Zeeshan
September 22, 2016, 12:19 AM
Background
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/94/Coochbehar.jpg
Folklore has it that this quiltwork of enclaves is the result of a series of chess games between the Maharaja of Cooch Behar and the Faujdar of Rangpur. The noblemen wagered on their games, using villages as currency. Even in the more sober account, represented by Brendan R. Whyte, an academic, the enclaves are the “result of peace treaties in 1711 and 1713 between the kingdom of Cooch Behar and the Mughal empire, ending a long series of wars in which the Mughals wrested several districts from Cooch Behar.”
Introduction
THOSE of us who keep an eye out for anomalies in the world's maps have long held a fond regard for what might be called Greater Bengal. A crazed array of boundaries cuts Bangladesh out of the cloth of easternmost India, before slicing up the surrounding Himalayan area and India's north-east into most of a dozen jagged mini-states. But the crème de la crème, for a student of bizarre geography, is to be found floating along the northern edge of Bangladesh's border with India.
Surreally, these include about two dozen counter-enclaves (enclaves within enclaves), as well as the world's only counter-counter enclave—a patch of Bangladesh that is surrounded by Indian territory…itself surrounded by Bangladeshi territory.
Context
India and Bangladesh share a 4,100km (2,500-mile) border, hastily drawn around one of the most densely populated places on earth in 1947. Because of endless zigging and zagging it constitutes the world’s fifth-longest. The parcels to be exchanged are 111 Bangladeshi and 51 Indian enclaves clustered on either side of Bangladesh’s border with the district of Cooch Behar, in the Indian state of West Bengal. The enclaves are invisible on most maps; most are invisible on the ground too. But they became an evident problem for their 50,000-odd inhabitants with the emergence of passport and visa controls. Independent India and Bangladesh—part of Pakistan until 1971—each refused to let the other administer its exclaves, leaving their people effectively stateless
Read more here (http://www.economist.com/blogs/economist-explains/2015/06/economist-explains-19)...and here (http://www.economist.com/blogs/banyan/2011/02/enclaves_between_india_and_bangladesh).
A border conundrum (http://s866.photobucket.com/user/ULJUH/media/Dahala-3.png.htm)
http://i866.photobucket.com/albums/ab230/ULJUH/Dahala-3.png
Scholarly resource (https://minerva-access.unimelb.edu.au/bitstream/handle/11343/34051/66438_00001443_01_whyte.pdf?sequence=1)
Wikipedia article on chitmahals (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/India%E2%80%93Bangladesh_enclaves)
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/94/Coochbehar.jpg
Folklore has it that this quiltwork of enclaves is the result of a series of chess games between the Maharaja of Cooch Behar and the Faujdar of Rangpur. The noblemen wagered on their games, using villages as currency. Even in the more sober account, represented by Brendan R. Whyte, an academic, the enclaves are the “result of peace treaties in 1711 and 1713 between the kingdom of Cooch Behar and the Mughal empire, ending a long series of wars in which the Mughals wrested several districts from Cooch Behar.”
Introduction
THOSE of us who keep an eye out for anomalies in the world's maps have long held a fond regard for what might be called Greater Bengal. A crazed array of boundaries cuts Bangladesh out of the cloth of easternmost India, before slicing up the surrounding Himalayan area and India's north-east into most of a dozen jagged mini-states. But the crème de la crème, for a student of bizarre geography, is to be found floating along the northern edge of Bangladesh's border with India.
Surreally, these include about two dozen counter-enclaves (enclaves within enclaves), as well as the world's only counter-counter enclave—a patch of Bangladesh that is surrounded by Indian territory…itself surrounded by Bangladeshi territory.
Context
India and Bangladesh share a 4,100km (2,500-mile) border, hastily drawn around one of the most densely populated places on earth in 1947. Because of endless zigging and zagging it constitutes the world’s fifth-longest. The parcels to be exchanged are 111 Bangladeshi and 51 Indian enclaves clustered on either side of Bangladesh’s border with the district of Cooch Behar, in the Indian state of West Bengal. The enclaves are invisible on most maps; most are invisible on the ground too. But they became an evident problem for their 50,000-odd inhabitants with the emergence of passport and visa controls. Independent India and Bangladesh—part of Pakistan until 1971—each refused to let the other administer its exclaves, leaving their people effectively stateless
Read more here (http://www.economist.com/blogs/economist-explains/2015/06/economist-explains-19)...and here (http://www.economist.com/blogs/banyan/2011/02/enclaves_between_india_and_bangladesh).
A border conundrum (http://s866.photobucket.com/user/ULJUH/media/Dahala-3.png.htm)
http://i866.photobucket.com/albums/ab230/ULJUH/Dahala-3.png
Scholarly resource (https://minerva-access.unimelb.edu.au/bitstream/handle/11343/34051/66438_00001443_01_whyte.pdf?sequence=1)
Wikipedia article on chitmahals (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/India%E2%80%93Bangladesh_enclaves)