Signs of Change

In the recent year between my last visits to these enclaves, there have been changes in their state, resulting in corresponding shifts in our dialogues in the different encounters:

[The following conversation takes place in Dinhata town and in Poaturkuthi Enclave in January 2011]

MM: Do you tune in to the changes now? The talks are on, our leader (Sengupta) is in Bangladesh, meeting officials, talking of exchanges.

ADG: How come you didn’t go? You should have gone too!

MM: I had a visa problem, I would have had to go via Calcutta, which involves two to three days of waiting and by that time the day of appointment would have passed and we would have had to come back. [He looks resigned.]

ADG: But, you said in case of emergency, you could, or anyone could cross over.

Oh, no! I forgot… [I make a gesture of apology]. This is to be an official meeting

153 between the representative of Home Department of Bangladesh and a delegation from the Indian enclaves. So you, I suppose could not possibly sneak in and then surface at the meeting!

[We both laugh, considering the cheekiness of my suggesting an illegal entry for a very serious meeting of international consequence]

MM: That could have happened for an ordinary visit though! However, it is a very serious meeting. What do you think will happen?

ADG: I don’t want to spell it out, but the feeling seems to be positive in the press.

Kolkata is also covering it, these days.

MM: Did you notice the news in day before yesterday’s Uttarbanga Sambad (North Bengal News)? And also yesterday’s Anandabazar!

ADG: No, probably because the North Bengal News doesn’t reach us and the Anandabazar Patrika (the most popular and probably the highest selling Bengali daily, with transnational circulation running into a billion or so) has its separate North Bengal edition, which again, doesn’t reach us. Just like the Calcutta edition that doesn’t reach you… However, two features by noted journalist Debdoot Ghosthakur got published in the editorial feature page of this issue. It’s gaining in importance.

MM: [nods in approval] OK, then, you are saying there is some reason for hope?

ADG: I think so, as far as the news media and the rumours indicate. But one thing is for sure, you can’t be in a rush now, elections are coming, nothing is happening in West Bengal, or even in India, in general, before the end of it all.

MM: That is till June or July then. First, Manmohan (the PM) and then Sonia (leader of the ruling Congress party at the centre) are visiting Bangladesh in August and September.

ADG: Before that there are a couple of secretarial level discussions, in June. If those happen alright and there is no complication in the middle phase then the

154 papers are likely to be signed by the end of October. But then, the parliamentary process has to begin, the bill will be brought to the committee for voting in the house, to be ratified etc.

MM: You mean then also there is some complication?

ADG: I don’t imagine a complication unless the ruling party loses all its support and opposition suddenly becomes very powerful... But in either case, there is an elaborate parliamentary process after signing the MoU, a mandatory process.

MM: And what do you think of our state? Of West Bengal, I mean. Assembly election is also knocking at its door?

ADG: Yes, what about it?

MM: Will there be a change of power? I mean, will the lady (Mamata Banerjee) topple the Left in power? And will it then impact our fate, the transfer of enclaves?

ADG: The chances, so far as the readings in the press and emotion of the people are concerned, are an even 50/50. Let’s see, the election is coming in a month and the result will be out by the end of May. But then that is not likely to change the fate of the enclaves. What determines their fate is largely, the change of guard in the current Union government of India, or similarly, the staying in power of its counterpart (the Hasina government) in Bangladesh.

But, may be this is my subjective reading that Mamata (the prospective future Chief Minister of West Bengal)²²⁷ is not too well disposed towards the enclave exchange issue. In any case, the Union government would not be disposed to take a decision on such a sensitive issue before the election, considering their election alliance is with Mamata. But otherwise, she, or anybody in the state assembly doesn’t have a direct ratifying or veto power to this move.

They can only indirectly try to press for or derail it.²²⁸

227 This apprehension of mine came true. Mamata Banerjee became the CM of West Bengal in May 2011 and opposed the Land Border Agreement, (under which enclaves were to be discussed, tabled and ratified in Parliament), at every stage. In February 2014, she was continuing to do so.

