Lefo Gerharz

Eva Gerharz
Eva Gerharz: The Construction of Identities: The Case of the Chittagong Hill Tracts in Bangladesh
Contents
1. Introduction 1.1. The People of the Chittagong Hill Tracts 1.2. Theoretical Presumptions 2. Methodology 2.1. Applied Methods Expectations and Reality 2.2. The Necessity of Somebody Who Takes Care 3. The Chittagong Hill Tracts and the Nation-State 3.1. British Colonialism and the Pakistan Period 3.2. Bangladesh Becomes Independent 3.2.1. Politics of Nationalism 3.2.1. A Question of Identity The New State of Bangladesh and the Hill People 4. Economy and Disadvantage - Land as an Essential Need 4.1. The Kaptai Hydroelectric Project and Its Impact on Land Issues 4.2. The Settlement Programme of the Bangladeshi Government 4.3. A Demographic Shift and Its Political Dimension 4.4. The Tribal Market in Rangamati 4.5. Economy and Trade 4.6. How the Hill People Perceive Their Economic Position 5. Education 5.1. The State of Education among the Hill People 5.2. The Advanced Position of the Chakma 6. Cultural differences Cultural Habits and Their Importance 6.1. Dress 6.2. Language 6.3. Religion 6.4. The Boundary-Markers as One Aspect of Identity Construction 7. The Peace Accord A Political Solution 7.1. Development Issues National NGOs in the Chittagong Hill Tracts 7.2. Another Insurgency? 8. Conclusion References Appendix: Glossary of Foreign Words, List of Abbreviations, Pictures, Maps
Construction of Identities in the Chittagong Hill Tracts
1. Introduction Bangladesh and Its Minorities

Bangladesh is one of the most homogeneous states as regards ethnic and religious differences. The vast majority of the population (86.7%) are Muslims, 12.1% Hindus and the rest, 1.2% are Buddhists, Christians and Animists. Those who are non-Muslims live in different communities spread all over the country. As the Hindus are chiefly counted as Bengalis, a very little minority belongs to those entitled as ethnic communities (Khaleque 1995, 9) or tribals1 . How many groups there actually are, is controversially discussed in the literature and varies between 12 and 46. According to the 1991 census there are 29 different ethnic groups living in Bangladesh, but even the census, which is carried out every 10 years, is disputed, as some groups are mentioned twice with different names while others are left out of the scheme. Leaving out the clarification of that question, approximately 1.2 Million Bangladeshis belong to these groups according to the 1991 census (Khaleque 1995). The different communities vary broadly besides in religious, linguistic and cultural features, in the grade of acculturation and resistance. The Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT) and its inhabitants can considered to be extraordinary in respect to historical developments and present political affiliations2 . The indigenous population of the CHT is estimated at approximately 530,0003 , that is 0,45% of the whole population More than 20 years of armed resistance have led the CHT to get special attention in Bangladesh as well as across its borders in comparison to the other indigenous groups in Mymensingh, Jamalpur and Sylhet4 .
1.1. The People of the Chittagong Hill Tracts Geographically the Chittagong Hill Tracts are located in the south-east of Bangladesh, next to the border of Myanmar and the Indian states Tripura and Mizoram. The total land area comprises about 12,181 square kilometres and constitutes about 10% of the total area of Bangladesh (Ahsan, 1989, 961). The landscape of the Chittagong Hill Tracts is amazing, with its comparatively small hills covered by jungles and jhum5 , while the fertile valleys look a
This term has been preferably used by the Bangladeshis, for ascription as well as self-ascription. Having in mind the negative connotation of that term related to tribalism, I will try to avoid its usage if possible. Preferred comp arable terms are Hill People, indigenous, jhumma or peoples 2 Although resistance and rebellion have happened among the Garo for example (Khaleque 1995). It is not my intention to marginalise these, but the CHT case has gained most attention in the recent in national politics as well as regarding international recognition 3 Numbers from the Statistical Pocketbook Bangladesh 98 4 For the spatial distribution of the different indigenous groups see Khaleque (1995, 13). 5 Jhum means shifting cultivation. The term also relates to the fields in which this mode of cultivation is practised
Eva Gerharz
little bit like paradise when they appear in front of someone who reaches the top of a hill. I have never seen such natural, green and beautiful scenery before. The Chittagong Hill Tracts are divided into three districts6 , Bandarban, Rangamati and Kagrachari. Rangamati as the biggest district has an area of 6,089 square kilometres and is divided into nine thanas. Bandarban, the southern district covers about 4,502 square kilometres, subdivided into seven thanas. The smallest district is the northern Kagrachari, covering 2,590 square kilometres and divided into eight thanas (Ullah 1995, 99). The inhabitants are categorised into 13 different groups7 . The major ones are the Chakma, Marma and Tripura, the minor ones are: Tanchangya, Riyang, Khumi, Murong, Lushai, Kuki, Bawm, Kheyang, Pankhua and Chak8 . Every group has its own language, dress and social customs, so that one can say that every one has its own culture9 . These groups can be roughly divided into two categories: the valley groups, comprising Marma, Chakma and Tripura, and the others who live on the ridges of hills.10 There has always been a small minority of Bengalis in the area, as well as some non-tribal Hindu communities and non-tribal Buddhists. Until 1951 the population remained small in numbers; the population census of that year estimated a density of 57 inhabitants per square kilometre, which has grown to 190 per square kilometre until 1991.11 In the following I will give a short description of the main groups which I have selected on the basis of my experiences in the field.
Chakma: The Chakma are the biggest group among the Hill Peoples. They belong to the Mongoloid group and their language originates in the Indo-Aryan group. Their descent is unclear, a they s have, like the other groups, no written history and different theories about their origin. Some
6 7
See map in appendix Again the number varies. Some authors mention less or more than 13, for example Bernot (1960) mentions 10. My decision to assume there are 13 groups is backed by Mohsin (1997), Shelley (1992) and my Chakma informants in the field 8 In the literature the spelling of the names varies. Shelley (1992, 45) examines these most broadly 9 For the conception of culture which is used in this paper see Chapter 6 10 T.H. Lewin who served as an British administrator in the 19th century in the hills and who has published two basic ethnological books on the Chittagong Hill Tracts named them according to this distinction Khyoungtha and Toungtha which is Burmese-Arakanese and means children of the river and children of the hills 11 To recognise the immense growth of the CHT is important for several reasons. Until the Pakistan regime the area was an excluded area which means that no one could settle in the CHT if he had not got permission from the tribal-chiefs and the deputy commissioner. Later under Bangladesh regime the CHT were used to rehabilitate landless Bengalis from the plains. The influx of these settlers enlarged the density of population immensely, especially the non-tribal portion.
consider the Chakma to be of Muslim origin, other theories, particularly those which are propagated by the Chakma themselves, tell that they migrated from a place called Champaknagar12 to the Hill Tracts (Mohsin, 1997, 12ff). This unclearness is sometimes utilised for political discussions, as they are regarded as being a rootless tribe by Abedin13 (1997, 58). The Chakma are Buddhists, whose society shows patriarchal patterns, and they are not just numerically the dominant group in the CHT. Most of the political leaders who influence the policies and processes of decision are members of the Chakma, as well as those taking part in insurgency actions.14 They are concentrated in Rangamati and Kagrachari district. In Rangamati they are the vast majority of the indigenous populations and the Rajbari15 of the Chakma chief is located there.
Marma: The Marma, who also belong to the Mongoloid group are Buddhists as well. The Marma community is divided into two; one mainly lives in and around Bandarban, the other in Kagrachari. 16 Both of these groups came from Arakan in Burma. The word Marma itself d erives from the name Myanmar for the Burmese nation (Prue, 1994, 1). The southern Marma came to the Chittagong area in the 17th century, went back to Arakan in 1756 under Moghal pressure until they finally reached Bandarban in the 19th century. The northern Marma were refugees driven out of Arakan some time later (Mohsin 1997, 15). As I was told at the Tribal Cultural Institute in Bandarban, the Marma language and script (which is almost forgotten) is very similar to Arakanese. Unusual for the CHT groups is the latent bias towards matriarchal societal structures among the Marma, which is revealed by the literature (Shelley 1992, 53). My empirical data show that the Marma gender order can considered to be extraordinary in comparison to the Bengali society17 . Norms in respect to the occupation of public spaces for
12
There is no hint to find where the city of Champaknagar was. Some theories maintain that it was located near Malacca, in Tripura, in Bihar or somewhere in Thailand 13 His opinion about the other groups is not better. In the Chapter CHT: Home of Alien Tribes he writes: All the tribes living in the CHT are outsiders and none of them are sons of the soil (Abedin 1997, 53) 14 The Chakma-dominance among the hill people will be explained and analysed more broadly in the following chapters. This fact is essential for the understanding of the dynamics of ethnicity and identity-construction. 15 The chiefs residence 16 Mohsin tells that they had two chiefs, the Bohmang Raja in Bandarban, the Mong Raja in Ramgarh. The community was divided by the Karnafuli river, those living south were headed by the Bohmang chief, those living in the north were ruled by the Mong chief. Of interest here are the southern Marma, since I have been in Bandarban and have very little knowledge about the northern group. As I was told the difference is not of great importance 17 During my field work I observed that the gender order among the Hill People varies to some extent from that of the Bengali society. These differences can be traced back to religion for example and will be examined in Chapter 6 more broadly
Eva Gerharz
example are very different to those of the Bengali community and even to those of the other Hill People. Smoking in public spaces is not a taboo for them. Receiving guests in a Marma house is the task of the woman. I have heard several times in the field: our women are very active.
The Hindu18 Tripura are the third largest group. Since they have no chief of their own, the Tripura live within the jurisdictions of Marma or Chakma rajas. Their origin is considered to be in the Indian state of Tripura, which borders on t e northern part of the CHT. The Tripura h are mainly concentrated in the northern Kagrachari district. The Murong are living predominantly in Bandarban district. They are Animists and have no religious book. Their cultural background and their social customs are sometimes regarded as extraordinary19 . The Murong believe that a bull was sent by their god Turai to carry the religious book but had eaten it up on the way (Mohsin 1997, 18). Informants told that they have special rituals like playing their pipe in return for baksish. The Chak and Tanchangya are considered as sub-groups of the Chakma. In general there has been very little knowledge about the smaller groups, since they lived isolated from the others (Mohsin, 1997, 20).
