I flere årtier har bengalere, der bor tæt ved grænsen mellem Indien og Bangladesh, været statsborgere i det ene land, men befundet sig og levet under lovgivningen i det andet land.
Resultatet har været, at bengalere, der fx lever i Indien men har et bangladeshisk pas, oplever et juridisk tomrum, og de har nu intensiveret kampen for at deres statsborgerskab afstemmes efter deres geografiske placering.
Efter at briterne trak sig ud af Indien i 1947 blev landet delt op efter befolkningens religiøse tilhørsforhold. Hinduerne fik således Indien, mens muslimerne rykkede til Pakistan og Bangladesh. Denne grænsetegning efterlod større grupper af muslimske bengalere i Indien og hinduer i Bangladesh, som i dag stadig ikke har statsborgerskab i de lande, som de lever i.
RANGPUR, 23 November 2011 (IRIN): Thousands of ethnic Bengalis living near the Bangladesh-India border have for decades found themselves citizens of one nation but bound within the sovereign territory of another. In recent months they have escalated their campaign for a land swap that will align their citizenship with cartography.
After independence from Britain in 1947, the territory was divided along religious lines, with Hindu communities going to India’s West Bengal State and Muslim pockets joining what is now Bangladesh.
But the division was not clean, resulting in 162 land parcels that became part of one country while remaining within the borders of the other. Today they form a mostly destitute patchwork of 120 sqkm of villages whose inhabitants are largely neglected by both governments, say locals.
There are no roads, only dirt trails in Dashiar Chara, one of 111 communities nominally governed by Indian law, but enveloped by Bangladesh’s northern Rangpur division.
It is a village without electricity, only the occasional kerosene lamp. In the marketplace, a few storeowners have managed to procure solar panels with the cooperation of neighbouring non-enclave Bangladeshis.
“No roads, no electricity, no hospitals or schools, nothing. It is like living in the middle of a jungle,” said Mohammad Shafiat Ali.
Enclaves
Known to cartographers as “enclaves”, there are another 51 of these border anomalies governed by Bangladesh’s government, but located in India’s southern most Cooch Behar District, according to a joint census conducted by the Bangladeshi and Indian governments in July 2011.
Some residents are lobbying for a land swap: transfer Indian enclaves within Bangladesh for Bangladeshi pockets in India. In 1994, a group formed an enclave exchange committee with representatives from each community.
Læs resten af historien her: http://www.irinnews.org/report.aspx?reportid=94291
