Stateless in South Asia: The Making of the India-Bangladesh Enclaves

Schendel, Willem van; Berg, Eiki; Houtum, H.J. van

doi:10.4324/9781315193786-13

Cited by 20 publications

(37 citation statements)

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“…Bangladesh and India's border enclaves originated in a 1713 treaty between the Mughal Emperor and the Maharaja of Cooch Behar, allowing them to retain and collect taxes from lands they controlled inside each other's territory (Whyte, ; van Schendel, ). When the British divided the subcontinent into India and Pakistan in 1947, the enclaves in Indian territory came under the formal control of Pakistan and vice versa.…”

Section: Enclaves In South Asia and Beyondmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Thus, they remained a constant source of anxiety in the postcolonial imagination of nation and territory (Cons, , p. 7). Enclaves were used in national discourses as a source of such anxiety by depicting them as hosts of bandits and anti‐nationalists and, at the same time, as places of national suffering, where fellow citizens had been living in disarray (Cons, ; van Schendel, ).…”

Section: Territoriality Nationalism and The Enclavesmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Symbolic spaces: Nationalism and compromise in the former border enclaves of Bangladesh and India

Ferdoush

2019

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Bangladesh and India exchanged all of their 162 border enclaves in 2015 after 70 years of protracted negotiations. This paper offers an explanation as to why these enclaves were exchanged and why it took so long for the exchange to be executed. In so doing, I offer the concept of “symbolic spaces” to demonstrate that in postcolonial South Asia, enclaves gained oversized significance in nationalistic and territorial discourses. Such elevated significance effectively turned them into symbols of nationalism and territoriality, which played the major role in both their existence and their exchange. In explaining the exchange, I also contend that, although rare, states may exchange territories if it serves significant geopolitical and geo‐economic interests for the parties involved and if the exchange can be portrayed as a victory for the nation.

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Section: Enclaves In South Asia and Beyondmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Territoriality Nationalism and The Enclavesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Symbolic spaces: Nationalism and compromise in the former border enclaves of Bangladesh and India

Ferdoush

2019

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“…This paper is about these ungoverned enclaves. Scholars have focused on nationalism, identity and statelessness (Van Schendel, 2002), politics over enclave exchange (Whyte, 2002), sovereignty (Jones, 2009;Dunn & Cons, 2014), bare life and vulnerability (Shewly, 2013), coexistence of citizenship, abandonment and resistance (Shewly, 2015), and survival mobilities (Shewly, 2016).…”

Section: India-bangladesh Enclaves In Literaturementioning

confidence: 99%

“…Following the decolonization process in 1947, both India and Pakistan/Bangladesh inherited more than 200 enclaves, which comprised 80 per cent of the world's enclaves (Van Schendel, ). Because of an enclave's transterritorial location (the boundary pillar marks the enclave residents' spatio‐legal identities), these places were an example of everyday life involving two nation‐states and their laws.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Life in de facto statelessness in enclaves in India and Bangladesh

Shewly

2017

Singap J Trop Geogr

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Drawing on conceptualization of statelessness and ethnographic research on crucial insights of rightessness, this paper investigates how the politico-geographic-legality constructs statelessness in the enclaves in India and Bangladesh. Following the decolonization process in 1947, both India and Pakistan/Bangladesh inherited more than 200 enclaves, which comprise 80 per cent of the world's enclaves. With improved bilateral relations, India and Bangladesh officially exchanged the enclaves on 1 August 2015, and the enclave dwellers will gradually be granted citizenship rights over the next few years. In this period of transition from statelessness to statehood, this paper can be read as contemporary history. This paper will draw attention to three aspects of statelessness. First, conceptualization of statelessness not only applies to the refugeehood or de-territorialization of people but also relates to the process of constructing transterritorial stateless people. Second, this paper will discuss the condition of statelessness constructed in a politico-geographic-legal trap. And finally, the paper calls for a wider empirical and critical focus on the hidden geographies of de facto statelessness.

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“…For forthcoming work on the relationship between diaspora and nation see, Chowdhury, Becoming Indian . For novel work on nations, borders and particularly the idea of statelessness see van Schendel, ‘Stateless in South Asia; Butler and Spivak, Who Sings the Nation‐State ?…”

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confidence: 99%

Making and Unmaking the Nation in World History: Introduction

2017

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This special issue consists of six articles initially presented at a conference titled ‘(Un)Making the Nation’, held at the University of Cambridge on the 10th and 11th of September in 2015. With papers ranging across temporal, geographical and thematic boundaries, this international and interdisciplinary conference explored various new engagements with the concepts of nations and nationalism. The introduction traces the ways historians have sought to insert ‘the nation’ into their work in spite of the methodological challenges brought by the global turn. The goal is neither to bury the nation nor to resurrect it, but is rather to introduce some useful approaches through which the making and unmaking of nations in world history can be better understood. This article then concludes by offering a brief synopsis of the articles that constitute the wider issue.

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Stateless in South Asia: The Making of the India-Bangladesh Enclaves

Cited by 20 publications

References 0 publications

Symbolic spaces: Nationalism and compromise in the former border enclaves of Bangladesh and India

Symbolic spaces: Nationalism and compromise in the former border enclaves of Bangladesh and India

Life in de facto statelessness in enclaves in India and Bangladesh

Making and Unmaking the Nation in World History: Introduction

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