1.2. Theoretical Presumptions Theories on identity construction are broad. Among the theories on the construction of ethnic identity, likewise national identity, two guiding positions can be distinguished. The first comprises the idea that ethnicity is a stable, contingent characteristic, tied to social circumstances, in which individuals are socialised and to which they belong. Contrasting this primordialist perspective, an instrumentalist perspective, grounded in the work of Frederic Barth (1969), has been developed, which largely dominates the discourse on ethnicity. The instrumentalist notion can be supplemented by a third strain, the idea of rational choice (Kler 1995, 3). The combination of these two ideas comprises the assumption that ethnicity is seen as a construction, an invention20 , on the one hand, and that ethnicity can be the result of a rational choice, a strategy, on the other hand. That theorem, guided by an idea of constructivism, comprises according to Barth (1998, 6) three main features. First, ethnicity is the social organisation of cultural difference. Second, ethnicity is a matter of self-ascription and ascription by others in
18
According to my field experience there are some Tripura who have converted to Christianity. That fact does not appear in the literature 19 Literature: Schendel 1992a, Shelley 1992, 54. In the Bengali society a visitor will consider various kinds of stereotypes towards the CHT peoples in general.
interaction and therefore constructed by the actors
themselves.
Third,
the
boundary-
connectedness of cultural features, implying that the actors themselves develop diacriteria along which members and non-members are categorised, included or excluded. The key element of ethnicity is the stability of boundaries between groups (von Bruinessen 1997, 196). The cultural features themselves are flexible. According to rational decisions these markers can be constructed: clothing, language, food habits, religion or modes of cultivation gain importance, whenever rational calculation stresses their concern. A common history can be invented, whenever it is considered to be necessary. Cultural features can become activated, when pressure from outside for example requires (Kler 1995, 4). Pressure can have its origins in political as well as economic processes (Schlee 1996, 20), the resulting inclusion based on cultural features then affects those processes vice versa. At the same time flexibility of cultural features can have the establishment of various identities as a consequence: Depending on the concern which is considered to be important, different identities are stressed: in the case of the Hill People three or more different levels cant be distinguished: the Bangladeshi identity, the Hill Peoples identity, the groups identity and the clans identity. Schlee (1996) defines these as pluritactic constructions. Starting from this very general theoretical base, after presenting the methodology, I will first examine the development of nationalism and counter-nationalism in Bangladesh and the Chittagong Hill Tracts. Mechanisms of inclusion and exclusion related to political processes are explored here. Secondly economic processes are analysed with regard to their importance for processes of group-formation. Education in Chapter 5 is treated as a kind of excurse. After analysing three exemplary markers, cultural features will be the focus of Chapter 6, embedded into a theoretic conclusion. As a question of current interest the Peace Accord is examined and an outlook about the development of ethnic relations in the CHT will be given here. The main aspects will be summarised in a final conclusion.
2. Methodology
You should always keep in mind three things. First, you are in a tribal area. Second, tribals are shy. Third, they are sensitive To investigate identity construction I conducted field work in the Chittagong Hill Tracts. In the beginning organisational problems hindered my attempt to start, but after two weeks acclimatisation in Bangladesh I found a NGO with projects in the CHT, namely the Integrated
20
Revealed by Hobsbawms notion on the invention of Tradition (Der Spiegel 1999 Nr. 52, pp. 144-148)
Eva Gerharz
Development Foundation (IDF). The field trip consisted of three phases: First I spent eight days in Rangamati and immediately after one week in the southern district of Bandarban21 . After a break of approximately two weeks I returned to Rangamati for another nine days. Helpful like all Bangladeshis, in my experience , IDF organised my first journey to Rangamati and a suitable accommodation. Besides my hosts interest in my work they had enough time to introduce me to different areas of social life in the area of Rangamati in the Hill Tracts. The host provided me with access to members and leaders of the local elite as well as to people of lower socio-economic status and villagers around Rangamati. An immense advantage for the field entry was my hosts knowledge of English, which made it possible to do research without finding an interpreter first. The difficulties of understanding, which are discussed by Bernard (1995, 145) were not as problematic because even among the villagers a lot of people know English and if necessary my informants translated. Additionally IDF gave me the chance to visit development projects in the area and provided an insight into their work in general. Besides that I was able to use the contacts of the host-family to visit other NGOs as well as governmental development organisations. Through these contacts my sample was largely influenced: finding people for interviews presupposes that the researcher knows somebody who knows someone and so on. The fact that I had, by accident, wonderful informants differing in age and position, provided me with contact to a broad variety of interviewees. To realise the idea of theoretical sampling (Strauss 1994) to a certain extent was therefore easy, as I was still able to express preferences about whom I would like to meet besides the contacts I got through the family contact in general22 . During the first time I spent in Rangamati I talked to several members of the traditional elite, teachers, people working in government jobs and international organisations, employees of several NGOs and their members, former insurgents, unemployed people, villagers and several members of the political elite. During the second term at Rangamati I visited additionally the Tribal Cultural Institute and some other villages; furthermore I intensified some of the former contacts. The sample consisted exclusively of Chakma apart from contacts I had to a few Bengalis. This is indeed not a representative sample for investigating an area in which 13 different indigenous groups are living, besides many Hindu and Muslim Bengalis and smaller non-indigenous and nonBengali groups23 . But the limitedness of the time-frame as well as the fact that the indigenous
21
My experiences in Bandarban will be described later. The two cases are kept apart as the experiences are quite different 22 It was impossible of course to reach a certain saturation of the sample 23 The Barua mentioned in Chapter 6
population
of
Rangamati
is
predominantly Chakma24 turned out to be a structural con-
straint. Contacts to Bengalis were even more difficult as in this conflict-ridden area ethnic segregation is well practised. Having once access to the Chakma circle, I recognised it as e xtremely difficult to establish any connection to Bengali inhabitants, except formal contacts to shopkeepers for instance.
2.1. Applied Methods - Expectations and Reality According to Lentz (1992, 320f) qualitative methods are appropriate when the researcher does not have much knowledge about the field. The close relationship to my host-family was a good basis for concentrating on participant observation (Bernard 1995, 136ff). Especially during the first days I was very curious about everything that I observed, that was different from my own or the Bengali society. Every detail had to be considered as being important (Bernard 1995, 147). Besides participant observation I made interviews which turned out to be quite different from what I expected. As my research topic is a very sensitive one, a lot of distrust and reluctance hampered collecting the data. Using a recorder while interviewing was impossible and formal interview-situations turned out to be counter-productive. Whenever a classical interview-situation25 appeared, the quality of the gained information was reduced to a non-satisfying level. I got the impression that people became suspicious whenever they were reminded that I am not just a visitor but a researcher. Informal interviews, talks, conversations while having a drink and sitting together on the other hand were very informative. In these situations people sometimes chatted among themselves, from time to time somebody summarised the conversation for me. Whenever I had any questions I could address these openly. In some situations I became aware that people took me for a donor or some representative and started to complain about their disadvantaged situation as a minority, which is of course quite important but limited my possibilities in investigating issues related to every-day life. When I got an audience from Shantu Larma for example my informant in advance and Shantu himself during the talk asked me directly to do something for the CHT and support the
24
Although eight different groups are scattered throughout Rangamati district (Ullah 1995, 99), most of them are living in remote villages which I could not reach during the short time I had. The Bengali population is approximately 50% 25 The situation of a researcher addressing serious questions to an interviewee
Eva Gerharz
implementation of the Peace Accord officially. I was merely put into an advocacy-role (Lachenmann 1995, 6), although I always emphasised that I am not an influential person. The close relationship to my informants and interviewees turned out to be more problematic than expected. As Levi-Strauss (1978, 378) notes, a researcher has two possibilities: to represent the values of ones own group or to submit oneself totally to the others, which implies loss of objectivity. In my case it was merely a question of sympathy for either the Hill People or Bangladesh and the Bengalis. Sometimes I found myself in the position of judging too fast without considering my situation as a researcher, who is asked to have a merely neutral position (Lachenmann 1995, 6). Statements like these Bengalis are all the same whenever there was reason to complain influenced me so, that I had some problems to force m yself to take a neutral position again. Being encapsulated in the field I recognised from time to time as being an enormous emotional burden. The destiny of some people I was confronted with in the context of 25 years armed conflict was sometimes hard to bear. The good understanding and warm kindness I experienced during my field work26 , whilst limiting my objectivity enor-
mously sometimes, gave me at the same time the possibility to get very attached to the field, a necessity for good participant observation.
2.2. The Necessity of Somebody Who Takes Care After the first week in Rangamati I spent a further one organised by IDF in Bandarban. The research situation was quite different as it was only possible to find accommodation in a h otel. The field access was even more difficult because I did not get an informant with the
necessary ability to communicate in English. This was the first time I realised the language problem mentioned by Bernard (1995, 145f), which hampered the process of gaining information immensely and produced a lot of misunderstandings27 . Making appointments for instance was difficult for myself as I had not enough knowledge to find the people, finding someones house was already complicated enough28 .To overcome the distance to the field, I recognised the opportunity to try new methods like formal and expert interviews. Additionally I could profit from having different informants which opened new fields and situations. This mix of
26
Without the Bengali habit of staring at me wherever I appeared, which got on my nerves quite a lot sometimes when in Bengali dominated areas. A habit which influenced my sympathy immensely, when I recognised the shy behaviour of the Hill People in observing me. Even in the villages people came, as if by accident, to have a look at me from a safe distance 27 In Bandarban I got the impression that there is a visible difference in the state of education in comparison to the Chakma (examined in Chapter 5). Communication was even harder as the diversity of groups is broader and with this the languages 28 As there are no street-names and numbers
different methods and changed perspectives, which are known as triangulation in the qualitative research methodology (Flick 1995, 250), was an important component of my research process. Besides difficulties concerning the field-entry the police of Bandarban became suspicious about my work. They realised that I am not just a tourist I had to visit the police office regularly to report about my activities. Having only a few references to justify my stay in Bandarban, no direct contact to anyone who could defend me, the situation turned to be problematic and caused an earlier departure than had been planned. Again, that problem of being thought a spy must be considered as a danger of certain field work in general (Bernard 1995, 144). It would have been helpful to have an official research permit. Altogether I interviewed some members of the traditional elite of the Bandarban Marma circle, employees of various developmental organisations from different departments29 , activists in the JSS office in Bandarban and the political elite, some intellectuals of various occupations, members of the credit programmes of IDF, employees and students of a residential school and normal families. The interviewees were mainly Marma, a few Tripura and Murong as well as Bengalis. Although my sample and the information I got satisfied me afterwards, the feeling of not getting real access to the field was there during my stay in
Bandarban. Without being in close touch with someone, fieldwork can turn out to be problematic.
