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Sensitive Space Along the India-Bangladesh Border

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Sensitive Space Along the India-Bangladesh Border THE FRAGMENTS AND THEIR NATION(S): SENSITIVE SPACE ALONG THE INDIA-BANGLADESH BORDER A Dissertation Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of Cornell University in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy by Jason Cons January 2011 © 2011 Jason Cons THE FRAGMENTS AND THEIR NATION(S): SENSITIVE SPACE ALONG THE INDIA-BANGLADESH BORDER Jason Cons, Ph.D. Cornell University 2011 Borders are often described as “sensitive” areas—exceptional and dangerous spaces at once central to national imaginaries and at the limits of state control. Yet what does sensitivity mean for those who live in, and those who are in charge of regulating, such spaces? Why do these areas persist as spaces of conflict and confusion? This dissertation explores these questions in relation to a series of enclaves—sovereign pieces of India inside of Bangladesh and vice versa—clustered along the Northern India–Bangladesh border. In it, I develop the notion of “sensitivity” as an analytic for understanding spaces like the enclaves, showing how they are zones within which postcolonial fears about sovereignty, security, identity, and national survival become mapped onto territory. I outline the politics of sensitivity and the production of sensitive space through both historical and ethnographic research. First, I explore the ways that ambiguity and vague fears about security and citizenship emerge as forms of moral regulation within and in relation to the enclaves. Specifically, I interrogate the processes through which information about the enclaves is regulated and policed and the ambiguity, suspicion, and insecurity that emerge out of such practices. Second, I examine the historical production of the enclaves as sensitive spaces. I ask how the enclaves were transformed from one of many administrative complications related to the new and hastily drawn border between India and East Pakistan in 1947 to symbols that were appropriated by various nationalist groups in India and Bangladesh as markers of national obligation and territorial threat. Third, I explore the ways residents of these contentious spaces frame their own histories as claims to belonging (in community, nation, and state). I examine how such claims are often indexed to possessions (belongings) and the way these claims shape the contours of membership within the enclaves themselves. Finally, I interrogate ways that various competing projects of rule coalesce in the enclaves to reconfigure power, opportunity, and expropriation. In doing so, I examine the ways that projects of territorial definition, national incorporation, and monitoring and regulation are experienced similarly by residents as various forms of spatial corruptions. BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH Jason Cons was raised in Maine and completed a BA with honors in English Literature and American Studies at Wesleyan University. Before entering graduate school, he worked as a freelance writer and reviewer for a number of publications, edited The Bookpress in Ithaca, New York, and worked for several years as an instructional designer. In 2002, he entered Cornell University’s Department of Development Sociology as a graduate student and, in 2005, completed a master’s thesis on colonial border formation along British India’s North-West Frontier. In 2006–2007, he was a Social Science Research Council International Dissertation Research Fellow. From 2007 to 2009, he was the Director of Research and Project Design at the Goldin Institute, where he designed and supervised community-based research initiatives in Bangladesh and elsewhere. In Fall 2010 he was a fellow at the Judith Reppy Institute for Peace and Conflict Studies, Cornell University. Currently, he is a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Development Sociology at Cornell University. iii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS My first thanks go to the residents of the chhitmahols in Patgram Thana in Bangladesh and especially the residents of Dahagram, who gave generously of their time and patience in sharing the long and ongoing complications of living in sensitive spaces along the India–Bangladesh border. I have struggled to do justice to their stories and histories. Many, I am sure, will find parts of what I have written here contentious. However, I hope they will find that the overall argument paints a fair picture of the histories and challenges of life within the enclaves. This dissertation research was generously supported by a Social Science Research Council (SSRC)–International Dissertation Research Fellowship. I thank staff at SSRC for their support and patience with my project, which proved more complicated than either I or they had imagined. Additional