From Stateless People to Citizens: The Reformulation of Territory and Identity in India-Bangladesh Border Enclaves
Abstract
This dissertation analyzes nation-building in hitherto ungoverned territories of two Indian chhitmahals in Bangladesh and explores the transformation of their residents from stateless Indian nationals to citizens of Bangladesh. Chhitmahals comprised nearly two hundred enclaves located along the Bangladesh-India border that belonged to one country but were located inside another’s territory. Chhitmahals came into existence with the partition of India in 1947; their non-contiguous locations kept them without state administration and citizenship rights. People developed political councils and adopted illicit practices to survive in the absence of the state, but the impossibility of exercising sovereignty in chhitmahals led Bangladesh and India to swap enclave territories in 2015. Ensuing nation-building projects reformulated the sociopolitical landscape while ordinary individuals embraced citizenship as a tool to realize diverse aspirations. Citizenship fuelled a sense of empowerment to normalize previously illicit everyday practices, contest local hierarchies, confront powerful neighbors, cultivate political connections, and make claims on the state. Access to boundaryless opportunities broke down the façade of common interest that prevailed in the stateless era. Viewed from a legal perspective, citizenship in chhitmahals might conjure images of a nation with paved roads, police stations, and other administrative services and infrastructure. An anthropological lens, however, reveals a reconfigured community that no longer finds normalcy and affluence in the traditional practices of livelihood, ethics, and leadership that were dominant before the merger with the enveloping state. Instead, clientelist party politics set the terms for the realization of aims. The implications of this reconfiguration were mixed and differed according to gender, generation, access to new media, and party affiliation. The emerging significance of these factors enabled citizenship’s cultural and political effects to gradually overshadow its legal meaning. Citizenship is now a malleable concept in chhitmahals that has departed from the originally egalitarian goals of normalization.