155 [Our walk ends as we arrive at Mansoor’s house, which is at the entry point of this village. He is one of the oldest residents and perhaps also the most enthusiastic about the enclave exchange. We see a gathering in front of his house… not the usual one that greets me whenever I announce my coming.]

ADG: Mansoor Bhai, there seems to be a special gathering today… Is there something official about it? I mean, am I intruding? Should I wait somewhere else for the meeting to finish?

MM: No, no, you can sit with us. We will be through in a few minutes. There is an official from the local council visiting us; we can resume our talk after he is gone.

[I wait, under a tree where Mansoor’s son lays out a separate set of chairs for me and a few visitors; while he, along with a few village elders, converses with the politico from the local council. After the meeting, the politico is introduced to me – he is Chowdhury. He does not reveal his purpose, instead asks for the purpose of my visit. I am introduced as an academic from Visva Bharati University, Santiniketan, which is famous for Tagore. He exchanges courteous notes and leaves in a few minutes. My dialogue with Mansoor Bhai resumes]

ADG: Is he a guy higher up in the council? Do they come to check on you often, or is it a recent phenomenon?

MM: A somewhat middle-rung official… He came about the request we made a few years ago for the improvement of the roads approaching our chhit. [Mansoor, like almost everyone here, uses the vernacular term chhit, for –enclave, in place of Gram – village] And, today he agreed to our demand for some concrete tunnels to mend the road before the monsoon sets in – it makes commuting difficult.

ADG: Such was the demand! And what was the delay for? You said you’d placed the request much earlier… Why the wait?

MM: As they always do, he attached a clause, in the form of a polite request, of course. He asked for our vote.

156 ADG: But, that is simply ridiculous, isn’t it? For you are demanding a merger of the enclaves with India, because the enclaves are cut off, politically, economically, legally isn’t that so? And you are generally stateless, aren’t you?

You have no vote!

MM: Yes, but some of us have procured voter ID cards by furnishing false addresses, and thus have voting rights. He knows that the village elders have a say in moulding opinion on who to vote for, hence… Additionally, of course they have an increasing interest in us. Since, like most of us here in the enclave, people in the immediate ambience also are expecting a sea change soon in the situation, and they are counting on the votes trapped inside the enclaves, which may be altogether no fewer than 200,000 (out of them, approximately 50,000 belong to Bangladeshi enclave dwellers in India).

*****

Another day, in February 2011, I call Mansoor Bhai on the phone, after arriving in Coochbehar. He sounds rushed when I ask for an appointment. He says he will have to go to a religious conference (a gathering arranged to coincide with the holy Haj to Mecca in the month of February. The exact time differs according to the Muslim Hizri calendar. It seems to me that the conference is considered a close substitute for the actual journey, which costs money and requires a legal document of citizenship. I ask Mansoor about the agenda for the meeting. He says – largely religious talks and prayers, nothing much. I ask whether there is any political agenda regarding the enclaves. To this he hesitantly says – may be, only informally, if the topic comes up.

The question that bothers me is – how do the enclaves know about each other if they don’t move out, cannot officially come out? There must be some unofficial channel so widely available that all the enclaves can access them.

ADG: But, are the enclaves connected somehow? Do you have a communication channel distributed over the several kilometres of Coochbehar and the bit of Dinajpur district on the Indian side?

157 MM: Not all of them were connected earlier. But, over the last few years, thanks to the mobile phones in the vicinity, we are connected.

ADG: Are mobiles widely available among the enclave dwellers?

MM: Yes, some have mobiles. [He does not explain how.]

This is my sixth visit to the six or seven enclaves that we have sought access to.

So, most of the people who were once faceless to me – as I was to them – are now known to me by their first names. And, they know me enough to recognise and greet me everytime I visit. Also the lingering cynicism is somewhat receding.

