Situating the Local in Bilateralism: Assessing Local Impacts of the India–Bangladesh Enclave Exchange

The Position of the ‘Local’ and ‘National’ in Bilateralism

The standard definitions of bilateral relations presuppose it to be centered on the fulfillment of its signatories’ national interests, derived from a singular, indisputable ethos of the ‘national’ which undergirds policies of state objectives. Contrary to this unvarying conceptualization of the ‘national,’ its constitutive tenets are subject to transformation over time, in response to changes in certain empirics (Van Dyke 1962). The ‘national’ therefore exists at the level of perception, textured by domestic and international factors such as regional power structures, international alliance systems, and national governance. This in part constitutes the subjectivists’ criticism of the fixity underlying general conceptualizations of national interest. In doing so, they situate the intentionality of action in individuals and collectives in stark contrast to the state’s normative abstraction and objectivity. The larger subjectivist criticism is against this presumption whereby the demands of the majority are viewed to be reflected in the actions of the few helming the state (Grayson 1952). Therefore, an understanding of what constitutes the ‘national’ and the areas covering its interests must engage the possibility of a subjective ordering of issues as national interests (Schilling 1956; Welch 2005) and the factors prompting the same.

The presumed objectivity of state action often predicates mediation in localized issues on its potential impacts on the preservation or pursuit of its interests. This is applicable to India’s federal division of authority, which is tilted in favor of the political center in its provision of overriding capacities. However, the heightening of a ‘local’ issue is conditional. A local issue is often viewed as restricted to a particular space, whereby the implications of its existence may not impact on national interests. Yet, when its scope expands into the preserve of state national interests, especially the domain of its security, its engagement tends to be based on considerations of interest preservation. In doing so, the state engages with selected facets of the conflict which may not be fully representative of the localized manifestation of its conditions or its contingent requirements of resolution.

The motivations for intervention in local affairs are often concealed by the semantics of state-led resolution and reconciliation processes. This is distinctive of both unilateral state action and bilateralism’s tendency to address issues as a precondition toward attaining larger national objectives and not as concerns unto themselves. In either of these, the representation of the ‘local’ appears to be constructed through the foci of state interests. The impacts of such ‘local’ issues and conflicts usually remain rooted to their immediate space of existence, as do the implications of their settlement through exclusive state action (Fisher et al. 2000). The state’s appropriation of an issue/conflict alters its narrativization at the local, regional, and national disaggregation of perception and political action. The issue is subsequently transformed through its dissociation from forms of local involvement or participation, subsequently rearranging the positionality of actors within its social and political milieu. This transforms the conflict through the intensification and/or variegation of its scope, subsequently rearranging the ‘local’ itself by changing the rules of quotidian interactions for its inhabitants and other actors.

The state’s appropriation of certain issues, even in a bilateral framework, remains contingent on the presence of concerns often unrelated to its associated or constituent local conflicts. The transient dynamics of the border space have often served as the condition demanding a heightened state presence on either side of it. The appropriation of local border issues has typically been determined by the state’s continuing necessity to securitize its limits against external infractions and internal dissensions (Flynn 1997; Wilson and Donnan 1999: 9). The centrality of borders in understanding the conceptualization and preservation of sovereignty (Murayama 2006) allows the state to appropriate its issues and conflicts and justify the imposition of an exclusivist discourse in their management in a more pronounced way than any other sphere of state authority.

An international border is often the stage for conflicts, the impacts of which may not be localized. The potential impacts of such issues on state and regional security often prompt engagement among states. The primacy of state efforts toward national interest actualization is similarly reflected in bilateral frameworks (Jackson 2003), constituted through speculations of the implications of the persistence or resolution of certain issues or conflicts. In assuming this position, I argue that bilateralism’s effectiveness as a mechanism of conflict management demands critical engagement with its local impacts, in understanding the factors contributing to persistence of local conflicts beyond their resolution. Engaging with this proposed positioning of the national and the local in bilateralism, the article will analyze the conflicts and issues surrounding the India–Bangladesh border enclaves ¹

