(Sixty(-Eight(Candles)))
August 2, 2015 6:04 AM Subscribe
After sixty-eight years, Cooch-Behar is no more. At midnight on Friday the almost-fractal boundary between India and Bangladesh was rationalised, erasing 162 enclaves and counter-enclaves, including Dahala-Khagrabari, the world's only counter-counter-enclave as well as what was, at one time, the world's only part-time enclave.
The move will allow residents to access social services of their respective nations from which they were previously cut off, although for many people it comes with problems of its own.
Here is a summary of the changes, and what appears to be a definitive account of Cooch-Behar, by Brendan Whyte, is available here.
The move will allow residents to access social services of their respective nations from which they were previously cut off, although for many people it comes with problems of its own.
Here is a summary of the changes, and what appears to be a definitive account of Cooch-Behar, by Brendan Whyte, is available here.
How absolutely fascinating. As I was reading, the name Cooch-Behar immediately rang a bell for me. It was only after a few moments of thought I realized it's name-checked in Brecht and Weil's Kanonen Song from The Threepenny Opera.
posted by Bromius at 7:33 AM on August 2, 2015 [1 favorite]
posted by Bromius at 7:33 AM on August 2, 2015 [1 favorite]
This story has been reported on as a cartographic oddity. And it's a lovely one. I know I saw a better, clearer map in the last week, but I can't find it now. The strangemaps blog is a little broken right now; I think this is the missing image. The Wikipedia article has a comprehensive list and a somewhat clear map.
But the historical story is way more interesting to me, the human tragedy. It starts three hundred years ago with wars between a local maharaja vs a Mughal ruler far away in Delhi, then continues through the British East India Company, then gets cemented during the tragedy of Partition and the subsequent second tragedy of Bangladesh, its own independence struggle.
Each of these little enclaves was someone's home, or a family's farm, or a local fiefdom. Swapped back and forth and preserved according to religious and political divisions. This fractal map is what global identity politics looks like when applied to individual families.
posted by Nelson at 7:51 AM on August 2, 2015 [7 favorites]
But the historical story is way more interesting to me, the human tragedy. It starts three hundred years ago with wars between a local maharaja vs a Mughal ruler far away in Delhi, then continues through the British East India Company, then gets cemented during the tragedy of Partition and the subsequent second tragedy of Bangladesh, its own independence struggle.
Each of these little enclaves was someone's home, or a family's farm, or a local fiefdom. Swapped back and forth and preserved according to religious and political divisions. This fractal map is what global identity politics looks like when applied to individual families.
posted by Nelson at 7:51 AM on August 2, 2015 [7 favorites]
I like the idea of being able to choose your own citizenship. Be fun if that was extended to everyone.
posted by Devonian at 9:10 AM on August 2, 2015
posted by Devonian at 9:10 AM on August 2, 2015
You're probably thinking of this version of Cannon Song. Not every English translation of Cannon Song has the lyrics in question, but they are in the original German version.
posted by markkraft at 9:16 AM on August 2, 2015
posted by markkraft at 9:16 AM on August 2, 2015
Really happy for these people, it way overbalances me being slightly miffed that this bizarre curio doesn't exist anymore.
posted by Meatbomb at 10:25 AM on August 2, 2015 [2 favorites]
posted by Meatbomb at 10:25 AM on August 2, 2015 [2 favorites]
And all the screwed over people got to choose their statehood, what a nice deal.
posted by Meatbomb at 10:28 AM on August 2, 2015 [2 favorites]
posted by Meatbomb at 10:28 AM on August 2, 2015 [2 favorites]
I wonder what James C. Scott thinks of this. It's possible the confusion and illegibility of Cooch-Behar was a bigger problem for the centralized governments than for the people actually living there.
posted by Wemmick at 12:04 PM on August 2, 2015
posted by Wemmick at 12:04 PM on August 2, 2015
No, it was pretty terrible for the people living there. They couldn't move freely, access necessary services, and were especially vulnerable to any tiff or change in relationship between the two states.
posted by tavella at 1:35 PM on August 2, 2015
posted by tavella at 1:35 PM on August 2, 2015
For example, they had to lie about their citizenship to allow their children to attend school, because the only ones within reach were in a different country:
"We are very happy, our children will no more need to hide their identity to go to schools," said Bashir Mia, 46. Many people posed as Bangladeshis to get their children admitted to schools in Bangladesh.
posted by tavella at 1:39 PM on August 2, 2015
"We are very happy, our children will no more need to hide their identity to go to schools," said Bashir Mia, 46. Many people posed as Bangladeshis to get their children admitted to schools in Bangladesh.
posted by tavella at 1:39 PM on August 2, 2015
Great news. It sounded like a bureaucratic nightmare for the people unfortunate enough to be stuck in the enclaves.