3. The Chittagong Hill Tracts and the Nation-State

To understand the problem of the Chittagong Hill Tracts it is essential to have some knowledge about the history, said an informant before he started to explain the historical development of the conflict between the Hill People and Bangladesh. For my research purposes, the analysis of the development of the ethnic segregation and the construction of identity, investigating history and development of the nation-state is particularly essential. In this chapter I will roughly describe some major changes in the period of British colonialisation and the massive ones during the Pakistan period, in which the patterns of life changed totally especially with the establishment of the nation state and the construction of the Kaptai dam30 . After Bangladesh became independent in 1972, the Bangladesh nationalist movement created rising insurgency, which lasted until December 1997. A peace treaty between the
29 30
For example an agriculturist, a health worker and co-ordinators of credit programmes As an very important issue the Kaptai Dam will not just be of interest here but in Chapter 4.1 as well.
Eva Gerharz
Bangladesh government and the Paratya Chattrogram Jana Sanghati Samiti (PCJSS), the political front of the Chittagong Hill Tracts people, was signed.
3.1. British Colonialism and the Pakistan Period There is no literature about the CHT before the establishment of British colonial power to be found. As in many societies with limited access to writing and reading, knowledge about the past is based on oral history. The first person who wrote about the CHT was Francis Buchanan, who travelled Southeast Bengal in 1798 in search of places for the cultivation of spices (van Schendel 1992). Later the British administrators Hutchinson (1906) and Lewin (1869) published the first quasi-ethnologic studies of the area31 . They pointed out that the a dministration, the social structure and political system were of a typical tribal character in a clan-order. In the hills the different peoples were basically self-governing small entities without highly formalised political systems, whereas the people in the plain were always subject to an external power. (Bangladesh Group Nederland: Roy 1995, 50)
British Colonialism: The Chittagong Hill Tracts were ceded to the British East India Company by Nawab Mir Qasim Ali Khan, who was the semi-independent governor under the Moghals in 1760. Until 1900 the main objectives by which the British policy was guided were the protection of the own political, economic and military interests as well as keeping the Hill People segregated from the Bengalis (Mohsin 1997, 26). In 1860 the area was separated from the district of Chittagong and became the Chittagong Hill Tracts as it remained until today. But the British colonialists did not establish any administrative structure worth mentioning, as the contacts were limited to the payment of taxes (Shelley 1992, 28). Their policies included the legal and judicial system was being simplified so far that the Hill People could retain their traditional norms and institutions (Ahsan 1989, 962). According to the Chittagong Hill Tracts Regulation 1900, the district of the CHT was divided into three circles under supervision of a deputy commissioner. Following the traditional struc-
31
In the Tribal Cultural Institute of Rangamati and Bandarban I was able to have a look into these publications. Unfortunately I could not go into it more deeply because of a lack of copy-machines and time
tures these were the Chakma, Mong and Bohmong32 , each of them placed under the jurisdiction of a tribal chief who collected revenues33 and managed internal affairs. According to these circles subdivisional officers were responsible to the deputy commissioner. The circles were subdivided into mouza and para (Ahsan 1090, 962). The mouza, ruled by a headman, is itself subdivided into paras where karbaris34 represent the chief in all social a ffairs. The following act, the Chittagong Hill Tracts (Amendment) Regulation of 1920 declared the CHT to be a so-called excluded area. Besides the fact that the British safeguarded their financial and administrative interests, the exclusive status provided special rights and privileges for the tribals living in the CHT, especially related to land and settlement. The Hill People had a self-governmenting system to a considerably large extent. (Shelley 1992, 28; DSouza 1995, 161; Lffler 1968). With the partition of the Indian subcontinent, the Hill People were caught in a difficult situation. The question to which of the new created states the CHT would belong affected all Hill People equally, but their interests were not represented properly. The elite of the different groups was not united itself: the Chakma elite was mainly in f vour of union with India, while a the Marma supported Burma (Mey 1988, 40). This explains the fact that the Chakma hoisted the Indian flag at Rangamati, the Marma the Burmese flag in Bandarban before the CHT b ecame a part of Pakistan on the 16th August 1946, as a part of the Chittagong division, a decision guided by mainly administrative and strategic reasons: the CHT were exchanged for Ferozepur in India, where trouble among the local Sikhs was expected if Ferozepur were to allotted to Pakistan (Mey 1988, 40).
Pakistan Period: The relationship between the Pakistan Government and the CHT remained difficult during the whole Pakistan period. Contemporarily with the first Pakistani constitution in 1956 the Regulation of 1900 and the status of an excluded area was retained and the Hill People were given the right to vote, which had stabilising consequences on the CHT situation. However the regime of Ayub Khan changed the administrative status of the CHT in 1962 from an excluded
32
The Mong and Bohmong are two different groups which both belong to the Marma group. One of them is concentrated in the north mainly in Kagrachari, the other one that is the Mong have their residence in Bandarban as already stated in Chapter 1.2. 33 Among these taxes the jhum tax was the most important but also most troublesome. Most of the Hill People were attached to jhumming and therefore putting taxes on jhum was one profitable way of making money. Another reason for the tax was that jhum, as a traditional mode of cultivation, was regarded to be backward. The tax was therefore additionally one way of forcing the Hill People to take up modernised methods of cultivation 34 Karbari is the headman of a village (para). A unit of villages is called mouza
Eva Gerharz
area to a tribal area35 . Although the special status was abolished by a constitutional amendment in 1962, the Regulation of 1900 was kept operative and the Hill People still e njoyed some privileges. At this time the idea of nation was used to consolidate Pakistani dominance over East Bengal, including the CHT (Mohsin 1997, 45ff). Alongside administrative and legal changes, Pakistan undertook some measures for economic development and the utilisation of the two major natural resources of the area, forestry and hydroelectricity. The consequence was that a paper mill was established in 1950 and the Karnaphuli Multipurpose Project, beginning in 1957, resulted in the construction of a dam which crossed the Karnaphuli river. The project was finished in 1963, established by the Pakistani government and financed by USAID (Shelley, 1992, 31). Like many other comparable development projects, none of the projects planners took into account how immense the impact on the inhabitants project area would be36 . The tribal interests have not been recognised at all. The dam built over the Karnaphuli next to Kaptai is about 666 metres long and 43 metres high. The product is an artificial lake which covers an area of about 655 sq. km37 and has swallowed about 125 moujas, including the major portion of Rangamati town (Ullah, 1995, 1). About 100,000 people were affected by the flooding. Although the compensation for homes and other belongings as well as the replacement of farmland that got lost was promised by the government, reports show that this has never happened. The result was that about 40,000 Chakmas crossed the border to India as refugees (Ullah, 1995, 21). As 40% of the best cultivable land was flooded, the land given to the families by rehabilitation programmes was not sufficient for proper cultivation. About 1,500 families were completely left out of the scheme. Altogether the government only compensated one third of the flooded land (Mohsin, 1997, 114). Although the Karnaphuli power project was regarded as revolutionising Bangladeshs industrialisation, the Hill People could not really benefit from it.38 During my stay in the CHT, I got the impression that the Karnaphuli Hydroelectric Project is the causal factor for most of the problems in the area. Not only did an immense change of the traditional patterns of life derive from it, including land problems39 but also difficulties with the relationship to the ruling state in general40 . Already at that time some ingenious students started to develop a
35 36
The consequence was that the area remained distinctive but not excluded any longer A controversially discussed example which is presently discussed is the Narmada dam in India, by which approximately 4 Million people are affected (Chatterjee 1999) 37 Regarding the size of the lake the data differ. Shelley (1992, 31) for example states that the submerged area is about 1036 kilometres. Unlike as in other cases (see Chapter 4.1), no political intention for the differing estimations can be seen. The fact that the literature is uniform regarding the estimation of 40% of best cultivable land which was swallowed leads me to the assumption that the differences here are not of great importance. 38 The issue of economic consequences of the Kaptai Hydroelectric Project will be discussed in Chapter 4. 39 In Chapter 4.1 the land issue will be analysed broadly 40 See Chapter 3.2
political
campaign
against
the
government and represented a new wave of Chakma and
Marma political identity and consciousness (Ahmed 1993, 39). The first conversation I had with a Chakma when I came to Rangamati ended after five minutes with the following statement: This dam has caused all our problems we have here in the CHT. Later he explained to me: They could give the tribals free access to electricity or fishery after this dammed lake has taken all our land, but it had just one intention: to destroy tribals life.
3.2. Bangladesh Becomes Independent In 1971 Bangladesh became independent after nine months of war. The Liberation War arose from an effort to free Bengal from the hegemonic system of Pakistan, which defines itself by religion. The ethnocentric political programme was guided by the idea of the pureness41 of the Islam which included the idea of Urdu being the Islamic language42 . The Bengalis were considered to be a lower Hindu caste although they had actively supported the idea of a Muslim Pakistani state43 . The Pakistani hegemony then led the Bengalis to assert their separate identity, which was now based on distinction through language and culture, instead of religion. Because of the exclusion from Pakistani Islamic nationalism a new form of nationalism guided by culture and language arose which became the guiding paradigm for the independent Bangladesh.