Enclaves in India–Bangladesh Bilateralism

The difficulties in evincing a solution for the enclaves’ stateless existences persisted mostly due to the complexities of bypassing their geographical dislocation from the state ²

A culmination of these factors delayed the resolution of the enclave issue until 2011, when the Protocol to the 1974 Land Boundary Agreement (henceforth, LBA) was signed between India and Bangladesh. However, its underlying requirement of alteration of national territory was censured on grounds that it stood in violation of the constitution ³

For Bangladesh, the resolution process was for the most part an exercise in perseverance. Progress toward a settlement at the bilateral level was overturned by India’s inability to secure a parliamentary majority on requisite legislations and amendments on several occasions. However, factors unrelated to the transfer acted as a linchpin in the alignment of interests between the two countries on resolving issues related to exchange of enclaves. This shift in India’s stance on LBA can be attributed to the incumbent government’s push for eastward integration as a counterbalance to China’s growing regional influence. The benefits of a secure border with India and developing itself as an access point into South East Asia were the major national considerations for Bangladesh in ratifying the agreement. A bilateral approach enabled both countries to pursue their respective national interests within a framework of mutually relayed benefits and securities. However, in positing a solution directed toward addressing the enclaves’ stateless existences, this process overlooked the necessity for addressing its resultant impacts at the local level, including both enclaves and non-enclave locales. In positioning resolution on the issues of citizenship and territory, the states overlooked other contestations at the local level. Viewing the enclave issue as dissociated from the impacts of its stateless existence at the local level, the dynamism of the space, characterized by the local’s ability to adapt to conditions of conflict and to state-led transformations, was overlooked. Therefore, the enclaves’ statelessness was viewed in isolation from its local impacts, in terms of how it shaped critical contestations and associations between the enclave and non-enclave locals. Consequently, the impacts of the solution itself were also limited to the facets of its scope of engagement.

The ‘National’ Reading of a ‘Local’ Issue

Regional perceptions of territoriality viewed enclaves as spatial aberrations within Westphalian frameworks of spatial organization ⁵

This categorization of local opinions is indicative of the impact of national interpretations on the assessment of issues at disaggregated levels of perception and engagement. These local perspectives on the transfer have differed among its multiple replications within and across the same spatiality. Local participant accounts from enclaves, surrounding non-enclave localities, and of other regional actors from surrounding Indian states came to reflect these outlined apperceptions, the specifics of which will be discussed in subsequent sections of the study. Local participants who were enclave residents viewed the exchange as a solution to their unsettled territorial status and identity. For them, the transfer signified the probability of change in their lived reality, given its provisions for resettlement to the country to which their enclaves belonged, or the provision of citizenship by their state of residence. Conversely, participants from non-enclave spaces located away from the border, but within states and affected by the transfer, viewed it as an unauthorized transfer of territory by India to another state. Expressions of disapproval frequently described the changes brought forth by the resolution as an enforced acceptance of its outcomes. There prevails a sense of grievance among those who have experienced loss or dispossession as a direct consequence of LBA’s implementation. Loss of livelihood and dispossession of land due to militarization of the previously undemarcated sections of the border as a precursor to the establishment of the Tin Bigha Corridor (TBC) were frequently recounted in several local narratives. Alongside this, their mobilities and prior entitlements of access to certain spaces now came to be regulated by the establishment of a visible border.

These two identified narratives which originated from opposing political estimations surrounding the issue—one from the political Center in New Delhi, the other from the local and regional actor-scape—have prompted how the issue has been perceived and engaged with at the formal, institutional spheres of governance and by the three aforementioned categories. The absence of alternative solutions in official policies or local public narratives is representative of two statements made in the preceding theoretical arguments. In not accounting for the varied impacts of statelessness across enclave and non-enclave locales in positing a uniform solution, the state obscured local narratives from its deliberative/procedural assessments. The precedence of national narratives over local realities therefore comes to be guided by the state’s primacy in fulfilling objectives of its national interest (Dent 2006). Secondly, the ‘objective’ singularity adopted in the state’s conceptualization and pursuit of national interest is reflected in its determination of the rules of engagement for other actors. By positing ‘exchange’ as the only viable option, the solitary choice left for other secondary actors is either approval or opposition, thereby limiting the scope of localized articulations of resistance or even consent. These patterned local narratives of discontent and allegiances within local actor scapes continue to impact upon the local even today.

