Reflexivity and emotion in the citizenship journey of stateless India-Bangladesh enclave dwellers

Abstract

The present study was conducted to understand the essence of the lived experience of the stateless erstwhile enclave dwellers in India and Bangladesh who later chose Indian citizenship during land and population swap between the two countries as per Land Boundary Agreement (2015). The study is phenomenological in nature and studies the phenomenon of living in statelessness in the Enclaves for generations, their emotions during transition and their pollyannaism after getting citizenship. The researchers conducted unstructured open ended interviews among the erstwhile enclave dwellers who were bestowed Indian citizenship and are living in India. Samples were taken both from the enclave dwellers who have been living in their own place and not displaced during land and population swap as per Land and Boundary Agreement (LBA) 2015, between India and Bangladesh and also from the enclave dwellers who had to move to the Indian mainland and are living in Permanent Rehabilitation Clusters (PRCs) provided by the Indian Authorities. All the participants of the study were male and their real names have been replaced by the pseudo names. The enclave dwellers reflected that the decades and generations of suffering from statelessness, lawlessness, lack of schools, hospitals and other civic amenities has cost their education, mental and physical health, dignity and identity. Though all the erstwhile enclave dwellers reflect on the statelessness and express their emotion on getting citizenship in the same way, but the pollyannaism of enclave dwellers who were not displaced by LBA 2015 and living in the ancestral place and those who are living in the PRCs are quite different.