Dahala Khagrabari

"Dahala" redirects here. For other uses, see Dahala (disambiguation).

Coordinates: 26°08′59″N 88°45′43″E / 26.14973888°N 88.76195555°E / 26.14973888; 88.76195555

Dahala Khagrabari (#51) (Bengali: দাহালা খাগড়াবাড়ী (#৫১)) was an Indian enclave located on the Bangladesh–India border belonging to the district of Cooch Behar in the state of West Bengal. This was a piece of India within a piece of Bangladesh within a piece of India within Bangladesh, making it the only third-order enclave (or counter-counter enclave) in the world until 1 August 2015, when it was ceded to Bangladesh.

Dahala Khagrabari was the only third-order enclave in the world.

At 7,000 square metres (1.7 acres)— approximately the size of a soccer field— it was one of the smallest of the India–Bangladesh enclaves: 106 Indian exclaves inside Bangladesh and 92 Bangladeshi exclaves inside India.

Overview

Dahala Khagrabari (#51) was completely encircled by the Bangladeshi village of 'Upanchowki Bhajni, 110' itself contained in the Indian village of Balapara Khagrabari, itself contained in the Debiganj, Rangpur Division, Bangladesh. Thus, Dahala Khagrabari was the enclave of an enclave of an enclave. In practice, it was a parcel of land used for farming and was not actually inhabited. It was separated by a few metres (yards) of Bangladeshi land from its first-order Indian enclave.^[1][2]

The owner of this enclave was a Bangladeshi farmer who lived in the enclave surrounding Dahala Khagrabari (#51).

Despite its small size, Dahala Khagrabari (#51) was not the smallest of the enclaves found on the Bangladesh–India border, the smallest being Panisala No. 79, an Indian enclave of 1,090 square metres (0.27 acres) in the Rangpur Division of Bangladesh.^[3]

Because of a lack of governance and unfavourable conditions faced by residents of the enclaves, in September 2011 the governments of India and Bangladesh announced their intention to resolve the issue by means of swapping 162 enclaves, giving residents a choice of nationality.^[4] On 6 May 2015, India ratified the Land Boundary Agreement and agreed to cede the enclave to Bangladesh.^[5]

See also

• India–Bangladesh enclaves

References

1. Guo, Rongxing (2017-10-23). Cross-Border Resource Management. Elsevier. p. 277. ISBN 978-0-444-64005-5.
2. Fessenden, Marissa (5 August 2015). "This Was the Turducken of Border Disputes". Smithsonian Magazine. from the original on 2015-08-07. Retrieved 2021-03-14.
3. Whyte, Brendan R. (2002). Waiting for the Esquimo: an historical and documentary study of the Cooch Behar enclaves of India and Bangladesh. Research paper. Vol. 8. The School of Anthropology, Geography and Environmental Studies, The University of Melbourne. ISBN 0-734-02208-5.
4. "Hope for Indo-Bangladesh enclaves". NDTV. 12 September 2011. Retrieved 12 September 2011.
5. Mislan, David Bell; Streich, Philip (2018-05-19). Weird IR: Deviant Cases in International Relations. Springer. pp. 37–39. ISBN 978-3-319-75556-4.

Further reading

• Taylor, Adam (1 August 2015). "Say goodbye to the weirdest border dispute in the world". Washington Post.
• Abheek Barman (23 April 2016). Celebrate our newest voters. The Economic Times.