hearing Date of the Berubari Case is on the 14th of June]’.

56 Quoted in Jacques, K. (2000). Bangladesh, India and Pakistan: International Relations and Regional Tensions in South Asia, St. Martin's Press, New York. p. 45Google Scholar. Of particular concern to the representative was that the leasing of the Corridor to Bangladesh stood to potentially create an enclave of the village of Kuchlibari with Mekhliganj Thana.

57 See the ‘Constitution (Third Amendment) Act, 1974, 27 November 1974’, reprinted in Whyte, Waiting for the Esquimo, Appendix 1–42.

58 For a full description of the legal battle in India over the Corridor, see Whyte, Waiting for the Esquimo, pp. 133–148.

59 Interview, Patgram, 9 February 2007.

60 On the violent and gendered politics of nation-making and territory, see Saikia, Y. (2011). Women, War, and the Making of Bangladesh: Remembering 1971. Duke University PressCrossRefGoogle Scholar, Durham Mookherjee, N. (2006). ‘Remembering to Forget’: Public Secrecy and Memory of Sexual Violence in the Bangladesh War of 1971, Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 12: 2, 433–450CrossRefGoogle Scholar; various other essays in Chatterjee, P. and Jeganathan, P. (eds). (2000). Subaltern Studies XI: Community, Gender, and Violence. Permanent Black, DelhiGoogle Scholar; Menon, R. and Bhasin, K.. (1998). Borders & Boundaries: Women in India's Partition, Kali, New DelhiGoogle Scholar; and Butalia, U. (1998). The Other Side of Silence: Voices from the Partition of India, Penguin, New DelhiGoogle Scholar.

61 In 1977, after a period as ‘chief martial law administrator’, Ziaur Rahman became president. On 22 April, he pushed through a marshal law ordinance to amend the official principles of the Bangladesh state by removing ‘socialism’ and ‘secularism’ from the constitution and substituting them for ‘economic and social justice’ and ‘trust and faith in Almighty Allah’ See Anisuzzaman, A. (2001). ‘The Identity Question and Politics’ in Jahan, R.. Bangladesh: Promise and Performance, University Press Ltd., Dhaka, pp. 45–46Google Scholar.

62 Interview, Patgram, 9 February 2007. This assertion was echoed in a Bangladesh Observer report that claimed that people in Dahagram had died due to blockades which prevented medical assistance and food from moving into the Corridor. As the report claimed, ‘Equipped with guns, arrows, lathis [clubs] and hand bombs, the Indian nationals are patrolling around these enclaves preventing helpless Bangladeshi nationals of Dahagram and Angarpota to come out and enter Bangladesh main soil to purchase essential commodities’. Quoted in Bhasin, A. S. (ed). 1996. India-Bangladesh Relations 1971–1994: Documents, Volume Two. Delhi: Siba Exim Pvt. Ltd. p. 808Google Scholar.

63 See Foucault, M. (1991). ‘Governmentality’ in Burchell, G., Gordon, C., and Miller, P.. The Foucault Effect: Studies in Governmentality, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, pp. 87–104Google Scholar.

64 See Scott, J. (1998). Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed, Yale University Press, New Haven, especially pp. 11–52Google Scholar.

65 See Markowitz, F. (2007). Census and Sensibilities in Sarajevo, Comparative Studies in Society and History, 49: 1, 40–73CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

66 Quoted in Whyte, Waiting for the Esquimo, p. 134.

67 See Cohn, B. (1987). ‘The Census, Social Structure, and Objectification in South Asia’ An Anthropologist Among the Historians and Other Essays, Oxford University Press, Delhi, pp. 224–254Google Scholar.

68 Interview, Patgram, 9 February 2007.

69 Interview, Dahagram, 26 March 2007.

70 Chatterjee, P. (2004). The Politics of the Governed: Reflections on Popular Politics in Most of the World, Permanent Black, Delhi. p. 57, emphasis in originalGoogle Scholar.

