Acts of belonging: The choice of citizenship in the former border enclaves of Bangladesh and India

Sovereign Atonement: (Non)citizenship, Territory, and State‐Making in Post‐Colonial South Asia

“…While measuring and controlling land is a well recognised technology of territory, Bangladesh also used an unconventional, yet innovative technology of territory from below by bringing the relations of citizenship into play. Briefly demonstrated earlier and discussed in detail elsewhere (Ferdoush 2019a), a strong sense of belonging and citizenship existed between the former enclave residents and their host states, even though they were not recognised as citizens. Owning land both in the enclave and outside remained one of their primary expressions of belonging.…”

“…The abandonment by the state resulted in various innovative ways to adapt and survive in the enclaves, including overt and covert resistance, “managing” state officials, evading the law, attaining forged identity documents, coming to terms with the neighbours and so forth. Buying lands and building houses, using a friend’s or relative’s address, or getting married to a citizen of the host country were common acts that allowed the enclave residents to build a citizenship relation with the state 6 (Cons 2013; Ferdoush 2019a; Isin 2008; Jones 2012; Shewly 2015). At the same time, different types of citizenship relations have also existed based on religious identity.…”

“…Therefore, I contend that there were layers of an in/exclusive relationship between the sovereign and the enclave residents with abandonment and violence on the surface. Although noncitizens, due to a long history of such informal in/exclusive relations, a strong sense of belonging and citizenship was already prevalent among most of the enclave residents (for a detailed discussion, see Ferdoush 2019a). Such a sense of belonging and informal relations did not lose their relevance after the exchange.…”

“…I claim that sovereign atonement did not result from a “caring” sovereign to make up for its violence; instead, it emerged from a combination of numerous factors. These are the politically amplified history of these enclaves, a strong sense of belonging and acts of citizenship from the enclave residents, and the nature of state territories in post‐colonial South Asia (Cons 2016; Ferdoush 2019a, 2019c; Isin 2008; Krishna 1994). It must also be mentioned that I do not intend to offer a general picture of the Bangladesh state through the lens of sovereign atonement; instead, my discussion sheds light particularly on Bangladesh’s response to territorial exchange and the inclusion of “new” citizens.…”

Postcolonial geographies and colonialism's mutations: The geo‐graphing of South Asia

“…On the borderlands, histories of partition and the nation's imaginative geographies converge to produce exclusions resulting from the state's frustrated attempts to bound territories to the nation. As Ferdoush () showed in his study of the 2015 India‐Bangladesh exchange of border enclaves, where the overwhelming majority of Indian‐origin stateless persons chose Bangladeshi citizenship (and vice versa), the borderlands express the limits of national belonging and the disjuncture between citizenship and territory. This process of cultivating the nation and its enforcement at the border is the domain of a range of state institutions and paramilitary forces that imbue the borderlands as a paradoxical space of exchange and exclusion (Cons & Sanyal, ; Jones, ; Sur, ).…”