Banglaception!

I am usually not one for bombastic titles (I usually leave that for those pesky ‘click-me!’ websites with easily misinterpreted pictures and a very compelling question). However, recently I have come across something interesting so please bear with me. I was in this internet forum discussing borders and boundaries, and someone posted an image of the intertwined towns of Baarle-Nassau (Dutch) and Baarle-Hertog (Belgium). What’s remarkable is that in Netherlands, there’s a town which has a Belgian town in it. And this Belgian town has pieces of the Dutch town in it too. The map looks quite intriguing, although many would probably assume it to be a clusterfuck.

Somewhere along the border of India and Bangladesh you get pockets of Indian land in Bangladesh, and Bangladeshi land in India. These aren’t merely land in one country owned by the other—these are actual territories of one, completely landlocked in the other. How did this happen? Well, history can be very complicated, especially when it comes to borders. But this isn’t uncommon. It happens many other places too. The concept is called an enclave—a piece of land completely surrounded by territory of another country. What is unique however, is a third degree Indian enclave in Bangladesh called Dahala Khagrabari: a microscopic bit of India in a tiny bit of Bangladesh in a small piece of India in Bangladesh proper. That’s some scary Banglaception shit right there. Or maybe it’s Indiaception? I don’t know. I don’t even know if it was all a dream in the end. And why did that totem thing jig a little?

BANGLACEPTION.

Anyway, yes that’s it. Read on if you like, but it will mostly be about enclaves: town names and logic and wordsy words like contiguous.

In Bangladesh proper, you have a pretty large Indian enclave (about the size of a small district). In this enclave you have a small Bangladeshi village which perhaps the Bangladeshis wanted to keep some particular reason. In the middle of this village, however, is a football field-sized plot of land that is somehow India. Stepping into one plot of land into another, you are actually moving from one country to another. But of course this is a poor rural area, and the various my country, not my country debates often lead to neglect. So there are no fancy/cutesy signs on the borders, just a concrete stone marker. No immigration, nothing. However, there are people who say they have been shot for crossing into some of these enclaves. And of course bribing your way through these nondescript borders are a norm.

The Belgian town Baarle-Hertog is a Belgian enclave to/in the Netherlands—it is a piece of Belgium completely surrounded by Netherlands. Conversely (of course we’ll need a 'you' to match the 'I'), Baarle-Hertog is a Dutch exclave to Belgium. However, an enclave isn't necessarily an exclave. Argentina has a few islands completely in Paraguayan waters. Lesotho, for example, is an enclave in South Africa—it is completely landlocked. But it isn't a tiny piece of a bigger country—it is its own country—so therefore it cannot be an exclave as it doesn't have something else to be an exclave to. The Vatican City and Rome is a similar example. KL is a subnational enclave to Selangor, despite not being an exclave to anything else. Russia has an exclave hundreds of miles west of mainland Motherland bordered by Poland, Lithuania and the Baltic Sea, called Kaliningrad Oblast. While it is an exclave of Russia, it isn’t an enclave of anything as it isn’t completely surrounded by any one country. So an exclave-enclave therefore must be completely surrounded by another one country.

And then there are people who stretch the definition. These are called pene-enclaves or pene-exclaves. They are contiguous, but just not connected by land or road or rail or whatever. An example is the northeast corner of Connecticut, USA. Interstate 684 cuts it off, so that American Lane (and with it, Blue Sky Studios, the guys who made the Ice Age animation films) is only accessible through New York state. Closer to home, Limbang in Sarawak finds itself snug in between Bruneian waters to the north, mainland Brunei to the west and Brunei’s Temburong district to the east. It still is contiguous to the south with the rest of Sarawak, although there is the small matter of Gunung Mulu in the way. Thus the only roads leading to this district is through either side of Brunei. It is sort of exclaved since it’s inaccessible. Temburong too has a case of semi-exclavedness. It is surrounded by Sarawak, but also by Bruneian waters to the north. So a yes and a no. In Petaling Jaya's Section 16 you have streets that are party Selangor and partly Kuala Lumpur; I know someone whose post code is 46350, yet her neighbour's in 59100.

So you see, enclaves are fun! Or exclaves. Or whatever. It’s nice to have a piece of your country in another country (given the right circumstances, of course). It’s like an embassy that’s not so...embassy-ish. There's also negative enclaves. The United Kingdom once ceded a hospital to another country so its exiled ruler can have his son born 'in his country's soil'. Canada once ceded the maternity ward of a hospital (to no one at all) so a Dutch princess could be born 'not on Canadian soil' (because dual nationality would hinder her claim to her throne).

Now, here’s where we digress a little, as most of my writings tend to do. Russia has a hold of Kaliningrad for a good reason—it is the only port that is ice-free all year round. Some may have been irked at its annexation, but you can see why the Soviets wanted it. Why do we need Limbang? We always say we should be neighbourly and all that, friendly and whatnot. So why can’t we just give the Bruneians Limbang? Isn’t it quite annoying having a separate piece of land which requires you to pass through immigration and whatnot? (I’m not sure if there are checkpoints, but still). Does Limbang have something the rest of Sarawak doesn’t? Do we insist on controlling the rivers that flow to the Brunei Bay? Why? Someone enlighten me, please. Or is this one of those things where, if we give them one thing, they’ll ask for another and therefore we shouldn’t? The India-Bangladesh case too. Why have a village in your neighbour’s country, if that village cannot enjoy what the rest of you do? They have no schools, no hospitals. They are born without documentation, and they need visas to get to their country proper, so you have a vicious cycle. Is it that hard giving up your sovereign territory for something in exchange?