For 250 Khasis in Moulvibazar’s Pallathal village, the loss of 146 hectares of paanjhum – betel leaf gardens – to India means the end of a way of life and increasing financial anxiety for the community.
Because the Land Boundary Agreement puts the land they once cultivated in India, some 50 Khasi families are being separated from their traditional source of livelihood. It is a matter of time before they must leave behind the land they tilled for generations.
But some indigenous rights activists are raising questions about the demarcation of the new international border.
“We have noted that the governments of India, Pakistan and Bangladesh have never obstructed Khasi people in their use of traditional land. But, after this recent survey, India has started to take possession of over 146 hectares of land which was historically owned by 50 Khasi families,” Bangladesh Adivasi Forum Secretary Sanjeeb Drong said.
“Boundary pillars were set keeping two-thirds of the traditional land of the local Khasi and Garo people inside India during the joint survey between India and Pakistan in 1947. However, India kept the traditional land of the people outside the fencing while setting up the border fence,” he added.
The transfer of the land is taking place under the Bangladesh – India Land Boundary Agreement of 1974 and enabling Protocol of September 2011. It was adopted on May 7, 2015 and later ratified on June 6, 2015.
Between July 31, 2015 and June 30, 2016 the physical exchange of exclaves and adverse possessions as well as the final boundary demarcation between Bangladesh and India will take place.
Already, bamboo pillars staking out India’s new territory are visible.
Annexure V to the Land Boundary Agreement reads: “The boundary shall be drawn from existing Boundary Pillar No 1370/3-S to 1371/6-S to follow the outer edge of the tea garden and from Boundary Pillar No 1372 to 1373/2-S along the outer edge of the pan plantation.”
Dipayan Khisha, vice-chairperson of the Kapaeng Foundation, a local indigenous rights based organisation, said: “Despite this section’s instructions, the joint survey team of India and Bangladesh did not survey following the agreement. When we visited, we found that a large amount of paanjhum land under Pallathal village is going into the possession of the Indian state.”
Local lawmaker Md Shahab Uddin denied allegations that the LBA had been “violated.”
“The land will pass into Indian possession according to the LBA. There is no violation of the agreement. The land was adversely possessed by Bangladesh since 1974 and India is now taking possession of it legally,” he said.
The 2011 protocol to the LBA acknowledges the complicated circumstances of such situations in section 4.C(ii): “People living in the Adverse Possessions are technically in occupation and possession of land beyond the boundary pillars, but are administrated by the laws of the country of which they are citizens and they enjoy all legal rights, including rights to vote. They have deep rooted ties to their land which goes back decades and are categorically unwilling to be uprooted.”
It continues: “Many local communities have sentimental or religious attachments to the land in which they live. Over time, it became extremely difficult to implement the terms of 1974 LBA as it meant uprooting people living in adverse possessions from the land in which they had lived all their lives and to which they had developed sentimental and religious attachments to.”
Nevertheless, the 2011 enabling protocol says India’s Assam state will cede 30 hectares of land to Bangladesh, while Bangladesh will give up 146 hectares of land in Moulvibazar’s Pallathal area.
This means Pallathal village’s Khasi community will have to vacate the land when the demarcation process is completed.
Lucas Bahadur, the Khasi punji montry or community head, told the Dhaka Tribune: “For generations we have lived off this land by cultivating paanjhum.”
He said the community had submitted complaints to the local member of parliament, the district commissioner, the upazila nirbahi officer, the upazila chairman and the National Human Rights Commission. “But we have not seen any initiatives from the government.”
Shahab Uddin, also a parliamentary Whip, told the Dhaka Tribune: “The government will try to relocate the affected Khasi people.”
The prospect of relocation is scant consolation for forty-five year-old Warless, an inhabitant of Pallathal village under Barlekha in Moulvibazar.
His face is lined with worry as considers the loss of six hectares of ancestral land and the only trade he has ever known.
“I had around 6,000 paan trees on my land. I will lose it all – my land and my livelihood.”