Provision of Citizenship and Its Impacts at the Local Level

Participant narratives indicate the limitations of the provision of citizenship in mitigating complications linked to the enclaves’ near century-long statelessness. Although it legalized enclave residents’ access to institutions of local governance, public distribution system, education, healthcare, and institutions of financial management, the same had been negotiated previously through other means. Prior to 2015, a portion of the enclave population registered for voter identification cards by citing addresses of family members and acquaintances who resided in non-enclave locales. Drawing upon relations of kinship and familiarity allowed them access to aforementioned avenues of local engagement with the state. Additionally, these extended linkages to a legal identity allowed enclave residents to substantiate the legitimacy of their claims to local membership in order to access irrigation pumps and green houses constructed by the state for local farmers. Since enclaves were not a part of local constituencies before 2015, inhabitants voted for securing fringe benefits ⁷

Proximity to important local sites also emerged as a key factor. Enclaves that were proximate to other villages and to sites of local conflict enjoyed a greater level of assimilation than enclaves that were distanced from non-enclave locales ⁹

These mixed apperceptions of local acceptance find reflection in this excerpt from a local participant, a former enclave inhabitant stating the reasons for his participation in local affairs, Amra bharoth er jomi te jonmo peyechi. Toh amra toh bharotiyo. Sheta amra borabor bishwash kore esechi. Chhit o toh bharoth er e chilo. (We were born on Indian soil. So we are Indians. We have believed that throughout. The enclaves belonged to India.)

However, integration through local participation did not result in an erasure of discriminatory and exclusionary practices against enclave locals. They were often subjected to reproves by non-enclave locals, the intensities of which, according to participants’ accounts, wavered between frivolous banter to public disclosures of their factitious identities as ‘citizens’ in markets, schools, and particularly during elections when enclave residents with voter identification cards would be publicly called out as chhit bashinda (enclave resident). Nonetheless, since the procurement of identification in cooperation with non-enclave locals was common practice, participant narratives suggest that this act of ‘outing’ was carried out by local populations as a means of asserting their authority over enclave populations, based on their comparatively lengthier association with the state. These practices persist to this day and constitute a part of common parlance and exchanges despite the official conferring of citizenship to these communities.

The agreement’s provision for relocating populations on the basis of individual preferences, for either settlement whereupon their enclaves lay or relocation across the border, also created new lines of social differentiation at its respective local level. Although the provisions for the physical exchange of populations were facilitated at the bilateral level, the assimilation of newly relocated individuals was a locally determined process. Deficient state assistance in the form of welfares, benefits, and safeguards after 2015 has prevented these previously isolated communities to attain parity with their surrounding locales. Presently, enclave residents frequently invoke their erstwhile identity of chhit ¹⁰

A former enclave resident’s grievance regarding her present circumstances is reflected in the voices of many others.

Amra ekhane thaklam ei asha te je India eto boro desh, amader jibon ekhane onek bhalo bhabe kaatar asha chilo Amra bhebechilam je shorkar amader pashe darabe. Ekla fele debe na. (We came here thinking that India is such a big country, we hoped to lead better lives here. We thought that the government would stand by us. Not abandon us.)