But, the distance between a common conversationalist-well-wisher and a partner in strategies, which differentiates the insider from the outsiders for any enclave, I can see, still exists. The hazy explanations, strategic silences on certain questions seem to me to be pointers in that direction. For, until recently, Mansoor used to ring me up from different mobile phones, never from the same number twice. I suppose so as not to be detected, may be by Indian authorities. But of course we managed to turn that into common knowledge and a joke. I am learning to cope with a person, his age, the collective dream of freedom and the question of strategies, and sometimes necessary secrecy – probably as a safeguard from squealers.

I know by now that not only do many have mobiles, many have multiple SIM cards and they swap them constantly. I see kids do it, and when, during the workshop, we interact with the younger people for days together each time in a semi-urban atmosphere, I realise that the enclaves’ new generations are desperate; they are clever enough to bypass laws and have mobiles equipped with cameras. Some of them have internet and basic IT knowledge as well. I realise they know the new job market.

158 1.5 Enclaves: Barredness of Imagination

and Continuity of the Predicament

There are 111 Indian enclaves in Bangladesh and 51 Bangladeshi enclaves in India with a cumulative population of over 51,000. Over the past 64 years, several proposals, about handing over the enclaves on both sides of the border to the respective countries of their physical situation have been initiated. The issue embroils those who have ideological or political stake in these spaces. On one side, there are voluntary organisations and individuals like Diptiman Sengupta, the coordinator of the Bharat Bangladesh Enclave Exchange Coordination Committee (BBEECC), who are pitching the demand for freeing the enclaves from their trapped situations and trying to negotiate with the political authorities.(ILL.1.19) On the other hand, there are the respective national governments and the state government of West Bengal. A battle line is always drawn whenever the issue comes up. Very recently, it has come up in the form of a bill tabled in the Indian Parliament; the following citations published in the national newspapers bring out the conflicting positions.

Diptiman Sengupta states:

We welcome the tabling of the bill as Parliament will debate about the rights of enclave dwellers for the first time since independence. The move vindicates our long-standing fight for the rights of the people.

And, for the current government of West Bengal, Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee says:

We are not accepting. The state government will not implement it. Not an inch of land of our state should be given away. Together, we will fight a public battle for West Bengal, Assam, Tripura and north-eastern region, including other parts.

[West Bengal will get only about 7,000 acres, while having to secede nearly 17,000 acres to Bangladesh if the Land Boundary Agreement (LBA) is implemented.]

159 Diptiman reponds:

The issue is not about politics, rather concerning the rights of 51,000 stateless people who have historically been denied basic rights and amenities.

Local legislator from the Dinhata subdivision of Coochbehar- Udayan Guha of the Forward Bloc, also welcomes the move:

There is a ray of hope for the stateless people. Their situation is so abysmal that even a pregnant woman living in an enclave is denied medical facilities because she is not an Indian citizen. The chief minister is not aware of these issues as she expresses her opposition.²²⁹

From the said origin of the current Indo-Bangladesh enclaves as spaces demarcated as tax regimes in C. 1713, to their genesis and survival under several rulers, beginning from the Coochbehar Kings, to the Mughals and then the British, through presently to the republics of India or Bangladesh (as the case might be), it is a long story of stasis. It is said that the enclaves themselves are not the source of the border tensions, but are rather, decoy focus for other kinds of cross-border disputes.²³⁰

India’s inability to implement a 1958 treaty with (East) Pakistan and a delay in ratifying a 1974 treaty is highlighted as the major factor impeding resolution of the enclave dispute.

The interactions between the different political quarters regarding the enclave exchange are somewhat well known by now, in 2014, when the bill is finally tabled at the lower house of the Indian Parliament:

229 http://freepressjournal.in/bangladesh-boundary-bill-gives-hope-to-enclave-dwellers/#sthash.atS15pHF.dpuf.

Similar news came out in The Hindu,

http://www.dnaindia.com/india/report-bangladesh-boundary-agr...