support for this dissertation was provided by a Mario Einaudi Center Travel Grant, Cornell University. Support for language training in Bengali was generously provided by three years of Foreign Language Area Studies Fellowship (FLAS) funding from Cornell University’s South Asia Program and a summer FLAS Fellowship to participate in an American Institute of Indian Studies (AIIS) intensive language training program in Kolkata in 2005. Support for the final phase of writing this dissertation was proved through a fellowship in the Judith Reppy Institute for Peace and Conflict Studies at Cornell University. Support for travel to conferences at which parts of this dissertation were shared, and subsequently improved, was provided by the Cornell University Graduate School, the Cornell University Department of Development Sociology, the American Institute of Bangladesh Studies, and the Association of Asian Studies. In Bangladesh, many people generously aided both this work and the researcher conducting it. Faridul Ahmed, Anders Bjornberg, Sayeed Hassan, Erin Lentz, Xulhaz Mannan, Kasia Paprocki, and Ruqsana Parvin all assisted in this iv research. I wish to thank, in particular, Xulhaz, whose reliability and good spirits made working together a pleasure. I also wish to thank Sayeed, a dear friend who shared in many of these adventures. I deeply hope that he is able to find a path he is happy on. Anis and Mabhub Ahmed opened their home to us. Nabil Ahmed, Tuni Chatterji, Clay Dean, Kapil Gupta, Khushi Kabir, Tara Maria, and Monower Mostafa all made life in Bangladesh fun. Two people’s work paved the way for research on the enclaves: Willem Van Schendel and Brendan Whyte. Willem’s 2002 article on the enclaves provided the initial inspiration for this project, and his support and encouragement along the way have been always timely and extremely generous. Brendan’s historical, cartographic, and documentary study provided an invaluable base of knowledge and materials for my own investigation. His work is an encyclopedic reference for anyone interested in these spaces, and his maps are both unique and outstanding. I thank him for his research and for generously allowing me to use several of these maps in this dissertation. Parts of this dissertation were presented at the 2008 and 2010 Annual Conferences on South Asia in Madison, Wisconsin; the 2009 Annual Conference of the Association of American Geographers in Las Vegas; a workshop on South Asian Borderlands organized by David Gelner at the 2009 British Association of South Asian Studies in Edinburg; the 2009 and 2010 Annual Meetings of the Association for Asian Studies in Chicago and Philadelphia (respectively); the 2009 and 2010 Annual Meetings of the American Sociological Society in San Francisco and Atlanta (respectively); the 2009 Cornell Graduate Ethnography Workshop Series in the Department of Anthropology; the 2009 Cornell Development Sociology Brownbag Series; and the 2010 Asian Borderlands Research Network Conference in Chiang Mai. v My thanks to audience members and panel members for their questions and comments. Numerous people have commented on parts of this dissertation. These include Nosheen Ali, Anders Bjornberg, Jaideep Chatterjee, Alex Da Costa, Dia Da Costa, Parvis Ghassem-Fachandi, Chuck Geisler, David Gelner, Reece Jones, Christian Lentz, Erin Lentz, Nayanika Mathur, Townsend Middleton, Karuna Morarji, Sudha Narayanan, Tahir Naqvi, Kasia Paprocki, Nikhil Rao, Cabeiri Robinson, Susan Rose- Ackerman, Yasmin Saikia, Djahane Salehabadi, Romola Sanyal, Malini Sur, Willem Van Schendel, and Brendan Whyte. I am indebted to all of them. I wish to thank Anders Bjornberg for his last-minute reading of this dissertation, which allowed me to catch a number of errors and improve the overall prose. I wish to particularly thank Townsend Middleton, my writing partner, who has made the intellectual (and other) challenges of researching and writing a dissertation into a collaborative and immeasurably rewarding project. He read multiple drafts of each part of this dissertation, providing critical commentary that dramatically improved the thought, organization, and readability of this final product. There is much of his intellectual generosity and sharp eye in what follows. My committee has been more than supportive of this project. They have also been generous with their time and feedback and constructively critical throughout my time as a graduate student. Eric Tagliacozzo provided key advice and encouragement in ways to write and think historically about borders and frontiers. Philip McMichael taught me critical historical sociology, offered critiques that made me reconsider and reframe my thought, and provided good-humored criticism and timely prods to move forward. Working with Shelley Feldman, my committee chair, has been one of the most rewarding intellectual experiences
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