Paper short abstract:

India-Bangladesh enclaves offer a study of identity formation and how it plays with the sense of belonging. For enclave dwellers geographically bound in one nation while being the citizens of another, multiplicities of self-hood are unfolded with a contested sense of territory and allegiance.

Paper long abstract:

Encompassed within the boundaries of one nation while being historically a part of another, enclaves open the discussion around the sense of belonging. The India-Bangladesh enclaves in particular underline both the liminal identity held within the enclave and the tension felt upon trying to merge it with the mainland. In light of the recent Land Boundary Agreement granting citizenship rights to the country of their preference, it is interesting to note that while the erstwhile stateless people desire integration, this incorporation has caused an unease within the mainland population.

On the Indian side, the public imaginary shades the 'new citizens' as units of threat to national security and culture. The movement of the enclave people is not uniform within itself, and often throws up witnesses to differing experiences as a Hindu and as a Muslim on an individual level. By focusing on the resettlement camps at Haldibari, Mekhliganj and Dinhata in Cooch Behar district, the paper inquires into how the relocated people's sense of self along the axes of language, religion, and ethnicity is constantly challenged by the collective they wish to enter and how in turn the collective demands differing measures of allegiance as the price of belonging. Built on field research comprising of personal testaments, video interviews and photographs, the paper scrutinizes the intra-group dynamics that complicates incorporations into a community one holds to be historically one's own and the individual arbitrations within the claims of collective belonging.