‘I am You, as You are Me’: Replicative Adaptability and Capacities of Resilience in Chhit Sheupara

Abstract

In former enclaves of the India–Bangladesh borderlands, trans-local interactions evinced adaptations in response to recurrent shifts in their categorical and experiential peripheralities. This case study of Chhit Sheupara assesses the disconnect in its categorizations as a ‘stateless’ space through an exploration of local negotiations to bypass its ascriptive isolations. The study analyses proxy-citizenship and limited governance as configurations of Sheupara’s adaptive resilience, as a part of local efforts to subvert and circumvent their erstwhile stateless existence within a dynamic borderland locale through reproductions of normativity and instrumentalities of state civicism.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Site name has been changed in the study.

2 The Koch dynasty (1515–1949) ruled over parts of the eastern Indian subcontinent, the present-day states of Assam and Bengal.

3 The word chhit denotes a speck; and mohol, a unit of division of land estates used locally around these regions. Together, they form the locally used portmanteau used to describe these spaces.

4 Princely States were the vassalages of local, traditional power that existed initially under the British East India Company and later, the British Crown following the Sepoy Uprising of 1857.

5 The partition of India in 1947, resulting in the creation of Pakistan, stemmed from the struggle for independence from British colonial rule. Led by the Indian National Congress and the All-India Muslim League, the latter, under Muhammad Ali Jinnah, advocated for a separate Muslim state due to fears of majoritarian domination upon attaining independence. This led to the formation of West Pakistan (present-day Pakistan) and East Pakistan (present-day Bangladesh), on grounds of constituent demographic identity, despite their territorial detachment, and economic, linguistic, and political disparities.

6 West Pakistan suppressed Bengali nationalism in the erstwhile Eastern sector, leading to increasing youth-led protests. The War for Independence (Mukti Juddho) began on 3 December 1971; complexified by Cold War politics with America supporting Pakistan, while India sought Soviet backing to aid in the Bengali liberation efforts. Securing superpower protection, India escalated to all-out war with Pakistan. Eventual withdrawal of American support under international pressure, led to Pakistan's surrender and the liberation of Bangladesh on 16 December 1971 (for a detailed understanding read The Blood Telegram, by Gary J. Bass).

7 The voiding of enclaves in independent India and Bangladesh is located between the points of their sovereign exclusion as stateless spaces, and of eventual atonement through integration into national territory in 2015 (Ferdoush, 2021a).

8 Local inhabitants who were not enclave residents.

9 The conventional tripartite of bordering, ordering, and othering (Van Houtum & Van Naerssen, 2002) in the India–Bangladesh borderland was complicated by the presence of enclaves. The additionality of localized dissociation and dislocation these spaces represented compounded the conventional obscuring of the borderland ‘local’ (Chaturvedi, 2000) and therefore, statelessness can be located within a broader framework of borderland dissonance (Jones & Jessop, 2010).

10 Yuval-Davis (2006) enumerates belonging on three analytical levels: (1) social locations pertaining to specific social and economic positions that bear implications on prevalent power structures, based on varying historical contexts lending to both fluidity and contestability. (2) Identifications and emotional attachments between individuals to forge collective identities, upon which interactions within and outside groups take place in influencing a sense of belonging. (3) Ethical and political value systems held in common by collectives to evaluate their own and others' belonging based on shared frameworks, which shape judgments or claims.

11 The local Bengali dialect differs from the Bengali spoken in Kolkata and other urban centres. The local dialect bears resemblance to the bangla spoken in Bangladesh, with linguistic usages drawn from Assamese and Rajbongshi as well.

12 Enumerated by the Indian state under the category of Scheduled Castes which constitutes a protected category of communities under the Indian government, they comprise some of the most socially and economically disadvantaged low-caste groups in the country. In West Bengal, it is believed that the caste category was established as a result of migrations from North India where the identity was more prevalent amongst communities.

13 The Rajbongshi community, which literally translates to ‘royal class’, gave itself the name after 1891 following an internal social movement to distance themselves from their indigenous tribal identity to acquire a higher social status associated with the Kshatriya caste identity as per the chaturvarna system of social stratification, an import from the Northern parts of India. The Kshatriya identity was established by linking the community to the Koch dynasty as their loyal protectors. Rajbongshi is a nineteenth-century neologism, assumed to confer a semblance of proximity to the erstwhile rulers of Cooch Behar.

14 For a detailed discussion on the bilateral resolution of the enclave exchange and its local ramifications please see Sen (2021) ‘Situating the Local in Bilateralism: Assessing Local Impacts of the India–Bangladesh Enclave Exchange’.

15 It was a notional transfer, transforming de facto claims to de jure recognitions. The term ‘exchange’ suggests originary state possession, while statelessness applies only to the people, preserving the state’s geography. This seemingly relinquishes territorial claims, presenting a rational conclusion to statelessness.

16 Sheupara is a cluster of settlements that emerged as a result of the three distinct waves of migration from Bangladesh, coinciding with three major events which impacted upon and shaped its political and socio-cultural dynamics, namely the independence of India and the subsequent Partition (1947), the Liberation War and the emergence of Bangladesh as an independent country (1971), and finally the establishment of the Tin Bigha Corridor (1993). Although referred to locally by the singular identification as Sheupara, it is in fact a discontinuous cluster of multiple settlements scattered across the locale.

17 A traditional and indigenous structure used to store and preserve harvested paddy.