Paper short abstract:

A border is not equally restrictive to all groups of people. In the border enclaves along the Bangladesh-India boundary, certain 'bodies' experienced harsher violence, oppression and abandonment than others based on their state identity, gender, ethnicity, religion, financial prosperity and so on.

Paper long abstract:

The worldwide decolonization process of the mid-20th century and strong nationalist movements forced the British Empire to leave India. Before leaving, in 1947, the Empire partitioned the colony into two independent countries, e.g. India and Pakistan (East Pakistan seceded as Bangladesh in 1971). In the process of partition, based on the incorrect database, the Empire dragged two hundred small territories of one country into the map of another. Both the parent and host countries failed to administer these enclaves because of their locations inside another sovereign state which led into 70-year of statelessness and lawlessness. In such atmosphere, certain 'bodies' became the target of violent crimes, an organized syndicate of smuggling, crude border policing and catastrophic communal conflicts. Donnan & Wilson (1999) say that state power which demarcates geo-political spaces, also designs the topography of the body. The discourse of an impenetrable 'holy' international border presented the enclaves a citizenship crisis, a criminalized economy, an identity of smugglers and thugs, countless deaths and detention, and brutal border manning. My paper aims to explore such 'biopolitics of othering' in two scales. First, at a broader scale, the enclave residents are subjected to the politics of majority and minority, politics of nationalism and citizenship, socio-political movements, and international relations. Second, inside the enclaves, not all groups experienced equal share of oppressions: male-dominated crime horizon targeted female bodies for gender violence, religious majorities achieved the status of proxy citizens of host countries, poor households enjoyed less border mobility, and indigenous groups were dehumanized.