3.2.1. Politics of Nationalism The history of the Bangladeshi state is determined by two distinct forms of nationalism, namely the Bengali and the Bangladeshi variant. The first one was developed and practised under Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, who guided the independent movement and became the first political leader of Bangladesh. It comprises two dimensions, the cultural and the territorial one. The cultural dimension is particularly determined by the language movement44 and secularism, both developed in the attempt to demarcate itself from West Pakistan, where Urdu as state-language and Islam as state-religion were considered as determining features of n ational-
41 42
pak means pure, stan means land (Mohsin 1997, 38) Urdu is written in a Arabic Persian script, while Bengali was sanskritised by the Hindu elites during colonialisation (Mohsin 1996, 35) 43 After the Muslim population of Bengal had been dominated by a Hindu aristocracy created by the British colonial policy Hindu as well as Muslim identity which arose after the pre-colonial syncretism (Mohsin 1996, 74) 44 Bangladesh literally translated means the land of Bangla speaking people (Mohsin 1997, 54)
Eva Gerharz
ism. The Bengali nationalism was indeed specific about its territorial boundaries45 of EastBengal. This concept of Bengali nationalism thus was defined as one of the state principles in Article 9: The unity of the Bengali nation, which deriving its identity from its language and culture, attained sovereign and independent Bangladesh through a united and determined struggle in the war of independence, shall be the basis of Bengali nationalism (cited in: Mohsin, 1997, 60). Furthermore the ideology was based on a centralist idea of state under non-capitalist objectives, marked by the total integration of the individual within the community (Jahangir 1986, 33). Bangladesh with its uni-cultural, ethnocentristic nationalism developed the same kind of hegemony the population of East Bengal had to suffer during the Pakistan period. When Sheikh Mujib was assassinated in 1975, the BNP with General Ziaur Rahman took over the political leadership. Their concept of Bangladeshi nationalism, distinct from the Bengali variant, was determined mainly by religion46 . This trend arose already increasingly after Mujibs secularism. Territoriality became more determining in drawing a line between East and
West Bengal in India and gave the state a new totality (Mohsin 1996, 47ff ). As a consequence this turn towards religion and territoriality had some substantial changes on different levels. Islamiat was introduced in the education system and furthermore administrative policies and mass media were induced by religious rituals. Additionally the Constitution was changed, the word secularism replaced by absolute trust and faith in the Almighty Allah (Jahangir 1986, 79f). Bangladeshs policy became Islamised and as a consequence the citizens of Bangladesh were defined as Muslims as one unit against non-Muslims. Under General H.M. Ershad from 1982 onwards Bangladeshi nationalism moved towards Islamic nationalism. The model of nationhood became even more rigid and totalitarian in its Islamic orientation. He raised the slogan of building a mosque-centred society47 and introduced Islam as the state religion through an amendment to the Constitution (Mohsin 1996, 52).
3.2.2. A Question of Identity Bangladesh and the Hill People

45
What is reflected by Amar Sonar Bangla Ami Tomae Bhalobashi (O my golden Bengal, I love thee) the highly patriotic song written by Rabindranath Tagore as the national anthem. 46 The BNP defined Bangladesh nationalism as follows: Religious belief and love for religion are a great and imperishable characteristic of the Bangladeshi nation ... the vast majority of out people are followers of Islam. The fact is well reflected and manifest in out stable and liberal national life (Mohsin 1996, 49) 47 The issue mosque-centredness and its meaning for the Hill People will be part of the Chapter 6.3.
The Hill People and the CHT played a controversial role in the War of Independence. The former Chakma Raja Tridiv Roy co-operated with Pakistan, but at the same time many Hill People joined the war in favour of independence. Nevertheless many of them had to face discrimination by the Bengalis48 (Mohsin 1996, 38). Immediately afterwards, some indigenous people were accused of being collaborators and killed. Violence against the Hill People continued for months. The excuse given by Sheikh Mujib, that such incidents are natural after a war49 was not accepted at all by the Hill People. Some of them set u an administrative sysp tem for the villages and resisted the Bengalis50 (Mohsin 1996, 39). The Hill People did not just demonstrate the failure of the GOB to protect their rights but, more important, this was the first manifestation of group formation processes among the Hill People in order to protect themselves from Bengalis. Some Hill Peoples representatives met Sheikh Mujibur Rahman to demand four basic arrangements for the CHT, under the leadership of Manabendra Narayan Larma 51 . These included four points: (1) autonomy for the CHT including its own legislature (2) retention of the 1900 manual in the constitution of Bangladesh (3) continuation of tribal chiefs offices (4) a constitutional provision restricting the amendment of the 1900 Regulation and imposing a ban on the influx of non-tribals (Ahsan, 1989, 967) Sheikh Mujib advised them to get rid of their tribal identities and merge with Bengali nationalism. As no special provision for the CHT was made in the 1972 constitution, M.N. Larma formed the Parbattaya Chattragam Jana Sanghati Samiti (PCJSS/JSS) as an oppositional political platform for the Hill People. Nevertheless in a pre-election meeting in Rangamati, Sheikh Mujib maintained that all tribal people are Bengalis and nothing else. According to the political programme of the AL and Sheikh Mujib in particular distinct identities could not be accepted. In his view nationalism based on secularism should include the Hill People and any differences were denied. The demand to merge with Bengali nationalism was
48
Mohsin emp hasises here that many of the Hill People could not join the forces because their ideological background did not fit in with those of the Awami League which was responsible for recruiting the soldiers. Some Hill People came back from the training camps because of discrimination 49 Stated by Charoo Bikash Chakma, who was the leader of a delegation which met Sheikh Mujib on 29 January 1972 to appraise of the situation cited in Mohsin (1996, 39) 50 The local youth recovered arms left behind by the Pakistan army in the jungles. They were called Shanti Bahini, and can be seen as the early beginning of the armed wing of the JSS 51 M.N. Larma was at that time member of the Bangladeshi parliament and functioned, among others, as a political leader of the Hill People and formed the JSS. He was assassinated on 10 November 1983 by supporters of an opposing political group of the Hill People. His younger brother, Shantu Larma took over his function and is the present leader of the JSS and Chairman of the CHTRC
Eva Gerharz
not seen as a force but as an invitation, therefore the Hill People should be grateful52 . The Hill People already had to face discrimination by Bengalis and their relationship to the ruling state was due to the Kaptai dam, wholly determined by suspicion and doubt. Under the leadership of M.N. Larma the representatives of the Hill Peoples community expressed their dissatisfaction with the state policies of Bangladesh. As a member of parliament M.N. Larma was able to articulate the Hill Peoples interests directly, but instead he experienced paternalistic rejection of these. The debate between M.N. Larma and his supporters on the one hand and Sheikh Mujib on the other hand has given rise to the conflict between the two groups. The nature of Bengali nationalism with its ethnocentric and hegemonic outcome was categorically rejected by the Hill People. Bad experiences and the fear of becoming submerged under the majority of Bengalis has led to their being conscious of their distinctiveness. The absence of any minority rights in the Constitution and the Bill declaring Bangladesh as a uni-cultural and unilingual nation-state has created a feeling of being oppressed by the majority of the Hill People. M.N. Larma asserted in the Parliament: Our main worry is that our culture is threatened with extinction ... we want to live with our separate identity (Mohsin 1996, 44). The emphasis on a separate identity in this context expresses the importance of cultural habits in the process of identity construction, but at the same time their importance is ultimately developed in a process of becoming conscious of it. The differentiation of groups itself is not the cause of conflict. Differences and cultural peculiarities become apparent when pressure and threat from outside or the dominant group within a nation-state necessitates inclusion for defence. (Kler 1995, 4). With the establishment of the nation-state the Hill People started to develop a unified identity as all groups were equally affected by the threat of the Bengali hegemony53 . The government reacted to the appealing group-consciousness of the Hill People by dividing the CHT into the three districts: Rangamati, Bandarban and Kagrachari54 . The purpose of this measure was, as a Chakma expressed it in an interview, t cleave the Hill People and reduce o the possibilities of collective resistance. General Zias Bangladeshi nationalism, which emphasised religion as the central feature of the Bangladeshi society, besides culture and language, alienated the Hill People further. Changes towards an Islamic orientation in mass media, education, administration and the Constitution affected the Hill People even more directly. The impact of religion on every-day
52
In his speech at Rangamati in 1973 Sheikh Mujib stated: From this day onward the tribals are being promoted into Bengalis (Mohsin 1996, 74) 53 While the Kaptai Dam had mainly touched the Chakma and some groups, but some not at all 54 In March 1989 the parliament passed several Bills which enabled the government to transform the administrative system with the resulting partition into the three districts (Mahmud Ali 1993, 162)
life
expressed
in
symbols
and
rituals confronted the Hill People massively with the
feeling of being different55 . Recognising the rejection of the Hill Peoples demands by Zia and the BNP M.N. Larma started acting in the underground and formed the Shanti Bahini as the armed wing of the JSS to enforce the demands of JSS in an armed struggle. Later he crossed over to India and started to launch massive guerrilla action against the Bangladesh authorities56 (Ahmed 1993, 45). Training camps were established in India, fighters were recruited from the refugee camps and only a few years later the Shanti Bahini constituted a military and political threat for Bangladesh. The GOB reacted by militarising the area57 . At the same time Zia tried to win over the Hill People by drawing special attention to development of the CHT58 and developed a settlement programme for landless Bengalis who should be rehabilitated in the CHT59 . His
attempts were regarded as forced assimilation by using strategies of oppression. The settlement programme, although guided by pragmatic and humane intentions, established a demographic shift60 in the area. The aim was to put the Hill People regionally into a minority position to reduce the power they gained from of the establishment of identity - based institutions. In other words: the GOB tried to segregate the Hill People in order to prevent group formation on the basis of identity. The pressure which was put on the Hill People and their organisations showed effects. The Hill People were forced to decide for or against the Shanti Bahini forces but whatever side they chose the other one put pressure on them. As my data show the society is roughly divided along these political lines, which are not directly compatible with those of ethnic segregation; meaning some opt for, others against insurgency. But also on the organisational level processes of separation developed out of the military pressure exterted. The JSS, formed on the basis of an ideological dispute61 , was divided into one faction led by Preeti Kumar Chakma, one by the Larma brothers. As a consequence M.N. Larma was assassinated by the opposing group in 1983. His brother Shantu continued Manobendra Larmas work, whereas Preeti and his supporters surrendered to the GOB in response to an amnesty which was offered by Ershad in 1985.
