Sovereignty and statelessness in the border enclaves of India and Bangladesh

This article investigates the 198 political enclaves along the northern section of the border between India and Bangladesh. The enclaves are a remnant of the partition of British India in 1947 and are effectively stateless spaces because most are small and located several kilometers within their host country, which has prevented any administrative contact with their home country. Drawing on interviews with current enclave residents, this article describes the creation of the enclaves and analyzes the disputes that prevented their normalization over the past 60 years. The enclaves provide an important site for scrutinizing the connections between bordering practices and sovereignty claims. They also demonstrate both the social benefits the sovereign state system has brought through the establishment of law and order and the devastating consequences it has caused by territorializing those basic social protections. The article concludes that the failure to exchange the enclaves displays the powerful role nationalist homeland narratives play in institutionalizing the concepts of sovereignty and territorial integrity, often at the expense of human rights.