A couple of comments on the recently-posted enclave article
>
> Background to the Dispute
> The problem of enclaves is a legacy of the dissipated life
> styles of the rulers of two former princely�of Cooch Behar in North
> Bengal and Rongpur in South Bengal (present day Bangladesh). The
> Rajas of the two princely states routinely staked pieces of their
> estates over a game of cards, and thus came to acquire pockets of
> land in each other's territory. The lands were pledged on piece of
> paper known as `chits' and hence, these lands are still
> called `chits'.
Rangpur (not Rongpur) is in north Bengal, not south Bengal! Because it fell entirely to Pakistan at partition, Rangpue can be said to have been in East Bengal, and not West Bengal, but certianly not south Bengal!
There is no historical evidence for the gambling anecdote, or other stories that the enclaves were hunting camps, or even created by the British when a drunken officer spilled drops on ink on a map. These stories seem to cast aspersions on historic figures which are not justified. Most evidence suggests the enclaves were formed by the Mughal-Cooch Behar peace treaty of 1713, when the chaklas of Boda, Patgram and Purvabhag were ceded to the Mughals, although the Maharajah of Cooch Behar retained their zamindari (which his heirs did until the post-1947 land reforms). Thus it would seem that the lands he held were patchworks of different chaklas, similar to feudal landholdings in Europe. Until a copy of this treaty is unearthed (I could find no trace of it, and even the official histories of Cooch Behar written in 1903 and 1936 mention, but do not quote it), the question remains moot, but I am not convinced by the tales of gambling of villages.
The ownership of these enclaves devolved upon India
> and East Pakistan after partition in 1947. Sir Cyril Radcliffe drew
> the dividing line as the parties involved failed to arrive at any
> agreed border. He was concerned with not disturbing the `railway
> communications and river systems' rather than the issue of
> enclaves.
Radcliffe is often blamed in the Indian media for the enclaves surviving past 1947. However, his brief was to partition Bengal into Muslim and non-Muslim areas. Cooch Behar was a Princely State, and not part of Bengal. He had no power to do anything at all with regard to Cooch Behar. It just so happened that the Muslim-dominated area abutted southern Cooch Behar, and Hindu-majority area abutted the north, so that Cooch Behar ended up straddling the Bengal partition line. Some enclaves of cooch Behar fell within India, and were later absorbed into Jalpaiguri district.
However, others, in Assam (and assamese enclavesi n Cooch Behar) were not absorbed by the host district/state, and remain at a state level to this day.
Further, most Princely states and provinces of British India were riddled with enclaves. Menon and others tried to exchange these in the late 40s/early 50s, and mostly succeeded. More were eliminated when the states were reorganised on linguistic lines in 1956.
Many still exist however, as can be seen in Dadra-Nagar Haveli, Pondicherry, etc.
Back to Radcliffe, he partitioned Bengal. Cooch Behar's maharajah then had the right to accede to India or Pakistan. Being Hindu with a Hindu-majority population, he chose India, and the state became a Chief Commissioner's Province in India in late 1949, and was merged into West Bengal as a district in early 1950. Whichever way he could have chosen, there would have been enclaves of India in Pakistan and vice versa. Radcliffe had nothing to do with it in this regard.
Brendan Whyte
University of Melbourne