55 56
These cultural differences will be investigated in Chapter 6. India provided active support to the Shanti Bahini by allowing them to establish bases in Tripura and supplying military logistics (Ahmed 1993, 49) 57 Zia even tried to give the armed forces unlimited power by proposing the Disturbed Area Bill in 1980, but the bill failed to pass (Ahsan 1989, 969) 58 For that issue see Chapter 4.3 59 See Chapter 4.1 60 The demographic shift will be investigated in Chapter 4.1 too 61 Beside questions of leadership and power the current cause for the dispute was related to the aims of insurgency action. Preeti opted for a decisive war in the CHT to merge with India after secession from Bangladesh while M.N. Larma pleaded for autonomy within Bangladesh
Eva Gerharz
Within the processes of group-formation among the Hill People the JSS acted as a political platform for the interests of the Hill People and attempted to establish a counter-hegemony to the Bengali one. On the other hand the JSS as a Chakma dominated organisation started more and more to represent the interests of the Chakma community instead of the Hill People in general. As a result the JSS has been rejected by other groups as they considered its policies as a hegemony of the Chakma over the others (Ahmed 1993, 54). The Marma, Murong and Tripura became resentful of the dominance of the Chakma in the JSS. which was considered a hegemony over the others. Especially the Marma opposed the Shanti Bahini after Chabai Mogh, a prominent Marma JSS leader, who had been imprisoned together with Shantu Larma from 1976 to 1980, went back to normal life. Subsequently he was killed by the insurgents. Most of the Marma left the movement and went back to normal life. The Murong also revolted against the Chakma-dominated JSS. Between 1983 and 1985 the Murong Bahini (Murong Force) were set up by the military to resist the Shanti Bahini with a strength of 1,000 (Shelley 1992, 117, Mohsin 1997, 176). As a result Bandarban was almost free from insurgent actions from 1984 on and was consequently less involved in struggle between the military and insurgents, as one of my Marma informants stated: the people in Kagrachari and Rangamati had to suffer much more then us. Here the situation was very calm. The effect of this development was that 98% of the insurgents were Chakma and the political movement, as Shelley (1992, 118) states, turned into one of the Chakma section. Besides the literature an expert interviewee in Dhaka told me about this issue. During my stay in the area I tried to find people to confirm this hypothesis but all interviewees and informants asserted that there is no division of the Hill Peoples with regard to political interests. Nevertheless my data show that there are cleavages to be found 62 . One Marma insisted there was a lack of democracy because political leadership among the Marma is missing. I would trace the reticence I have experienced back to the assumption that people do not want to harp upon internal trouble when they are talking to a foreigner. At the same time one has to bear in mind that the internal quarrel is not necessarily a question of entire separation but is dependent on a separate situation63 .
4. Economy and Disadvantage Land as an Essential Need

We are poor, we have no land. Our land was taken by the lake and by the Bengalis. We dont know what to do. We had to move to these hills here after the lake swallowed our land. But here is not enough space. We have some land at another place over there but it was captured by the Bengalis.
62 63
As the other chapters 5, 6, 7 for example will show This will be examined broadly in Chapter 6.4.
I have heard statements like that several times. Land is the most substantial problem in the CHT and can be regarded as the present cause of the conflict in the region. There are at least two main reasons for the problems of land-scarcity in the area. The first one was the development undertaking Kaptai Hydroelectric Project64 . Only a few years later the Bangladesh government started a settlement project in the Hills to relieve the densely populated plains of Bangladesh, which is regarded as the second impact on Hill Peoples lives.
4.1. The Kaptai Hydroelectric Project and Its Impact on Land Issues With the construction of the Kaptai Hydroelectric Project about 40%, that is 54,000 acres, of the most fertile land has been covered by the lake. Of those having lost their land, about 100,000 families fled to India (see: Roy 1995, 56; Bertocci 1989, 156; Ahsan 1989, 963). B esides the fact that barely one third of the lost lands were replaced, the compensation was largely paid in cash (Roy, 1995, 56). The Hill People alleged that the affected Bengalis were the first who got compensation, as the Revenue Compensation office was staffed with Bengalis only. Of the total sum of US $51 million, which was set aside by the government for rehabilitation of the affected population, only US $2.6 million were actually (Mohsin, 1997, 104) The Chakma, who are concentrated in the area, suffered especially. For years many had already been cultivating the plains and were dependent on their paddy fields. This change had taken place when the Chakma raja brought Bengali cultivators into the Hill Tracts to train the Hill People in methods of plain cultivation65 (Ullah, 1995, 14). But especially those still dependent on shifting cultivation could not benefit from the rehabilitation programme at all, because most of them had no titles to land (Mohsin 1997, 103). Besides the Chakmas, using plough cultivation, were not familiar with property rights and ownership either. Land has been recognised as common property66 grounded in customary rights. The Hill People were forced to change their pattern of life radically. They were used to working as agriculturists and had, due to land scarcity, to adopt horticulture67 . Even before the construction of the dam the available cultivable land was insufficient for the comparatively
64 65
distributed.
Already presented in Chapter 3.1 It can be regarded as a consequence of the jhum tax, which had been evied since the 1900 Manual to discourage the Hill People from continuing jhum cultivation. 66 Or merely the Rajas property, as Ahmed (1993, 47) writes: The Chakma Rajas having no right to land, by a mere accident of local custom treated the persons living on it as private property, thus creating human talooks instead of hereditary zamindarees, which were sold, subdivided and inherited like landed property 67 Horticulture means fruit gardening for commercial use which implies several problems like transport and storage
Eva Gerharz
68
sparse population in the CHT
(Mohsin, 1997, 114). Some people tried to cultivate in the
jhum again, others settled the fringe land69 around the lake. This land is cultivable but implies a great risk, because it largely depends on the rise and fall of the lake water and is exposed to storm and drought (Ullah, 1995, 33ff). The possibilities of Jhum cultivation decreased as well due to scarcity of land: the jhum cycle needs ten to fifteen years to allow the fields to recover. Intensive usage reduced the circle to three to five years. The consequences are erosion of soil and a resulting decline of soil fertility. (Mohsin, 1995, 104; Mey 1988, 36)
4.2. The Settlement Programme of the Bangladeshi Government The land problem, already acute after the construction of Kaptai dam, was aggravated even more in the 1970s, when the Bangladeshi government initiated a settlement programme for landless plainsmen. Bangladesh, with its agrarian economy, is substantially dependent on land. Densely populated, the country had 0.29 acres per-capita land in 1992 (Mohsin, 1997, 113). But even 0.5 acres cannot be seen as sufficient for subsistence production and are the absolute minimum level for existence (Jessen 1997, 59). That brings about immense problems with providing food for the roughly 120 Million Bangladeshis70 and regular floods make the situation even worse. In contrast, the CHT are regarded to as sparsely populated71 , as 0.75% of Bangladeshs population inhabits 9.2% of the land (Siddique 1997, 1). In 1979 the government72 changed Rule 34 of the 1900 Manual and removed the restrictions against settlements by non-residents in the CHT. Furthermore the GOB decided to settle about 30,000 Bengalis on government-owned Khas73 land. Each family got five acres of land, some cash and provisions. In August 1980 another settlement phase was initiated, in 1982 a
68
The problems which arose after the construction of Kaptai dam have already bee described. Lots of people did not get any land as compensation, or if they got it was not equivalent to the land they had before 69 Cultivating the fringe land means that during the dry season rice seedlings are planted and after its harvest the land is filled with weeds. These rot under water when the level goes up again and remain there till the next rice seedlings are planted 70 Meyers Taschenbuchlexikon (1995), Bd. 3, S. 29 71 there are various surveys to examine the actual capacity of land in the CHT. One example is given in the following part with the survey of an Canadian Company. Another example of calculating how much available land is in the CHT gives Abedin (1997, 14). He argues that the geo-natural formation has to be analysed, and that instead of 5093 sq. miles the CHT area comprises 11.439.25 sq. miles, if geometrically measured. It has to be said that his book as a whole is written in a conservative, pro-bengali manner. This example shows that the availability of land is discussed very controversially. Different actors use it for political purposes 72 At that time under Prime Minister General Zia 73 Khas land is regarded by the Hill People as common land which has been cultivated by them for centuries (Mohsin, 1997a, 99). Officially khas land is government-owned land available for distribution to people (Rashiduzzaman 1998, 659)
third one. (Mohsin, 1997, 112) Altogether it is estimated that about 400,000 Bengalis had been settled by 1984 (The Guardian 6.3.1984 cited in: Mohsin, 1997, 113). But it seemed that nobody had taken into consideration that the problem of land or conflict because of land in the CHT already arose after the construction of the Kaptai dam. Roy (1995, 57) argues by using a survey made by a Canadian company in 1964 that the state of available land in the CHT was already very critical before the dam-construction:
-
Only 3.2% of the land in the CHT graded as class A (suitable for all purpose agriculture) 2.9% was graded as class B (suitable for terraced agriculture and fruit gardening in part) class C was about 15.5% (suitable for horticulture and partly afforestation) class C-D accounted for 1.4%, which is suitable for afforestation and horticulture after terracing the slopes 77% of the land constituted class D, and therefore exceptionally suitable for afforestation
This shows that the vast majority of the land cannot be used for cultivation, except for afforestation (Roy, 1995, 57). Taking into account that according to the 1974 census about 80,000 to 100,000 families had to share 270,000 acres of suitable land, that is class A, B and half of the land classified C and C-D which could be used for cultivation. Consequently each family could have between approximately 3.7 and 4.63 acres, while the government-assessed minimum is 5 acres. (Roy, 1995, 59) The resettlement projects were carried out without informing the rajas and mouza headmen, although according to the CHT Manual they should have been involved in the decision process. The regulations as well as other traditional rights, conventions and practices of the Hill People were therefore largely violated. Many of the settlers did not get adequate land and a large number of encroachments took place. Settlers grabbed land violently and many thousands of the Hill People were uprooted and pushed into the neighbouring countries for a second time (Roy, 1995, 60). Many Hill People who actually possessed land somewhere have no chance to get it back because of the militant behaviour of the settlers who had captured it in the meantime. Several interviewees reported having been affected by these processes. During the days I spent in the Hill Tracts two Hill People were killed in such a dispute74 . These disputes highlighted the conflict between the Hill People and GOB. The settlement programmes could not be carried out without heavy militarisation, since Shanti Bahini violently opposed these. The military worked together with the settlers. On the one hand the military gave them enough power to encroach on the lands of the Hill People by equipping
Eva Gerharz
them with government-provided arms, on the other hand they were used as human shields in battles with Shanti Bahini forces (Lee 1996, 74). Strategically, indigenous villages were destroyed, Hill People were put into cluster villages75 or had to flee (CHT Commission, 1991, 64ff). At the same time the Shanti Bahini also put enormous pressure on the Hill People by tax collecting76 and kidnapping for example, in search of eventual collaborators. From 1980 to 1985 Shanti Bahini killed 44 and kidnapped 84 Hill People (CHT Commission 1991, 43f).
