Dynamics of Strategies for Survival of the Indigenous People in Southeastern Bangladesh

Abstract

The Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT), located in the southeastern part of Bangladesh, hosts 11 heterogeneous indigenous groups. Over time, the region has routinely been affected by successive intruders (i.e. Mughal, British, Pakistani, and Bengali). Since the mid-1970s, it has witnessed ethnic conflict between the indigenous people and Bengali migrants. The situation intensified in the wake of a state-sponsored transmigration program (1979 onwards), which not only changed the demographic profile of the CHT, but also forcibly displaced many indigenous people—who less than two decades earlier had already been displaced by a hydroelectric dam. Consequently, the indigenous people, already under duress, faced further survival problems in competition with the settler Bengalis, leading to an ongoing conflict situation. However, in 1997 a treaty was signed to end the two-decades-long bloody conflict. Even though 17 years have passed since the treaty was signed, the CHT remains neither peaceful nor secure for the indigenous people. Accordingly, the indigenous people have employed diverse strategies to manage survival in their own land. This paper is an effort to offer an insight into the survival strategies of the indigenous people living in the hills.

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank the anonymous reviewers (at Ethnopolitics) for their constructive critiques and suggestions. I am grateful to Professor Gyo Miyahara (Osaka University), for his patience and diligence during my study. Thanks are due to my friends, Matt Wilson (UCSB) and Gautam K. Bera (AnSI), for language help at a moment’s notice. I should be grateful to Prof. Karl Cordell, for his kind patience and constant enthusiasm for this piece to arrive at this point.

Notes

1. ‘Indigenous’ has a number of different meanings. Even within anthropology the concept of ‘indigenous’ people is complex (Barnard & Spencer, 1996/2010, p. 377). Autochthony is one of several characteristics of the definition of indigenous people (Saugestad, 2001, p. 43). In this paper, it is applied to the people who have lived in the CHT for a long time, as ‘first peoples’, before the advent of ‘outsiders’. Here, with regard to the dominance of one group over another, and especially the relationship of different groups to the state, the hill people are indigenous, local, or native in this sense that they are not only the first peoples of the region, but also those who have been engaged in the struggle for political rights, for land, for a place and space against the state authorities.

2. There is a debate about how many ethnic groups reside in the CHT. Some scholars cite the number of ethnic groups is 11, to some 13, to some others it is 12. See Ahamed (2012), Ahmed (1993), Ali (1993), Dalton (1872/1973), Hunter (1876/1973), Hutchinson (1906), Lewin (1869, 1885), Mey (2006), Mohsin (1997), R. C. Roy (2000), Sopher (1963, 1964), Uddin (2008), Uddin (2011), van Schendel (1992), van Schendel et al. (2000). Besides these 11 groups, there are two other groups, namely the Gurkha (Nepalese origin) and the Ahom or Assami (Assamese origin). They have been living in this region since the British colonial period without a ‘recognized’ identity; neither as ‘indigenous’ nor as ‘tribe’.

3. The local people of the CHT are called Pahari by the Bengalis while the PCJSS (a regional political party) called them Jumma. The term Jumma came from the local Chakma word, jum, for shifting cultivation; Tanchangya also use the same word (jum) to refer to their traditional shifting (slash & burn) cultivation. The PCJSS invented ‘Jumma’ as a shared identity of the indigenous people distinct from Bengali identity. Some scholars among the indigenous people, however, do not admit such livelihood-based identity or nationalism (e.g. G. B. Chakma, 1993).

4. Although many indigenous people suggest, the Census 2011 does not represent the accurate demographic picture. To them, the indigenous population had already been outnumbered by the Bengalis by 2000. They suspect the census because, according to Census 2001, the indigenous population was 592,977, while the Bengali population was 738,989. It is really confusing! Surprisingly, the Bengali population has decreased in a decade though the birth rate of the Bengalis is much higher (21.61/1000) than their counter parts.

5. Sopher refers to the Khyoungtha as ‘River men’, and Toungtha as ‘Mountain men’ (1964, p. 109).

6. The Gurkha and Ahom have also been residing in river-valleys since their arrival.

7. The Chittagong Hill Tracts United Peoples’ Party formed in 1972—the champion of the Pahari—the sole political party in the hills until the emergence of UPDF (United People's Democratic Front) in 1998.

8. An armed wing of PCJSS was formed by the indigenous youths (formed mostly by the Chakmas).

9. Bangladesh Rifles (BDR, a border force) was renamed as Border Guard Bangladesh in December 2010.

10. The Chittagong Hill Tracts was called Kapas Mahal (Cotton Territory) and later Jum Banga during Mughal period (R. T. Roy, 2003, p. 23).

11. Since the pre-colonial period, jum has been the means of principle livelihood means of the indigenous people ties with their everyday life, livelihood, and rituals.

12. To some others, however, the Regulation 1900 was the legal expression of the final destruction of ‘tribal’ self-government (Ali, 1993, p. 174).

13. The divide et impera (divide-and-rule) approach characterized British policy all along the empire's frontiers (Ali, 1993, p. 174). Regulation 1900 gave recognition to the chiefs of the Chakma and Marma, and made chiefs of the other groups subservient to them (Mohsin, 1997, p. 85).

14. The Two-Nation Theory was a negation of the philosophy that the Indian subcontinent has only one nation, subsuming all the inhabitants of the subcontinent into one nation. It argues that Indian subcontinent has two large communities, Hindus and the Muslims. The Two-Nation Theory (also known as the ideology of Pakistan) was the basis for the Partition of India in 1947. It stated that Muslims and Hindus were two separate nations by every definition, and therefore Muslims should have an autonomous homeland in the Muslim majority areas of British India in order to safeguard their political, cultural, and social rights, within or without a United India.

15. The indigenous people were not consulted prior the construction of the dam. The Pahari were not organized then in order to resist its construction. The Koel–Karo movement, however, is one of the rare examples of the successful prevention of the construction of massive dams on indigenous lands (a hydroelectric project planned on the South Koel and Karo rivers) in India with a long and rich history of determined struggles by tribal peoples against forces of displacement (Ghosh, 2006, p. 502).

16. According to German anthropologist, Löffler, this multiplicity of political borders is a postcolonial artifact (1994, p. 1).

17. This transmigration project proved popular among the plainsmen, because, Bangladesh is an overpopulated land; out of its total population of 11 million people (in mid-1970s), 6.18 million rural land-poor households belong to the category of functionally landless (0.05–0.49 acres) and marginal (0.50–0.99 acres) farmers (Sobhan, 1991, p. 31). The population density in the plains in 1980 was 1400 persons per square mile; on the other hand, vast tracts of land in the CHT were lying empty (Mohsin, 1997, 113); not more than 100 persons per square mile. However, the inhabitable and arable lands in the hills were not in plenty; arable per capita in CHT is 0.23 acres (0.09 ha), while the national average is 0.13 acres (0.05 ha) (Adnan, 2004).

18. Here it is pertinent to note that the settler Bengali coveted the relatively level land in the hill valleys and forcibly displaced hundreds of valley-dwelling peoples—e.g. the Chakma, Marma, Tripura, and Tanchangya. The Bengalis are used to cultivation in the plains and fishing, they do not know how to make a ‘hard’ living on the steep high hills, where livelihood totally depends on shifting cultivation in the hills.

19. A renowned scholar; he has been conducting research and writing on CHT since the early 1990s.

20. In the changed circumstances, the mountain-dwelling people (Toungsa) use terms such as powerless, weak, small, poor, and vulnerable to denote their current situation.