Within enclaves, there exists a differentiated logic of validation of claims over space and rights among its residents, constituted on the basis of their year of arrival to India. Newer entrants are often categorized as ‘encroachers’ by local populations and older enclave residents, and they are often cast into the identity of the otherized Bangladeshi Muslim, an outcome of localized apprehensions surrounding this identity. Exclusionary terms and practices based upon local perceptions of the Muslim identity and associated historical anxieties were frequently drawn upon by local participants to substantiate this continuing exclusion; for instance, Hindus with Bangladeshi roots pre-dating 1971 are often referred to as Bhatiya (people of the soil) or as Dhakaiya (those who came from Dhaka). Similarly, Muslims from Bangladesh are referred to as Miyah or Gnyada ¹¹

During a discussion on local anxieties, a former enclave resident stated,

Okhankar Musholman ra alada. Tumi dekhe bujhte parbe kon Musholman Bangladeshi ar kara ekhankar. Ekhane jara musholman lokjon ache tara amader moton e hoye geche, ekhane eto bocchor theke. (Muslims there are different. You can tell the difference between Muslims from Bangaldesh and those from here. Muslims here have become more like us, from staying here for so many years.)

Bypassing their statelessness through informal channels of local support and extension of patronage to local political leadership prior to 2015 enabled a section of enclave residents to subsist on more or less equal terms with the local population, as stated above. Despite this, the authority of claims exercised by non-enclave locals with regard to access to resources and spaces by virtue of their unremitting identity as citizens continues to persist subsequent to the exchange.

Local Grievances Surrounding Land Transfers and Exchange of Enclaves

Following the independence of Bangladesh (then East Pakistan), it was considered vital to regulate the impacts of the Liberation War on local borderland mobilities, which had manifested in the form of cross-border migrations in response to violence of the West Pakistani pogrom during 1971 ¹²

Research participants frequently recounted similar opinions in discussing the impacts of the transfer on local livelihood practices and the functioning of local social capital networks. A resident from the Kuchlibari area states:

Dahagram e amader koto bondhu, atmiyo thakto. Oder shob chhere diye chole ashte hoye. Ekhon keu Cooch Behar e, keu Moynaguri te, keu Siliguri te thake. Onek e Dahagram theke beriye abar jibon toiri koreche, abar keu pare ni. (We had friends and family there. They had to leave everything behind. Now some of them are in Cooch Behar, some in Moynaguri and some stay in Siliguri. Some of those who left have been able to rebuild their lives, others haven’t.)

Residents of this particular locale also recounted how Hindu families residing in DA deserted their homes to move into the Kuchlibari region in the days leading up to its transfer. These migrations (often overnight) they state, however, were common, even prior to any consideration of a transfer. Often, the numerical preponderance of one religious community would constitute the motivation behind these relocations. A local history of communal tensions ¹⁵

The circumstances dictating these movements would determine whether families undertaking this crossing would be able to sell off their properties or not. In some cases, the abrupt nature of these decisions prevented individuals from receiving fair prices for properties, prompting settlement at base prices. Also common were instances of seizure by locals or non-receipt of payments by sellers upon crossing over. The subsequent settlement patterns in India allude to a recursion of similar conditions of statelessness for these individuals upon crossing over to India. Their resettlements were primarily concentrated in local enclaves on the Indian side. This was due to certain interconnected factors. The geographical proximity of certain enclaves to the more porous sectors of the border, and the absences of state identification for enclave residents as well as formal modalities for legalizing proprietorship for their land; allowed those who chose to relocate an opportunity to bypass related sanctions, granted they were able to cross over undetected. The establishment of settlements was based on the informal provision of inhabitancy rights by those who claimed original ownership over these lands. The proof of originary possession was established by papers provided by the erstwhile Princely State of Cooch Behar and held no ostensible value or validity after 1949, when it joined the Indian Union. However, till the provision of rights to their land holdings in January 2019, enclave residents and enclave landowners used these documents as a proof of their tenancy and ownership. This has contributed to certain disadvantages as well.

Even today, enclave residents, namely original inhabitants or those who relocated before 2015 ¹⁷

Beyond the deprivation of agency for these communities in asserting their livelihood choices, their ‘statelessness’ also contributed to the emergence/persistence of different local frameworks of exploitation; for instance, agricultural labor constitutes the major source of income for the erstwhile enclave residents. However, only a minute subsection of owner-cultivators are somewhat insulated from the exploitative sharecropping systems prevalent in this region such as Aadha Chaash ¹⁹

The absence of state support for former enclave residents has further compromised their ability to hold on to their land. Subsequent to integration, their isolation from instruments of governance continues till today, carried forth through the inadequate presence of administrative mechanisms and supportive frameworks and inept systems of local governance. The requirement of a positively differentiated system of governance based on affirmative action, to assist these spaces in achieving parity with its surrounding locales, has been obscured by multiple institutional deficiencies. Institutional apathy toward progressive change points toward a discernible proclivity toward preserving this flawed system. The persistence of such instances is indicative of extensive structural mismanagements which in turn have generated unresponsiveness toward and lack of engagement with local democratic processes and reliance on informal, exploitative systems and processes.

