Indo-Bangla Boundary agreement: India's Thank You for letting Assam sleep in peace, writes Shashi Tharoor

Of the many decisions made in both houses of Parliament during the last session, the most momentous decision was undoubtedly the vote to regularise a boundary dispute with Bangladesh that dates back to the partition of the subcontinent in 1947.

The Partition of India by the British was a slapdash affair, concocted by a collapsing Empire in headlong retreat from its responsibilities. The border between the new states of India and Pakistan was hastily drawn by a lawyer, Sir Cyril Radcliffe, who had never visited India, and left numerous practical problems in its wake. In the Eastern part of Pakistan, now (since 1971) the independent country of Bangladesh, Radcliffe’s lines left two sets of anomalies behind: territories “awarded” to one country that the other country (and its citizens) refused to relinquish (known to the lawyers as “adverse possessions”), and tiny enclaves formally belonging to one country but located within, and totally surrounded by, the territory of the other.There are 111 Indian enclaves in Bangladesh spread over 17,000 acres and 51 Bangladesh enclaves in India spread over 7,110 acres, so that a settlement would involve a net transfer of some 40 square kilometres of territory from India to its eastern neighbour.

Initial attempts to resolve these anomalies soon foundered on the hostility that sprung up between the two nations soon after Partition. Bangladesh’s independence from Pakistan as a result of Indian intervention in 1971 opened up the possibility of a resolution, and a Land Boundary Agreement was actually concluded in 1974, but a military coup in Bangladesh and subsequent strains in the relationship with India put that agreement on indefinite hold. Though there were periodic bouts of bonhomie in the two countries’ relationship through the 1990s, a succession of Indian governments proved unable, or unwilling, to squander the political capital necessary to legitimise the transfer of territory required to settle the dispute.

In 2011, then Prime Minister Manmohan Singh pushed anew for a permanent settlement, but his efforts stumbled in the face of domestic resistance, both from a coalition ally and from the Opposition, especially the BJP, whose votes would have been indispensable for the Constitutional amendment required to implement the deal.The BJP had blocked the bill in Parliament, with the then Leader of the Opposition in the Upper House, Arun Jaitley, a lawyer himself, arguing last year that the territory of India is an integral part of the Constitution and "cannot be reduced or altered by an amendment."

The BJP’s victory, however, was followed by a U-turn on most of the policy positions it had adopted in Opposition. The boundary with Bangladesh proved no exception. Visiting Dhaka as her first foreign stop after becoming Foreign Minister, the BJP’s Sushma Swaraj pledged to go through with the Land Boundary Agreement, and referred it to the Parliamentary Standing Committee on External Affairs for review. The Committee, which I head, deliberated over three weeks of hearings, summoning senior representatives of the Foreign Ministry, the Home Ministry and the government of the most affected state, West Bengal. On Monday 7 December, it unanimously recommended that Parliament proceed to ratify the Constitutional Amendment. Mr Jaitley, now the country’s Finance Minister and a prominent member of the Cabinet, refrained from reiterating his previous views, and with Prime Minister Modi himself announcing his support for the deal, passage through Parliament seemed assured. But it took the Government four more months – and a last-minute hurdle in the form of a demand by the Assam unit of the BJP that that state be left out of the deal, something stoutly resisted by the Congress – before they finally brought it to Parliament, unchanged, for passage.

The agreement faced no hurdles in Bangladesh, which gains the most from a settlement, both territorially and in stature in relation to its giant neighbour. In India, the most problematic issue remains the perception of a surrender of territory. It has never been sufficiently explained to the public that neither country will, in fact, actually be giving up any territory it currently controls. The enclaves are lawless tracts within sovereign countries, where the writ of their nominal overlord does not run. India, for instance, has no access to the Indian enclaves within Bangladesh – there are no customs posts, border markings, post offices or police thanas to reflect their notional Indian sovereignty. The people inhabiting these enclaves are theoretically Indian citizens, without any of the rights and privileges Indian citizens in the rest of India are able to exercise. Ending the anomaly will merely regularise the reality, and any loss of territory is purely on paper.

Still, any residents of the Indian enclaves who wish to migrate to India after the settlement would have a legal right to do so. If they fail to exercise this option, their status is converted to Bangladeshi, along with the territory they inhabit. Most people are expected to opt to remain where they are, though, since any connection to the rest of India must have faded since 1947.

The agreement, once it comes into force, will be a major boost to the already warm relations between New Delhi and Dhaka. The Awami League government in Bangladesh under Sheikh Hasina Wajed, which returned to power this year after a controversial election boycotted by its principal Opposition, has extended India an unprecedented level of co-operation in the area of security and counter-terrorism. 
Under less friendly regimes, Bangladesh had been a haven for assorted terrorist and militant groups who used to wreak havoc in India and find refuge in Bangladesh. Hasina’s government has not just denied these groups shelter but actively intercepted them, arrested some of their leaders and even handed wanted terrorists over to the Indian government. As she pointed out to me when we met in Dhaka last year, if bombs are not going off in Assam these days, it is because of her Government’s actions against the terrorists who used to set them off.

If Indians and in particular Assamese are sleeping safer these days, it is thanks to the government in Dhaka. Giving Bangladesh legal rights to territory within its own borders is the least India can do to say thank you. With the 100th Constitutional Amendment, we have finally done so. 

The writer is a Member of Parliament from Thiruvananthapuram