230 Whyte, “Waiting for the Esquimo,” 31.

160 On 23^rd March 1993, the Minister of State for External Affairs – R.L. Bhatia was asked in the Rajya Sabha about the action taken with regard to the enclave issue. His reply was glib – “Necessary action has been taken.” ²³¹

On 19^th March 1994, Member Parliament Amar Ray Pradhan– a leader of the AIFB – part of the ruling Left coalition government of Bengal at the time – enquired about the dateline for ratification of the Indira-Mujib (1974) treaty. The External Affairs Minister answered that it was impossible to indicate a definite time frame since it involved legal, constitutional and administrative procedures.

On 16^th April 1999, Amar Roy Pradhan raised the question once again, calling the then Home Minister – Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP – a nationalist pro-Hindu majority party) leader L.K Advani – a hypocrite. He went so far as to say that the minister who was ‘shedding crocodile tears’ over the question of the predicament of the enclaves while in opposition, was now silent while in power.²³²

On 27^th July, 1999, Jyoti Basu, the then Chief Minister of West Bengal’s ruling Left, talked favourably of an expeditious transfer of enclaves, which the caretaker government did not heed, since elections were to take place in September.

Quite a few barriers also vex the enclave issue. The deterrence to mapping and other necessary activities is the apprehension or assumption of consequential loss of land, change of identity etc. In August 1999, people in the south of Jalpaiguri resisted the measurement for fencing. There are four mouzas of land, which are said to be in the illegal possession of India and if fencing is done, they will go into Bangladesh, which the residents do not want. Many political parties with contrary ideological stance, like the Forward Bloc and the BJP, supported the villagers’ demands; while the Left supported them openly, BJP maintained a distance.

There were amendments made in the constitution of Bangladesh, post the Indira-Mujib Pact of 1974. Article 2 of the constitution discussing the territorial aspects, originally had stated:

231 Amar Ray Pradhan asked the question at the Upper House of Indian Parliament, to which R.L Bhatia the minister of External affairs of India replied on 26^th March 1993. Whyte, “Waiting For the Esquimo,” 149.

232 Ibid.,152.

161 The territory of the republic shall comprise –

a) The territories which immediately before the proclamation of independence on the 20^th day of March 1971 constituted East Pakistan, and

b) Such other territories as may become included in Bangladesh.

The amended version states:

a) The territories which immediately before the proclamation of independence… East Pakistan and the territories referred to as included territories in the constitution (3^rd amendment) Act, 1974, but excluding the territories referred to as excluded territories in that act, and… ²³³ [Emphasis mine]

b) [Clause ‘b’ remains the same as above]

It is thus evident that Bangladesh is willing to take appropriate steps towards the merger of enclaves. What is notable is that there has been no corresponding change in the Indian constitution. On the contrary, strange objections and unwarranted clauses rising from different political sources have, time and again, interrupted the process. In the least, there have been instances that have shown a lack of political will. India shares 700 km of boundary with Bangladesh, out of which 124 km are in West Bengal. Narasimha Rao, who was Foreign Minister during the 1984–89 Congress rule in the centre, suggested in a note to Rajya Sabha, there should be a demarcation before ratification of the enclave exchange bill. This was in direct contradiction to the 1958 Nehru-Noon agreement, which states that the demarcation could follow the exchange. The reason for this new clause is never explained.

When the Bangladesh border force, Bangla Desh Rifles (BDR, now called Border Guards Bangladesh BGB) and the Indian counterpart BSF met to discuss the possibility of a census in 2010, the former suggested that there was no need for a census as there was going to be a referendum. In fact, the census for the Bangladesh enclaves in India was done by the Indian government only in recent

233 Whyte, “Waiting For Esquimo”, 130.

162 times, in 2011, prior to which it was attempted privately, by BBEECC and Sengupta.²³⁴(ILL.1.15 – 1.16)