Encountering the state: situated strategies and perspectives of Tanchangya villagers in the Chittagong Hill Tracts, Bangladesh

ABSTRACT

Building on anthropological developments in the study of the state that highlight its margins, informal connections, and everyday dynamics, this paper examines the diverse strategies that Tanchangya villagers employ while negotiating peace and ‘development’ processes with local state actors in the Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT), Bangladesh. It shows that the state is manifested in various forms at the local level. In a myriad of forms of encounters with state actors, Tanchangya villagers employ situated strategies of avoidance, engagement, and resistance. The paper claims that these strategies ultimately contribute to challenge the dominant processes that confine Tanchangya villagers to a state of marginalisation, and aim to aid in the struggle to create greater spaces for the social, economic, and political dimensions of their lives. Thus, this paper offers an analysis of micro-power struggles that take place in the CHT’s rural spaces vis-à-vis the complex matrix of peace, citizenship, and ‘development’ in the region.

KEYWORDS:

• Bangladesh
• Chittagong Hill Tracts
• Tanchangya
• margins
• informality
• everyday state

Acknowledgements

I am grateful to Eva Gerharz and Shapan Adnan for their invaluable support and guidance in developing this paper. I would also like to thank all fellow colleagues who read and provided their insightful comments on the earlier versions of the paper. I am thankful to the anonymous reviewer(s) for their insightful comments in improving the quality of this paper. I thank Tom Triglone for his assistance in language editing. Finally, I am indebted to all research participants for their kind support and cooperation.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes on the contributor

Bablu Chakma is a PhD candidate in International Development Studies at the Institute of Development Research and Development Policy (IEE), Ruhr University Bochum. He is also an associate member at the Fulda Graduate Centre of Social Sciences (FGCSS), Fulda University of Applied Sciences. His research interests include survival strategies, everyday politics, human rights advocacy, social movements, critical agrarian studies, identity politics, and indigenous peoples’ issues in general.

Notes

1 The Tanchangya is one of 14 indigenous peoples found in the CHT, alongside ethnic Bengalis, the majority population of Bangladesh.

2 Ethnic groups indigenous to the CHT are now collectively known as Pahari or Jumma (hill people).

3 As opposed to the common understanding of ‘development’ as a vision and practice which embodies overwhelmingly positive change, I hold a critical view of the unquestioned usage of this term, particularly when taking into account the western invention of such categories as ‘developed’ and ‘underdeveloped’, in which unequal socio-economic-political positionings of groups of people are seen as something natural, often ignoring the historical roots behind these inequalities (see Woldeyes 2021).

4 The names of the research participants and the village presented here are pseudonyms.

5 This argument is founded on the claim of state-driven ‘genocidal processes’ enacted on indigenous people (see Levene 1999; Mey 1984).

6 Meyachara and its surrounding villages were not affected under the Bengali resettlement programme, due to the active lobbying of the local Tanchangya leaders. Therefore, the area does not have an associated history of violent encounters with women by the Bengali settlers and military, such as sexual assaults and rapes, such as has been experienced by indigenous women elsewhere in the CHT (see CHT Commission 1991; Nasreen 2017; Uddin and Gerharz 2017). During the escalation of military operations against insurgents, Tanchangya men would hide in the jungle to avoid the possibility of being targeted as insurgents or their collaborators and thus avoiding violent confrontations, while the women would take care of their homes and fields.

7 Locally known as bilati dhania, biledi baor or baor, a major crop in Ghagara-Wagga area.

8 Such camps can be set up for one to several nights.

9 The military can hand over people that they arrest/detain to the police after an interrogation, which often involves torture. In the case that a person is seriously injured following an interrogation, the police may not want to accept them because the responsibility for that person can then be transferred to them.

10 UP is a rural and the lowest governance unit in Bangladesh.

11 Although sarkar literally means government, people often use this term to denote both ‘government’ and ‘state’.

12 A few were also set up by the HDC and the Department of Public Health.

Additional information

Funding

The work was supported by the Bread for the World through a scholarship to pursue my PhD studies at Ruhr University Bochum (RUB). Additionally, I received a Research School PLUS grant (No. B_2019_01_001) of the RUB Research School to conduct my fieldwork.