4.3. A Demographic Shift and Its Political Dimension The people of the Chittagong Hill Tracts want to survive as human beings, nothing else There is evidence for the assumption, that the settlement programmes involved an effort to establish a demographic shift in the CHT for political reasons. The development of the CHT demography shows that while in 1947 the Hill People constituted about 98% of the population, in 1956 already less, that is 91%. The Bengali population rose from 1961 with 12% to 40% in 1981 and as much as 50% in 1991. In Bandarban and Kagrachari districts the Bengalis account for the majority with 53% and 52% (Mohsin, 1997, 119). When I was a girl you could see mainly tribals on the street, now they are a minority asserted one lady during my field work. In the following I will concentrate on the political dimensions of land as well as on the aspects of identity construction in relation to land. The fact that the settlement programmes were considered non-natural or political migration processes77 gave the Hill People more motives for the feeling of being deprived and disregarded. The feeling of being disadvantaged excluded them from Bangladeshi society more that it had integrated them. The impression of being a minority in their own country has provoked processes of constructing a counter identity. The Hill People have been dispossessed of their traditional rights over land78 , which is an important issue for an agro-based society. The possibility to cultivate land is essential to survival in the Hills due to the lack of
74 75
Interview with a member of the Chakma group. The incidents happened in August 1999. cluster villages are usually located around army camps or close by. They were justified as providing economic development for the tribal people. Army personnel controls movements in and out the settlement. The cluster village programme was actually installed because of Shanti Bahini actions, partly to protect the army camps from Shanti Bahini attacks, partly to control the Hill People so they do not to participate or support the Shanti Bahini 76 Tax collection and kidnapping for ransom was carried out by Shanti Bahini among the Hill People and the Bengalis by force to secure their income 77 These terms were introduced by Mohsin (1997, 112) 78 The government owned Khas land was regarded as common property. For further information see Mohsin, 1997a, 99; Roy 1955, Mey 1988, 47
economic
infrastructure79 .
Possessing
and cultivating land in such a society determines
the processes of identity construction as it is a part of lifestyle based on tradition. Although tradition can be understood as a historical construct (Kler 1995, 7) it is part of a peoples culture and in the case of the CHT tradition is the feature which integrates the different groups equally. Though especially the Chakma had largely shifted from jhumming to ploughland cultivation, jhum still or again determines their identification as Hill People. The choice of terms like jhumma for self description or Jhummaland (Mohsin 1997, 197) for describing the CHT in the case of autonomy by the JSS demonstrates and gives evidence for this a ssumption. Hence besides the fact that the vast majority of the Hill People depend on land, emphasising the significance of jhum relates to the demarcation from Bengali society, which is not less agro-based80 . For self-identification in demarcation from others is tradition very important as a historical construction (Kler 1995, 7). The term jhumma was ultimately introduced to unify the Hill People against the threat of the Bengali majority in Bangladesh and can be seen as a political construct81 . One has to take into consideration that there is a difference between the usage of the term jhum for describing a political project (as in the case of the JSS) and the usage for self-ascription in every day life. During my field research I have never heard somebody describe himself and those he identifies himself with by using the term jhumma. This term moreover relates to the political strategy of the JSS and the attempt to unify the Hill People under one designation. But that does not mean that the Hill People do not feel unified. Likewise they refer to terms like tribal or pahari which can be explained from the fact that the invention of jhumma is historically a very recent phenomenon, while tribal or pahari were used for self-ascription as well as for ascription by others long before. The term jhumma can therefore be seen as politically invented, but the actual meaning of the term, the mode of cultivation, presents an essential part of Hill Peoples life and functions as a symbol for unity. In the next chapter I will argue that not just land issues were affected by settling plainsmen, but trade and economic infrastructure as well.
4.4. The Tribal Market in Rangamati
79 80
Will be examined in the following chapter and therefore not less depended on land 81 The nomenclature was adopted among other reasons as an assertion of Hill Peoples equality and an attempt to come out of the negativism associated with tribalism, although it originally derives from Chittagonian dialect (Mohsin 1998, 82)
Eva Gerharz
Early in the morning I had to get up to visit the tribal market in Rangamati82 . I was told that it is something special. I was fetched at 7.00 a.m. by a friend to go to the market, which was about five minutes to walk. Some Chakma ladies were sitting on the side of the main road, their goods in front of them. They had only a few things, bamboo-shoots, pumpkins, fruit, spices and herbs which are, I was told, special tribal ones. The women were sitting together on the ground, two or three of them chatting. A few metres further I saw several male Bengali vendors with a much broader range on offer: They had fruit and some vegetables as well as mainly fresh sea fish, dried fish, fish paste, chilli, onions and readymade things like buckets, pots, and other goods made of plastic. Their way of presenting the goods was fundamentally different. They had tables and big bowls for their goods. I walked around between the Bengali vendors with a wide range of goods and the few Chakma women sitting on the floor presenting their few goods. After a short while the Chakma ladies started packing. They put their belongings into the kalong, a basket made of bamboo which is carried on the back with a strap on the forehead83 , to go to the next market. My informant asserted that they try to sell the goods so that they can change the small amount of money they earn into rice or other necessary things. After that they would take a boat to reach their villages across the lake or walk home with the kalong on their back. I was not really attracted by that event and was surprised that this was the much-praised tribal market. This bazaar was obviously dominated by Bengalis whereas the Chakma ladies seemed to be something like a rare object being left over from former times. Later I learned how important this observation was for my research. I saw another tribal market in Bandarban with nearly the same situation: Marma women selling a few goods, mainly bamboo-shoots, pumpkins and some sweet-water crabs. I realised that none of the shopkeepers in the whole town of Bandarban looked like a hill person. Later an interviewee stated that there are some shopkeepers who look like Hill People, but they would come from Arakan in Burma. Another obvious feature was that nearly all rikshawalas as well as the babytaxi-drivers were Bengalis. Even in the tribal areas of Bandarban I saw lots of Bengalis in the shops. These observations reveal that the Hill People are a minority nowadays among the crowds of Bengalis, but also the fact that the Hill People are clearly disadvantaged in economic activities and absolutely dependent on the economic structures established by the Bengali people in the area.
82 83
This is a description of an observation in Rangamati at 14th August 1999 Although I was told that this kind of basket is exclusively used by Chakma, I have observed that the other Hill People in the CHT as well as those in the other parts of Bangladesh, that is the Santals, Garo, etc. use this kind of basket known in Nepal e.g.
4.5. Trade and Economy The trade relations from the plains into the CHT have a long tradition. Already in the precolonial days the Hill People exchanged their goods for those of the Bengalis at market places. The Bengalis came by boat from the plains around Chittagong, the Hill People from their villages (van Schendel 1992, 85; van Schendel 1992a, 114). The colonial policy allowed the Hill People to trade with the Bengalis although the area was restricted according to the 1900 Manual. The trade between these two groups was based on the exchange of necessary goods which were not available in the Hills, like dried fish and salt for example and timber and bamboo which were, in contrast hardly available in the plains (van Schendel 1992a, 115). But a relatively high level of self-sufficiency remained and left the Hill People living mainly on subsistence production84 . They had not just the staple food which was grown in the jhum, but also clothes and other goods produced by themselves. Already between 1930 and 1947 when the restriction on the CHT was loosened, a lot of plains people entered the area most of them were shopkeepers and tradesmen85 . They lived in the bazaar areas and had little interest in land (Roy 1995, 65). Important for the further argumentation is to recognise that the restriction itself, although the aim was to protect the Hill People, has isolated them from social changes in the outside world ( Ahmed 1993, 34). The Hill People were not prepared for integrating themselves into the mainstream development and adopting the patterns of market and trade which were established by the newcomers. The great impact came with the construction of the Kaptai dam, the opening of the Hills and the influx of Bengali settlers with Zias regime in the 1970s. After the Hill People had lost most of their plain lands used for cultivating the socio-economic structure had to change immensely86 . Without land the Hill People had to search for alternatives for surviving and
securing a livelihood. The agro-based society shifted towards a structure more determined by trade, economy and market. At the same time Bengali people who were familiar with commercial fishing and plough cultivation came from the plains, which the Hill People had to learn first after being disrupted. They could not go into the trade and market economy since
84
According to the Bielefelder Verflechtungsansatz three modes of production can be distinguished: formal production, informal production and subsistence production. Subsistence Production can be seen as a relatively autonomous mode of production. These three modes are entwined with each other, more or less according to the impact of capitalist market economy in a society (Evers 1987) 85 These tradesmen came mainly from the plains around Chittagong to which the Hill People always had a relatively good relationship, at least because of the long trading tradition. Chittagong can also be seen as a connecting point with the outside world. It is quite necessary to distinguish between those plainsmen from the area of Chittagong and those coming from other parts of Bangladesh, the crucial feature for distinguishing here is language, I will examine that broader in Chapter 6.1. 86 As already discussed in the previous chapters
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market and trade structures had already been occupied by Bengalis as a socio-economic survey of six Chakma-majority villages by Rahman87 shows: about 78 market places and bazars in the district ... are owned, run and controlled by the Bengali population and the tribal people are totally dependent on the market for exchange [of their agricultural goods] and the cash income generated ... to purchase the provisions of life and [l]eft in the hands of the Bengali traders there is a feeling among the tribal people that they are being exploited (Bertocci 1989, 153) Although the Hill People were at large familiar with fishing before the implementation of the Kaptai dam, none of them had the idea of selling the fish, because it was exclusively for the family consumption (Ullah 1995, 54). Nowadays more and more people see fishing as one possible income source88 , although it is against their Buddhist faith as an informant asserted. Some Hill People who had received some cultivable land tried fruit-gardening raising pineapple, mango, jackfruit, lemon or bananas. But the problem here is marketing, transport and storage. The fruit farmers are forced to sell the goods sometimes below the production costs because the storage possibilities are very limited. When the Hill People have carried their goods from their villages down to the markets the middlemen know that they will not take it back home again if they do not get a reasonable amount of money for it. They are dependent on selling it for lowest prices because they have no choice. Furthermore the absence of soilerosion control89 has led to a diminishing of profits (Ullah 1995, 75; Roy 1995, 85). The extraction of forest products like timber and bamboo has been dominated by Bengalis since the times of British rulership as it has largely been in the hands of gangs of wood-cutters coming from the plains to manage the transport to Chittagong (Bertocci 1989, 151). Having visited a wood storage place in Rangamati this is obvious even nowadays. Apart from forest products which are principally not finished in the Hills but transported to Chittagong, there is very little industrial development in the CHT. Although the Karnaphuli power project and the Chandraghona Paper Mill have revolutionised industrialisation the Hill People could hardly benefit from this. Ahsan (1989, 964) argues that tribal employment in major industries ... has been less than 1%90 Further I was told that Rangamati has a dairy nearby which employs some of the local people91 .
