The Cooch Behar enclaves

Not a chess game

Local legend says the enclaves were stakes in a chess game between the Maharaja of Cooch Behar and a Mughal commander. In fact they came from a series of peace treaties signed in 1711–13 between the kingdom of Cooch Behar and the Mughal Empire.^[1]

The Mughals had conquered much of Cooch Behar but could not dislodge some of its chieftains, whose lands, surrounded by Mughal territory, stayed part of Cooch Behar. Meanwhile Mughal soldiers held estates inside Cooch Behar, and those became Mughal enclaves.^[1] Since Cooch Behar paid tribute to the Mughals, the arrangement made little difference at the time. It survived the change to British rule.^[1]

Stranded after 1947

At partition in 1947 princely states such as Cooch Behar could choose India or Pakistan. Cooch Behar signed a merger agreement with India in August 1949, and the enclaves became Indian or Pakistani territory, each surrounded by the other country.^[1] Pakistan’s eastern wing became Bangladesh in 1971.^[1]

A 1950 agreement to let officials reach their own enclaves was never carried out. Once passports, visas and border controls arrived in 1952, residents were trapped: they needed a visa to cross the surrounding country to reach their own, but could only get one at a consulate in their own country.^[1] The enclaves had no police stations, schools or health centres, and roads and power lines stopped at their edges. More than 75% of the people in Bangladeshi enclaves in India had spent time in prison for entering Indian territory without papers.^[1]

Some enclaves held counter-enclaves, pieces of the first country inside the enclave.^[1] The deepest was Dahala Khagrabari: 1.7 acres of India, inside a Bangladeshi village, inside an Indian village, inside Bangladesh. It was the only third-order enclave in the world.^[3]

The swap

India and Pakistan agreed to exchange the enclaves in 1958, and India and the new Bangladesh signed a Land Boundary Agreement in 1974. Any transfer of territory needed a constitutional amendment, and both deals stayed largely unimplemented. Bangladesh ratified the 1974 agreement that year; India did not.^[1][2] A Protocol signed on 6 September 2011 set out the exchange. A joint headcount from 14 to 17 July 2011 found 51,549 people living in the enclaves.^[2]

After India’s 2014 election, both houses of Parliament passed the amendment unanimously. Prime Ministers Narendra Modi and Sheikh Hasina exchanged the instruments of ratification on 6 June 2015, and the enclaves changed hands on 1 August.^[1] Residents could stay where they were and take that country’s citizenship, or move. Everyone in the Bangladeshi enclaves chose to become Indian; 989 people in the Indian enclaves chose to move to India, and the rest became Bangladeshi.^[1]

One large Bangladeshi enclave, Dahagram–Angarpota, is joined to the Bangladeshi mainland by the Tin Bigha corridor through India. In 2011 India opened the corridor to Bangladeshis 24 hours a day, and on 19 October 2011 Sheikh Hasina visited the enclave.^[2]