71 The Kuchlibari Shangram Shamiti was not simply opposed to the opening of the Corridor on ideological or communal grounds. The Corridor, if leased to Bangladesh, would have effectively enclaved Kuchlibari, a district of Mekhliganj. Kuchlibari is bordered in the East by Bangladesh and on the West by the Tista river. Residents feared that if the narrow strip of land connecting them to the rest of Mekhliganj was closed, they would be in the same territorially dislocated situation as Dahagram. Though the terms of the Tin Bigha Lease proposed in 1982 (see below) and the eventual agreement to open the Corridor made it clear that sovereign control over the Corridor would remain with India, the Kuchlibari Shangram Shamiti and Tin Bigha Shangram Shamiti, with the support of the BJP and the break-off Forward Bloc in West Bengal, aggressively opposed the opening of the Corridor until its actual opening.

72 JAGPA regularly participated in and organized protests in relation to a range of border controversies throughout the 1980s. See documentation in Bhasin, India-Bangladesh Relations.

73 Such numbers seem likely to have been exaggerated.

74 Interview, Patgram, 25 January 2007, p. 212.

75 See Van Schendel, The Bengal Borderland. On BJP rhetoric over ‘infiltration’ from Bangladesh, see Gillan, M. (2002). Refugees of Infiltrators? The Bharatiya Janata Party and “Illegal” Migration from Bangladesh, Asian Studies Review, 26: 1, 73–95CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Ramachandran, S. (1999). Of Boundaries and Border Crossings: Undocumented Bangladeshi ‘Infiltrators’ and the Hegemony of Hindu Nationalism in India, Interventions, 1: 2, 235–253CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For details of the debate over fencing beginning in 1983 between India and Bangladesh, see Bhasin, India-Bangladesh Relations, especially pp. 823–835.

76 For details of this lease, see Whyte, Waiting for the Esquimo, Appendix 1–42.

77 Ittefaq. (28 September 1991). ‘Tin Bigha Corridor Hostantore Forward Blocker Tibro Apotti [Strong Objection by Forward Block in Handing over the Tin Bigha Corridor]’.

78 For a discussion of the ways in which the BJP deployed rhetoric over the sundering of national territory throughout the 1980s and early 1990s, see Krishna, S. (1996). ‘Cartographic Anxiety: Mapping the Body Politic in India’ in Alker, H. and Shapiro, M.. Challenging Boundaries: Global Flows, Territorial Identities, University of Minnesota Press, MinneapolisGoogle Scholar.

79 Pamphlet reprinted in Whyte, Waiting for the Esquimo, Appendix 1–45. The political reference here is to the Narasima Roa-led Congress Party Government and the Jyoti Basu-led CPI(M) government in West Bengal.

80 Interview, Dahagram, 10 February 2007.

81 Interview, Patgram, 25 January 2007.

82 Though this did represent a return to democratic rule, it did not necessarily mean a move back towards a secular pan-Bengali political stance. For more on the opening of the Corridor, see Cons, The Fragments and their Nation(s), pp. 129–132. For more on Bangladesh's emergence from Ershad's rule, see Van Schendel, W. (2009). A History of Bangladesh, Cambridge University Press, New York, p. 199CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

83 A report collected in Bhasin, India-Bangladesh Relations (pp. 937–938), claims that more than 3,000 anti Corridor activists were arrested in Cooch Behar and adjoining districts and that at least one death resulted from skirmishes between Indian activists marching to stop the opening of the Corridor and members of the local police and the BSF.

84 For more on the current state of Dahagram and the Tin Bigha Corridor, see Cons, J. (2007). The Tin Bigha Corridor 15 Years On: Official and Unofficial Views, Forum: A Monthly Publication of the Daily Star, October.

85 Interview, Patgram, 25 January 2007.

86 C.f. Van Schendel, Stateless in South Asia; Sen, The Insiders Outside; and Jones, Sovereignty and Statelessness in the Border Enclaves.

87 Moore, Suffering for Territory, especially 1–5.