We have the idea that every people/ethnic group should have its own nation. Enclaves are what you get when you take that idea to its logical extreme, because ethnic groups typically don't live clustered together in one place you can draw a neat border around. It's why the ex-Soviet states have so many random exclaves, because the Soviet republics were (loosely) defined on ethnicity. For example, Azerbaijan has an exclave (Nakhichevan) and Nagorno-Karabakh is claimed by Armenia (and would be its exclave if the claim were recognized). Uzbekistan has exclaves in neighboring Central Asian states and vice versa. These little exclaves didn't matter much during Soviet times but have become a gigantic hassle for the local populations now that the ex-Soviet states are independent (and tend not to have friendly relations with each other).
I've never understood the actual logistics of how enclaves work, though. Do they put a gigantic fence around the enclave or are they just lines on a map?
posted by pravit at 6:23 PM on August 2, 2015
We have the idea that every people/ethnic group should have its own nation. Enclaves are what you get when you take that idea to its logical extreme, because ethnic groups typically don't live clustered together in one place you can draw a neat border around. It's why the ex-Soviet states have so many random exclaves, because the Soviet republics were (loosely) defined on ethnicity. For example, Azerbaijan has an exclave (Nakhichevan) and Nagorno-Karabakh is claimed by Armenia (and would be its exclave if the claim were recognized). Uzbekistan has exclaves in neighboring Central Asian states and vice versa. These little exclaves didn't matter much during Soviet times but have become a gigantic hassle for the local populations now that the ex-Soviet states are independent (and tend not to have friendly relations with each other).
I've never understood the actual logistics of how enclaves work, though. Do they put a gigantic fence around the enclave or are they just lines on a map?
posted by pravit at 6:23 PM on August 2, 2015
I'm honestly amazed that two countries were able to come to a border agreement of this complexity like adults. And boo to the British, who could have fixed the whole problem with a stroke of the pen when they were running the place.
For anyone interested, this is my understanding of how the original situation happened (and I would welcome corrections!): the Raj (British India) was composed of many, many separate jurisdictions of varying statuses, including 510 "princely states" that were nominally sovereign but under the suzerainty of the British Crown. Two of these were Cooch Behar (Koch Bihar) and Rangpur.
These states weren't necessarily geographic entities as we understand them: bits of land that were owned by the princes could become part of the "state". And that's what happened, over the centuries: bits got joined and removed, a farm here, a village there, and you ended up with a map that looked like lacework. Incidentally, here's a view of Cooch Behar's palace. It was good to be a prince, not so good to be a peasant.
The Raj actually became two countries at independence: Pakistan and India. This wouldn't have been a cartographic problem, but the division of land was done on the basis of princely states rather than geography. Cooch Behar went with India, and Rangpur went with Pakistan. This left each country with enclaves and counter-enclaves and at least one counter-counter enclave, based on the division of land between them. Then Bangladesh seceded from Pakistan, which is why it was an India/Bangladesh problem and not an India/Pakistan issue - this was very fortunate, because there's a separate India/Pakistan conflict in Kashmir that also originates in the sovereignty of princely states.
And there you have it. Two proud, independent nations got together and did something complicated but sensible that will make tens of thousands of people mostly happier and save lots of money and conflict. Neither side appears to have been seeking a victory; in fact I understand that India relinquished 40 square kilometers in this process. They just did a sensible thing because it was the right thing to do. There is hope for the human race yet.
posted by Joe in Australia at 6:32 PM on August 2, 2015 [1 favorite]
For anyone interested, this is my understanding of how the original situation happened (and I would welcome corrections!): the Raj (British India) was composed of many, many separate jurisdictions of varying statuses, including 510 "princely states" that were nominally sovereign but under the suzerainty of the British Crown. Two of these were Cooch Behar (Koch Bihar) and Rangpur.
These states weren't necessarily geographic entities as we understand them: bits of land that were owned by the princes could become part of the "state". And that's what happened, over the centuries: bits got joined and removed, a farm here, a village there, and you ended up with a map that looked like lacework. Incidentally, here's a view of Cooch Behar's palace. It was good to be a prince, not so good to be a peasant.
