Mobility aspirations and indigenous belonging among Chakma students in Dhaka

ABSTRACT

In recent decades, indigenous people from the Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT) in South-east Bangladesh have experienced increased social and spatial mobility. This article investigates how indigenous students from the CHT region who have migrated to Dhaka redefine indigenous belonging. By highlighting the juxtaposition of different forms of mobility (physical and social) the paper responds to a recent trend which has only rarely been the subject of scholarly enquiry. In particular, it examines the experiences of mobility of individual students and explores the ways in which these students justify their quest for higher education to fulfil their aspirations for a better future. The paper also reveals the obstacles students experience in their everyday lives, mainly in the form of stereotypical, often racist talk. It discusses the structural disadvantages indigenous students face as members of ethnic minorities as well as the strategies employed by the students to counter them. Furthermore, the paper illustrates how indigenous students negotiate urban lifestyles and redefine modernity and indigeneity simultaneously and how migrants face exclusion based on static interpretations of people from the CHT as put forward in mainstream discourses as well as by transnational indigenous activist networks. These lead to feelings of alienation between indigenous students and their Bengali Bangladeshi peers, leaving students to increasingly draw on indigenous networks to achieve mobility.

KEYWORDS:

• Mobility
• belonging
• university education
• Chittagong Hill Tracts
• Bangladesh

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. Karim, ‘Pushed to the Margins’, 307.

2. Mohsin, The Politics of Nationalism, 57–58.

3. Bal, ‘Becoming the Garos of Bangladesh’, 210.

4. These interpretations can be traced to the colonial era when British anthropologists started using the classifications tribal and aboriginal, illustrating the need to examine how these classifications were put to use to reconstruct social worlds in South Asia. Dirks, Castes of Mind; Pannikar, Colonialism.

In these colonial discourses of difference, the way in which status became inscribed in the physical exteriors of colonial subjects has contributed to stereotypes in the present. Bal, We Eat Frogs.

People classified as tribal or aboriginal were described in texts and treated by various administrations as living in timeless harmony with nature, disturbed only in recent times by the market and the state. Shah, Shadows of the State.

The ways in which the importance of these classifications increased has had a lasting impact in Bangladesh, influencing contemporary perceptions of indigenous people as ‘exotic’, ‘tribal people’, notions that resemble romanticized images of noble savages during colonialism. Bal, We Eat Frogs.

5. Uddin Siddiqui et al., Bangladesh, 94.

6. Gerharz, ‘Recognising Indigenous People’.

7. See Uddin, ‘Decolonising Ethnography’; Ahmed, ‘Bangladesh’; Badaruddin, ‘The Chakmas and their Customary Laws’.

8. Semi-structured interviews were taken and discussion groups with students were organized. The discussion groups provided additional insights due to the interaction between different respondents and the explanations they provided to each other, for example, on the importance and interpretation of certain concepts. In addition to the interviews, Visser also employed participant observation, which was carried out by living among Chakma student migrants. Throughout the study, a multistranded methodological approach has been adopted, focussing not on bounded fields but on shifting locations reflecting the multiple entry points in respondents’ lives. See Gupta and Ferguson, Anthropological Locations.

Gerharz spent several months of fieldwork in the Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT) and Dhaka between 1999 and 2000 and from 2008 onwards. Her focus has been on ethnicity and development, post-conflict CHT and the translocalization of indigenous activism.

9. Gerharz, ‘Approaching Indigenous Activism’; ‘Indigenous Activism in Bangladesh’; ‘Recognising Indigenous People’.

10. Kuper, ‘Return of the Native’.

11. Brubaker, ‘Ethnicity without Groups’, 167.

12. Pfaff-Czarnecka and Toffin, ‘Belonging and Multiple Attachments’.

13. Ibid.

14. Kaufmann, Re-thinking Mobility; Hannam et al., ‘Mobilities, Immobilities and Moorings’; Urry, Mobilities.

15. Massey et al., ‘An Evaluation of International Migration Theory’.

16. This argument builds upon the vast body of globalization theories which, relying upon Harvey’s time–space compression thesis, conceptualize globalization in terms of intensifying global flows. Appadurai, Fear of Small Numbers.

17. Urry, Mobilities, 47.

18. Ishtiaque and Ullah, ‘Factors of Migration’; Feldman and Geisler, ‘Land Expropriation and Displacement’.

19. Lewis, Bangladesh, 163.

20. Islam, ‘Bangladesh’.

21. A crucial marker in the region’s history is 1860, when the British colonial administration took control of the region and introduced state institutions, including central taxation and a land system. In addition, the British sought to cut the region off from bordering areas, thus limiting the otherwise self-evident flow of migration and cultural influence between plains and hills, which led the region’s inhabitants to form a largely separate identity. van Schendel, ‘Invention of the “Jummas”’.

22. van Schendel, ‘Invention of the “Jummas”’, Mohsin, Politics of Nationalism.

23. Chakma, ‘Post-Colonial State’, 285; Karim, ‘Pushed to the Margins’, 306.

24. Mohsin, Politics of Nationalism.

25. van Schendel, History of Bangladesh; Hasan, ‘Democracy and Political Islam’.

26. Haque Khondker, ‘Secularism in Bangladesh’.

27. Arens, ‘Winning Hearts and Minds’.

28. Roy, Land Rights.

29. Levene, ‘“Creeping” Genocide’, 340.

30. Singh, Stateless in South Asia.

31. Bal, ‘Yearning for Faraway Places’.

32. The Australian Development Agency AusAid initiated an Australian Development Scholarship Programme for the CHT in 2006, under which a large number of students pursued higher education at Australian universities.

33. van Schendel, ‘Invention of the “Jummas”’.

34. As stated in the Chittagong Hill Tracts Peace Accord 1997, clause D10.

35. Krueger and Lindahl, ‘Education for Growth’.

36. Nath, ‘Students’ Learning Achievement’, 50.

37. Lewis, Bangladesh.

38. Interview with Jani, 6 March 2015.

39. Interview with Peter, 28 February 2015.

40. Pigg, ‘Investing Social Categories’.

41. Uddin, ‘Paradigm of “Better Life”’.

42. Tripura are one of the groups living in the plains of Bangladesh, the CHT, and also in neighbouring India.

43. On enquiring later what ‘people who mattered’ meant, she clarified that these were politicians or people with political connections.

44. Fieldnotes, 10 July 2014.

45. Badiuzzaman and Murshed, ‘School Enrollment Decisions’.

46. Ibid.

47. Here, referring to the different indigenous groups inhabiting the CHT.

48. Interview with Kishan, 28 June 2014.

49. Interview with Kamong, 2 February 2015.

50. Rahman, ‘Education Policy for Indigenous Minorities’.

51. Interview with Sander, 25 January 2012.

52. Interview with Jash, 12 March 2012.

53. Interview with Abhik, 7 March 2015.

54. Rangamati is the district capital of the CHT.

55. Interview with Karen, 3 March 2012.

56. Interview with anonymous monk, 18 March 2012.

57. Elder sister refers to her roommate who is 2 years older here, not a sister in kinship terms.

58. Interview with Karen, 27 February 2012.

59. Interview with James, 8 February 2012.

60. Thompson ‘Moral Economy’; Scott, Moral Economy; Evers, Moral Economy of Trade.

61. Gerharz, ‘Indigenous Activism in Bangladesh’.

62. Banderban is the name of one of the three sub-districts of the CHT, the others being Rangamati and Khagrachari. Banderban translates as ‘monkey forest’.

63. Interview with Joshua, 24 June 2014.

64. Interview with Monica, 3 March 2015.

65. See Bourdieu, Distinction.