Engaging with the Local

The concentration of power at the political center and its spatial and notional distance from the peripheries can often be traced through an analysis of the impacts of state action at its peripheries. Often, state action is based on considerations exclusive to the realization of its national interests; in this case, the maintenance of regulatory and territorial integrity at the borders. Policies thus formulated ground engagement with issues on interests that may be distanced from or incongruent with the nuances of its localized existence (Autesserre 2006; Thomassen 2012). In the context of this study, the persistence of local conflicts in the area point toward particularistic state involvement, the necessity for which was induced through the lens of its own credo of interests ²¹

Therefore, in selecting models to explore regional factors contributing to successful bilateral cooperation, the scope of engagement must be considered in such analyses. The emphasis on the provision of citizenship and territorial status did not bring forth substantial local transformations, barring the insertion of the state and its institutions as the primary purveyors of benefits and mobilities, previously negotiated informally by local actors. The lack of dialogical engagement between the ‘local’ and the ‘national’ was evinced in the absence of issues of identities and conflicts of dispossession among others from the LBA’s scope of action. At the bilateral level, the states’ essentialized perusal of the enclave conflict took precedence, and its assessment from a national interest perspective overlooked the need to address vulnerabilities that were a direct outcome of the enclaves’ isolation and the impacts of the same on their respective locales. The persistence of contestations at the local level following the exchange problematizes the state’s construal of resolution in this regard, in confining its scope to the ascription of citizenship and exchange of territories. In the enclaves’ case, its associated localized conflicts which lay beyond the scope of its bilateral resolution continue to persist and impact upon local exchanges and relations which resonate across locales and even the border to this day.

An analysis of factors contributing to the persistence of local conflicts beyond their ‘resolution’ should account for the scope of state engagement as well. As this study has shown, citizenship and exchange constituted only two strands of a latticed conflict environment which the LBA sought to address amid a diverse range of other constitutive social, political, cultural, and economic contestations. The formation of resolution frameworks based on state construals of conflicts (Collier and Hoeffler 2004; Mason and Rychard 2005; Schmidt 1990) prompts consideration for the extension of its functions beyond the perceived culmination of an issue. The dissonance between uniform state policies of resolution and the variegated realities they seek to address contributes to the persistence or transformation of both active and latent conflicts (Drexler 2007), thereby requiring a continued, inclusive engagement extended to a post-conflict space as well. The semantics of resolution must be adjusted accordingly to specify its scope and to reflect the need of processes to go beyond determination of fixed objectives, toward ones adjustable to transformations in conditions it seeks to address. This would significantly level the stakes for local actors in that, they become active participants in this transformative process as opposed to adjusting to resultant flux/stasis initiated by state action, often resulting in localized dissonances.

The exercise of unqualified authority with regard to the maintenance and regulation of the border and its associated issues or conflicts have been widely accepted as practical corollaries of the state. However, as this study elucidates, the engagement with border issues and conflicts within a framework of bilateral cooperation generally ensues on the basis of national interests. When the practicalities of bilateralism are based on considerations of furthering a state’s national interests, it becomes only a limited rendering of the concept. The exclusion of the ‘local’ from discussions on conflict resolution through bilateralism inhibits a comprehensive appraisal of any issue it seeks to engage with. This partial interpretation then constitutes the foundations upon which its addressability through state action comes to be assessed. The focus therefore needs to shift toward including perspectives, previously not recognized within frameworks of understanding the impacts of state action, namely in considering the local as an important referent in international relations.