IndianMascot
Core Member
Hope I am not alive to see such days
News Parliament passes historic land accord bill to redraw border with Bangladesh
- Thread starter Technoglitch
- Start date
IndianMascot
Core Member
If everyone start living peacefully after getting what they want, then it won't be any issue.
Technoglitch
Core Member
Parliament on Wednesday passed the historic Constitution (119th Amendment) bill, which will put in effect a four- decade-old agreement between India and Bangladesh to redraw their shared border.
Some people have claimed that the bill will resolve a border dispute between the two countries. This is not so. Unlike its relations with China or Pakistan, India has no boundary squabble with Bangladesh. Each country is in perfect agreement over where the border lies. The issue is that this mutually agreed-on border is ridiculously complex, causing difficulties to not only the two governments but also the people trapped inside this cartographical maze. The bill seeks to swap land and redraw a more normal border.
What was wrong with the border?
The northern part of the India-Bangladeshi border is dotted with hundred of enclaves, called chhitsin Bangla (meaning fragments).
An enclave is a little pocket of land surrounded completely by another country’s territory. Enclaves aren’t that rare and there are a few around the world, mostly in Europe. The most famous enclave probably is the Vatican City, surrounded completely by Italy. And some of them have played a historical part: one of the reasons why the Nazis invaded Poland in 1939, setting off World War II, was due to tensions over East Prussia, a German enclave in Poland.
Nowhere, however, are they as numerous as in north Bengal. India possesses 106 enclaves of territory inside the Bangladeshi mainland. Bangladesh has 92 little pockets inside India. Most of these are ridiculously small and their total area is a little above 100 square kilometres. The smallest enclave, Upan Chowki Bhaini is all of 53 square metres – about the size of an average Mumbai flat.
It gets more complex: of these, 24 are counter-enclaves. Which means, an enclave within an enclave. So, for example, you’ll have a piece of Bangladeshi within Indian which, in turn, is within Bangladesh, a little like a Russian matryoshka doll.
But there’s still one more level: one of these is a counter-counter-enclave, the only one of its kind in the world. Dahala Khagrabari is a piece of India within Bangladesh, which is within India which, in turn, is within Bangladesh.
India-Bangla land swap: was the world's strangest border created by a game of chess?
Some people have claimed that the bill will resolve a border dispute between the two countries. This is not so. Unlike its relations with China or Pakistan, India has no boundary squabble with Bangladesh. Each country is in perfect agreement over where the border lies. The issue is that this mutually agreed-on border is ridiculously complex, causing difficulties to not only the two governments but also the people trapped inside this cartographical maze. The bill seeks to swap land and redraw a more normal border.
What was wrong with the border?
The northern part of the India-Bangladeshi border is dotted with hundred of enclaves, called chhitsin Bangla (meaning fragments).
An enclave is a little pocket of land surrounded completely by another country’s territory. Enclaves aren’t that rare and there are a few around the world, mostly in Europe. The most famous enclave probably is the Vatican City, surrounded completely by Italy. And some of them have played a historical part: one of the reasons why the Nazis invaded Poland in 1939, setting off World War II, was due to tensions over East Prussia, a German enclave in Poland.
Nowhere, however, are they as numerous as in north Bengal. India possesses 106 enclaves of territory inside the Bangladeshi mainland. Bangladesh has 92 little pockets inside India. Most of these are ridiculously small and their total area is a little above 100 square kilometres. The smallest enclave, Upan Chowki Bhaini is all of 53 square metres – about the size of an average Mumbai flat.
It gets more complex: of these, 24 are counter-enclaves. Which means, an enclave within an enclave. So, for example, you’ll have a piece of Bangladeshi within Indian which, in turn, is within Bangladesh, a little like a Russian matryoshka doll.
But there’s still one more level: one of these is a counter-counter-enclave, the only one of its kind in the world. Dahala Khagrabari is a piece of India within Bangladesh, which is within India which, in turn, is within Bangladesh.
India-Bangla land swap: was the world's strangest border created by a game of chess?