87
Rahman, A, (1982): Social Development in a Tribal Society: Socio-economic Profile of the Northern Valleys in the Chittagong Hill Tracts, Dhaka, Institute of Business Administration, University of Dhaka, cited in: Bertocci 1989, 153 88 In 1981 about 20-25% of the 3000 registered fishermen were Hill People (Islam 1981, 1217) 89 which is always necessary in a hilly area 90 Ahsan 1989, 964. Unfortunately her argumentation does not give any further information about this number. It is not clear, if she means less than 1% of the tribals are employed in that project or 1% of the employees are tribal. Mohsins argumentation relates only to the paper mill project. She writes that it has employed less then
4.5. How the Hill People Perceive Their Economic Position Thats, our villagers are very poor and they live from hand to mouth. Most of the villagers have no their own land for cultivation and illiterate. So it is the only income source the day labour of their ... My elder brother is also married now and he is separate from us. He lives by fishing ... My younger sister is too married in the same village one year ago. Her husband does nothing but day labour ... In spite of my having parents they cannot bear my educational expenses as he is old and ignorant. There is no earning way in our village or town. Even in our village or town day labour is not available ... Im studying through these suffering and distress.92 Talking to the villagers I recognised that their most essential problem is land, since their economic position is heavily dependent on it. An empirical study conducted by the Bangladesh Academy for Rural Development (BARD) in 16 mouzas in all three CHT districts in 1995 investigates the occupational structure. According to their data 72% of the respondents are still jhum cultivators. Besides 15,2% are day-labourers, 9.2% service holders, 2.6% businessmen and 1% housewives (Quddus 1996, 30)93 According to my empirical data the Hill People were predominantly critical about state politics: We are a minority in this country, depressed and disadvantaged. Although the Bengali settlers are blamed very often, I have heard statements like: The Bengalis here are not in a better situation then we are. Besides land issues administrative and official matters were also mentioned. Tripura and Marma interviewees in Bandarban asserted: one problem is how we are deprived by these people.... Asking for examples I was told that decision-takers in most of the institutions like banks or political institutions are Bengalis. They usually prefer Bengalis. There are indigenous service holders, but they usually have the junior status and no rights to take decisions. When people want to get loans from a bank, they have to prove their landownership. As 80% of the Hill People in Bandarban are landless or can not make sure they are landowners, they have no chance of getting a credit. Being disadvantaged was likewise confirmed with the argument that the Bengalis have the power to control the market prices. Economic deprivation, combined with the already discussed land problems and political implications therefore plays a crucial role in the processes of group formation. The Hill People
1% of the local population (Mohsin 1997, 106). I guess that they have used the same reference. Mohsin refers to her own work from 1996 and Ahsan to a publication of Siddharth Chakmas, but I guess that they both come from the same source 91 Unfortunately I cannot go into this more deeply because of a of lack of available literature 92 A letter received from a boy from the village Vedvedi close to Rangamati on 11.10.1999. I met him when I was invited to the village on 18.09.1999 93 The numbers relate to mouzas which are exclusively inhabited by Hill People
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perceive that their possibilities of economic development are immensely hampered by the dominance of settled plains people and their economic strength, especially after they have been alienated from their land. The transformation of modes of production due to land scarcity favours the plainsmen. The lack of the skills required within this economic transition has left the Hill People backward, although they try to compensate for the so-called backwardness with alternative skills like, for example, a high level of education. Their chance would have been to integrate into the given economic structures of the Bengali society, but most of the attempts failed. Not just backwardness in the sense of different structures and modes of production94 hampers economic development but also being disadvantaged in administrative structures and decisions which have been, although established by British, continued by Bengalis. The fact that administrative and economic structures are mainly determined by the Bengalis can be seen as strongly related to the role of the state in Bangladesh. The statecentred paradigm of nationalism in Bangladesh, which by Constitution excludes minorities, produces advantages for the majority leaving minorities behind. Although economic deprivation need not necessarily be traced back to an explicit aim of state politics, the settlement programmes would give evidence for that argument95 . On the other hand has the CHTDB established lots of different development programmes. The foundation of the Development Board was guided by General Zias attention to accelerating the process of economic development in the CHT and the aim was to integrate the Hill People into the mainstream96 (Ahmed 1993, 57). An informant has illustrated the problem of these development intentions: why do they build pavements when the people here do not use it? They have no idea of what a pavement is used for, they are sitting on it and chatting. What becomes obvious here is that development issues were related exclusively to ideas of structural development. Even more evidence for this argument is given by looking at the streetmap of the CHT: constructing streets was not for developing the infrastructure, but to provide the military access to the hills. Nearly all streets are constructed for a strategic military cause (CHT Commission 1992, 83). The settlers from the plains indeed were those who profited most, as many of their villages are close to army camps so as to be protected from Shanti Bahini threat. The accusation
94
In Bangladesh jhum cultivation has been considered as backward due to a world-wide paradigm (TorresTrueba 1986) and is still. Even nowadays this opinion dominates the ideas of rural development in the CHT, as the changes introduced in the Hills, i.e. shift from food gathering practices to cultivation and the shift to plough cultivation are seen as revolutions. Even the introduction of the market mechanism by middlemen is considered to be a step forward (Siddique 1997, 3) 95 Which is expressed in the literature for example in Mohsin 1997 and Mey 1988 96 One measure was the introduction of reservation for Hill People in jobs, universities and other educational systems. For education issues see Chapter 5
against the CHTDB does not just relate to a not adjusted structural development but to a political strategy as well: The CHTDB was established in 1976 by late Ziaur Rahman to fight the Shanti Bahini. It is a purely political organisation to bribe the tribals. Loans are given for private purpose, to businessmen and tribal leaders ... Yes, it is mostly a political bribe to tribal leaders to buy them off so that they would not help the Shanti Bahini (CHT Commission 1992, 84). One of my informants expressed this similarly when he stated that development in the CHT was not more then development of their pockets97 . The issue of economic disadvantage is therefore a result of processes of identity construction on the one hand and invigorates these on the other hand. The GOB has marginalised the Hill People as a group with another identity in order to integrate them into centralised statepolitics by using military forces and development programmes. As a result especially the plainsmen in the hills have been advantaged by these institutions along the previously existing ethnic segregation. Instead of supporting the Hill People, the not less poor newly settled plainsmen are those gaining profit from these steps. This fact in turn created a feeling of being disadvantaged among the Hill People, alienates them from the Bengali society and strengthens the inclusion within the group of Hill People, as all of them are equally affected. Consequently homogenisation98 processes are the result as well as processes of exclusion in respect to the advanced Bengalis.
5. Education
The most crucial dilemma among the Chakma is to be educated, eventually even to graduate, but not to have an adequate job. This can be mainly regarded as a problem of economic infrastructure and as a consequence of a relatively highly developed educational system in the CHT. The literacy rate in the CHT is comparatively high for Bangladesh. From 1974 to 1991 the literacy rate in the CHT increased from 18.2% to 27.6%99 (The Independent, Editorial 09.07.1999). This fact has mainly to do with an exceptionally high rate among the Chakma which is estimated to be 70% in comparison to 28% among the Bengalis living in the CHT
97
He did not mention whose pockets he was thinking of. I guess that he means those who are responsible for the planning of development projects, that are not just Bengalis but Hill People involved in these processes as well, because I have heard accusations against tribal political leaders like those who are a member of parliament as well as those involved in the Ministry of CHT affairs quite often 98 Although I would assume that there is an obvious tendency towards the homogenisation of the Hill People, there is enough evidence to prove the opposite. Indeed there are demonstrable processes of seclusion among the Hill People. One main reason is the advanced position of the Chakma within political and educational issues. See Chapter 5 and 6
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and the Marma and Tripura among whom about 20% are literate (Rashiduzzaman 1998, 660). The educational system in the CHT has a long tradition, which is directly related to the i porm tance and necessity of scriptural knowledge in Buddhist societies as well as to the rulership of British authorities. In the following I will try to analyse three questions: What is the state of tribal education in the CHT? Why are the Chakma more advanced than the Bengalis as well as to the other Hill Peoples? How does the state of education influence the processes of identity construction?
5.1. The State of Education among the Hill People There are different strains of educational systems in the CHT. The most important in fact is the role of governmental institutions. From the sixties on the government had established a large number of primary schools, as well as high schools and colleges. The Rangamati college was set up in 1965 and upgraded into a degree college in 1970. A present there are four government colleges in the CHT. The contribution of the CHTDB plays also a role in the field of education. It gave Tk 52 lakh as grant bursary to 5,500 students of the CHT until 1990. (The Independent, Editorial 09.07.1999) Nevertheless some people consider these steps accomplished by the Government as clearly advantaging the Bengali population. The schools are mainly in the densely populated valleys while many of the Hill People live in villages, and reaching the schools is much more difficult for them (Mohsin 1997, 127). Another problem is the curriculum of the government schools, where the medium of instruction is Bengali exclusively. A teacher at Rangamati college insisted to me that he would love to teach in English because he is much more familiar with it and it is easier for him but he is not allowed to100 . Since the curriculum is the same as for the other government schools all over Bangladesh, it is of Bengali character. The cultural and
historical content is Bengali. The governmental educational institutions are therefore an instrument for assimilation to the Bengali culture. The Bengali language becomes more familiar than their own traditional one, in the hidden curriculum101 values, trends and ideas are transmitted which include modes of dresses for example.102 There are two alternatives for the Hill students: to assimilate themselves to the Bengali mainstream or feel alienated by it and
99
It must be taken into account that the relation tribal - non-tribal changed immensely until 1991, the ratio of population was 51% tribals and 49% non-tribals 100 One has to bear in mind that the educational system was based on the English language until the independence of Bangladesh and especially the older people are more familiar with it. See chapter about language 101 For the notion of hidden curriculum see Hannerz (1987, 554) 102 See Chapter about cultural differences, especially language and dress
express this by protest. This alienation from Bengali society involves a reflection on their own group and identification with it. In other words: the feeling of being excluded from the mainstream society has the manifestation of peoples own group as a consequence. Differences between the two become visible and evident, the immanent conflict is strengthened. The processes typically involve group formations, in the case of the CHT students the, Pahari Chattro Parishad which is associated to the JSS. An alternative for the Hill People to avoid the problems of the government education is to send the children to a private, non-governmental school. Not just Buddhist institutions103 have established schools but also Christian initiatives as well as non-religious ones. As a relict from colonialism the bigger towns have missionary schools, which have their own curriculum which is often taught in English. Others are CCDB (Christian Council for Development of Bangladesh) or World Vision. The latter has established in co-operation with Fatima Rani Catholic Church a residential school combined with an orphanage in Bandarban which I have visited. The fathers insisted to me that they are not there to convert the mainly Tripura but for developmental reasons. For the same purpose NGOs like BRAC have recently established primary schools in Hill Peoples villages.