The Raj actually became two countries at independence: Pakistan and India. This wouldn't have been a cartographic problem, but the division of land was done on the basis of princely states rather than geography. Cooch Behar went with India, and Rangpur went with Pakistan. This left each country with enclaves and counter-enclaves and at least one counter-counter enclave, based on the division of land between them. Then Bangladesh seceded from Pakistan, which is why it was an India/Bangladesh problem and not an India/Pakistan issue - this was very fortunate, because there's a separate India/Pakistan conflict in Kashmir that also originates in the sovereignty of princely states.
And there you have it. Two proud, independent nations got together and did something complicated but sensible that will make tens of thousands of people mostly happier and save lots of money and conflict. Neither side appears to have been seeking a victory; in fact I understand that India relinquished 40 square kilometers in this process. They just did a sensible thing because it was the right thing to do. There is hope for the human race yet.
posted by Joe in Australia at 6:32 PM on August 2, 2015 [1 favorite]
I've never understood the actual logistics of how enclaves work, though. Do they put a gigantic fence around the enclave or are they just lines on a map?
Pravit, I understand that the Cooch Behar ones were both, depending on the size and proximity to the mainland. Elsewhere it depends on the state of peace between the countries: it will very often just be a line on a map, but in Nagorno-Karabakh there might literally be an army between you and the rest of "your country".
posted by Joe in Australia at 6:35 PM on August 2, 2015
Pravit, I understand that the Cooch Behar ones were both, depending on the size and proximity to the mainland. Elsewhere it depends on the state of peace between the countries: it will very often just be a line on a map, but in Nagorno-Karabakh there might literally be an army between you and the rest of "your country".
posted by Joe in Australia at 6:35 PM on August 2, 2015
I've never understood the actual logistics of how enclaves work, though. Do they put a gigantic fence around the enclave or are they just lines on a map?It depends greatly on the enclave / exclave but sometimes they are not much more than just lines on the map.
posted by Nerd of the North at 8:08 PM on August 2, 2015
There are buildings that straddle the US-Canada border. In theory, you can cross that border as easily as crossing a room.
posted by Joe in Australia at 8:43 PM on August 2, 2015
posted by Joe in Australia at 8:43 PM on August 2, 2015
> We have the idea that every people/ethnic group should have its own nation. Enclaves are what you get when you take that idea to its logical extreme, because ethnic groups typically don't live clustered together in one place you can draw a neat border around. It's why the ex-Soviet states have so many random exclaves, because the Soviet republics were (loosely) defined on ethnicity.
You have no idea! Anyone interested in this stuff should read Terry Martin’s The Affirmative Action Empire: Nations and Nationalism in the Soviet Union, 1923-1939; as I wrote here:
You have no idea! Anyone interested in this stuff should read Terry Martin’s The Affirmative Action Empire: Nations and Nationalism in the Soviet Union, 1923-1939; as I wrote here:
Like everyone who’s studied the Soviet Union at all, I was aware that each official nationality was awarded its own territory in which its language would be taught and its customs maintained, but I had no idea how complex the system had been. How many such territorial units do you think there were? Fifty, a hundred, a few hundred? At its peak, tens of thousands. These ranged from the well-known union republics (e.g., Ukraine), autonomous republics (e.g., Tatarstan), and autonomous oblasts (e.g., Chechnya) down through autonomous okrugs, national districts, national village soviets, and national kolkhozes “until they merged seamlessly with the individual’s personal nationality” (as recorded in everyone’s passport). ...[T]he Bolsheviks insisted on a strictly territorial definition of nationality. The solution was “the strategy of ethno-territorial proliferation” in which the system of national units was extended “downward into smaller and smaller territories, the smallest being the size of a single village.” (In Ukraine there were thirteen Czech village soviets, three Albanian, and one Swedish; in Leningrad Oblast there were Norwegian, Jewish, and Chinese national kolkhozes.) They hoped this would put an end to nationalism (the idea being that if, say, ethnic Germans were being oppressed by other ethnic Germans in their own territory, it would sharpen class struggle rather than causing ethnic resentment); in fact, it exacerbated the problem, as could have been predicted by anyone not hampered by ideological blinders.posted by languagehat at 7:44 AM on August 3, 2015 [2 favorites]
Joe in Australia: "These states weren't necessarily geographic entities as we understand them: bits of land that were owned by the princes could become part of the "state". And that's what happened, over the centuries: bits got joined and removed, a farm here, a village there, and you ended up with a map that looked like lacework."
This happened quite a bit in Europe as well, reaching its apotheosis with the Holy Roman Empire.
posted by Chrysostom at 8:39 PM on August 5, 2015 [1 favorite]
This happened quite a bit in Europe as well, reaching its apotheosis with the Holy Roman Empire.
posted by Chrysostom at 8:39 PM on August 5, 2015 [1 favorite]
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