AMUSINGLY WEIRD BORDERS PT.2



Do you remember Baarle-Nassau and Baarle-Hertog? That was fun, right? But sometimes those kind of situations can lead to very serious situations. 

Let’s look down to border there was between India and Bangladesh few months ago. This border by itself had over 200 enclaves: 102 were Indian in Bangladesh, with 21 Bangladesh enclaves within them, and the only one “enclave, within an enclave within an enclave” in the world. India, in the other hand, had 71 Bangladesh enclaves, containing 3 Indian enclaves. And the worst of all: they were all planned, mapped… and controlled!

What kind of evil mind planned all this mess? Well, legends tell this enclaves were the result of card or chess games between two regional kings centuries ago. But what History in fact says is that in 1713, the Mughals and a regional kingdom, Koch Bihar, the two countries did not commonly agree a clear border between them, and so it became fuzzy. When borders had to be set clear, in 1949, all this mess up of enclaves was born.

The Indian "third order" enclave
This situation in fact led to a lot of trouble to people who lived there. Differing from Belgium and the Netherlands, India and Bangladesh don’t have open borders… so the minor enclaves’ residents were literally trapped: they had no light, water, gas, or even public services. In total, over 51,549 people were in this pity situation. That led both countries to start thinking to come to an agreement to unify that nasty border, and finally managed it in 7 May 2015.

Now, the border is (mostly) neat and clean. The problem now is: what country are those over 50,000 people from? Well, at least they can call the firemen if their houses set on fire…  

Enclave:
A country or part of a country surrounded by foreign territory –WordReference.com

 


     
Borders were, like any other, guarded every day
 Sources:


 

No comments:

Post a Comment