Bliss at dawn for enclaves

At the stroke of the midnight hour as July turned August, thousands in the enclaves woke up to a new dawn.

The enclaves, whose origins are rooted in the medieval age to the days of the Cooch Bihar kings and the Mughals, have finally gone to the country to which it belongs.
 
The boundaries are finally straightened, nice and easy, the physical curves of the borders that haunted the nobody's peoples in a no man’s land is finally history.
 
Delwar Hossain, who teaches international relations at Dhaka University, insists it is a 'historic moment'.
 
"It is historic not only for the troubled population of the enclaves but also for India-Bangladesh relations," Hossain said.
 
He felt the end of the land boundary problem will help set the tone for resolving other bilateral disputes between the two friendly neighbours.
 
Past midnight on Friday, 111 Indian enclaves measuring 17,160 acres became Bangladesh territory. Similarly, 51 Bangladesh enclaves measuring 7,110 acres became Indian territory.
 
The boundary is now straight and clear, nobody's land hanging into the other's territory.
 
For the 50,000 plus population in these 162 enclaves, life had been nightmare all these years.
 
Now they are free, truly independent. 
 
More to follow