5.2. The Advantaged Position of the Chakma After the construction of the Kaptai dam many people, principally Chakma were uprooted from their traditional way of life in an agrarian society104 . The socio-economic and cultural life of the Hill People has been effected enormously as well as the state of education in the region. Although there had always been a great interest in education105 , many people could not afford to send their children to schools. As a consequence many Buddhist institutions had set up orphanages to take children of poor families as well as orphans into residential schools. One example which I have visited is the Monaghor Complex in Rangapai near Rangamati town. This residential school provides education from primary up to high-school level combined with vocational training in a carpentry for example, and it is the present home of approximately 2,000 students106 . With the support of the French government the possibility of studying abroad can be offered to some of the scholars, this year for example approximately
103 104
the importance of Buddhist schools in the educational system will be seen in the following I refer to my argumentation in the Chapters about history and land 105 Every Buddhist village traditionally had its own monastery in which education was held in high regard (CHT Commission, 1991, 103) 106 Informants estimation
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70 of them could go to France107 . Some other institutions with a similar background are the Bonophul-Complex in Dhaka as well as an orphanage in Calcutta. But there are projects of this kind which are not exclusively for Buddhists, as the Murong-Complex in Shoalak108 , established with the help of UNICEF, shows. The idea of these activities was to give the affected people education to prepare them for getting a paid job and to fight back. The motto was Education is mightier then sword109 . Some asserted that the high educational level is a reaction on the economic strength of the Bengalis and the Chakmas economical marginalisation. In fact, the Chakma seem to be very proud of and especially the elite has great interest in education110 . Those I met spoke perfect English111 and supported education actively. Many of t em were educated abroad, in India or h Britain. At the same time education relates to how the Chakma are described by others. Once I talked to the cousin of the Marma Raja Aung Shui Prue Chowdury about the Chakma royal family and their raja who is a barrister in Dhaka. He declared: Yes, they are very active, well educated, they are doing a lot. The Marma raja is a raja by profession however. Being conscious about these differences leads to processes of exclusion, as a Marma who has visited the Monaghor Complex in Rangamati district said. He told me that he could not participate in an exchange programme with France because he was not a Chakma. As the Chakma are those mainly engaging in the representation of the Hill Peoples political interests112 , there seems to be a relationship between education and the political consciousness. Engagement in political organisations presupposes a manifest identification with the group which is represented by the organisation as well as the consciousness of the own identity (in demarcation to others). I would therefore assume that the rise of a political consciousness is strongly tied to the state of education113 an individual has. The divergence of the state of education among Chakma and the others goes back to the times of decolonialisation. Already at that time the Chakma had been more educated and took the leading political role in negotiations and representing Hill Peoples interests (Ahmed 1993,
107 108
Information given by a staff member mouza in Bandarban district dominated by Murong, about 15 kilometres from Bandarban town 109 statement of an informant at Rangamati 110 see also statements of several members of the Chakma elite including Raja Devasish Roy in Ullah (1995, 70f) 111 For somebody who is going to do research in the area it is quite useful, that nearly every man, and the women sometimes too, speaks at least some words of English and communication seems to be much easier then in the plains 112 for the Chakma dominance in the JSS see Chapter 3 113 The term state of education does not specifically relate to formal education in the sense of being able to read, write or calculate. It merely describes the knowledge about principal and political rights, as well as the ability to overview ones own situation in the context of larger organisational social structures. Quoting Hannerz, Education is a cultural process, an organised way of giving individuals cultural shape (1987, 553)
34). This gap has, with regard to the push given by the anomic situation the Chakma were in after Kaptai dam, widened. The representation of interests which is mainly followed by the JSS as the political elite on the one hand and the traditional elite on the other, is largely dependent on the engagement of the Chakma114 . The Chakma here can be described as a strategic group (Evers 1988, Elwert 1989). The Chakma dominance within the JSS, although productive in the creation of resistance against the Bengali majority, has provoked processes of exclusion among the Hill People115 . The policies of the JSS can even be regarded as a new hegemony of the Chakma over the other Hill People116 . Educational differences therefore play an important role in the differentiation of societies and strengthen already existing cleavages.
6. Cultural Differences Cultural Habits and Their Importance

To investigate cultural differences the concept of culture which is used in this paper must be defined. The conception of culture in sociology comprises on a very general level all that in human society which is socially rather than biologically transmitted. ... Culture is thus a general term for the symbolic and learned aspects of human society (Marshall 1998, 137). Although culture can be defined on a very general level, it always involves diversification. As cultural features determine matters of self-ascription as well as ascription by others in interaction, they are boundary-connected. Members of groups and their actions are evaluated and judged by the diacriteria which determine membership by others and co-members (Barth 1998, 6). Above all two cultural models can be distinguished in the case of my research topic: the South-Asian (represented in the Bengali variant) and the Southeast Asian (in the Burmese/Arakanese variant). The Hill Peoples can considered to comprise a continuum placed in between these two models, according to the influences imposed on them over time117 , the Tripura on the South-Asian side, the Marma on the Southeast-Asian side118 . The Chakma can be placed linguistically and religiously somewhere in-between (van Schendel 1992, 106f.). Within that broad frame it can be said that each group can develop an own culture as it distinguishes itself from others. Even smallest entities can have their own culture. Whenever a group is categorised according to its own culture, that does not automatically imply that the
114 115
see Chapter 3.2.1. for resistance against the Chakma dominated JSS and its political interests: see Chapter 3.2.1. 116 this thesis is proposed by Mohsin (1997) 117 This is of course a very complex system of influences over a long period of time, which cannot be examined at length here. Again, the construction of the basic differentiation is useful as well as necessary for my purpose.
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entity has a homogenous conglomerate of cultural features. It does not even mean that it is particularly coherent (Hannerz 1989, 550). At the same time it is necessary for my purpose to find categories which can be used to organise the description and analysis of cultural differences. As revealed by my empirical data, language, dresses and religion are categories which are used for ascription by the people themselves and seemed to me obviously clear modes of distinction. These categories are therefore the most coherent aspects of culture which could be found and are furthermore r eferred to in the literature on ethnicity (Schlee 1996, 10). They therefore comprise the main aspects of differentiating societies in the given context119 . Religion in particular is a guiding cultural system for differentiation as it influences a large number of different matters in everyday life. Gender order for instance is usually a religiously determined phenomenon (LeviStrauss 1978, 404). The same is true for many habits I have observed in the field, in which the Hill People differ from the Bengali population. A very obvious case for example are differences in food habits. While Muslims reject the consumption of pork and alcoholic drinks because of religious norms, the Hill People do not have restrictions which condemn the consumption of these120 . Having alcoholic drinks is according to my experience even a very important part of the Chakmas way of life121 . The case of consuming pork was quite visible in Bandarban, where one can easily distinguish the tribal from the non-tribal area by the numbers of pigs running around on the streets. Besides these religiously determined differences I observed a lot of other things distinguishing the Hill People from Bengalis. The usage of the kalong for carrying goods for example or a characteristic way of constructing houses out of bamboo122 . Another feature of distinction which has been, I surmise, historically developed, are different modes of preparing food. I could observe for instance that the Chakma boil vegetables instead of frying them which is what the Bengalis do. Other spices and herbs are used for cooking, the instruments for grind-
118
The Marmas closeness to Burma, very obviously visible in the relationship of the term Marma and Myanmar for instance, has been examined in Chapter 1 already 119 I would like to emphasise again that this categorisation evolved out of my experiences in the field, and can be considered to be an axiomatic guiding differentiation which is, in my estimation, necessary for structuring this part of my paper. This is backed by my wish not to examine culture in its theoretical concepts but to analyse identity construction processes in a specific case of ethnic conflict 120 Although Buddhist the norms concerning an ascetic way of life include the rejection of alcoholic drinks and the taking of meat because of the condemnation to kill any living creature, a lot of Buddhist Hill People consume both. I was told by a Thai Buddhist, that these norms do predominantly affect those who practice religion, like monks for example, while it is quite common among the normal population not to follow these rules strictly. 121 This assumption is revealed in the literature commonly too. See Shelley 1992, 52 for example 122 for the characteristic way of constructing houses see Levi-Strauss 1951 or Mey 1988
ing spices differ from those used by Bengalis as well123 . The ways of treating a foreigner are different in respect to serving snacks or presenting alcohol before having a meal. All these differing habits of managing everyday life124 contribute to the processes of diversification of two (or more) groups and should be taken into account especially concerning processes of identity construction. In the following dress, language and religion are treated in separate sections and are affiliated again in the last one under a general theoretical hypothesis which derives from the analysis of the three.
6.1. Dress This is our national dress said a Chakma lady when she entered my room to give me a khadi in memory of my time in Rangamati. As there are 13 different groups living in the CHT, every one has its own traditional dress125 . Dress is an important characteristic since one can see at first glance to which group someone belongs. The women are those who usually still wear the traditional dresses, but that depends on which group they belong to and which status they have. Some of the womens dresses are more or less similar, for example the Chakma and Tanchangya dress like the Tripura dress. It is a hand-woven skirt with stripes, a blouse and a scarf. Colour and design vary, details are used for distinction in these cases, for example jewellery. The Marma dress is a skirt of a lungi-type, but not tied in the middle as the men do but on the side of the hips, mostly in a colourful design. The Murong women traditionally wear a one-piece cloth which covers neither knees nor breast. Contrarily the male Hill People I have seen do not wear traditional dresses at all. Most of them are dressed either in western clothes, or in lungis. It is a common phenomena in South Asia that women preserve traditions expressed by clothing, while mens clothes symbolise modernity (Wichterich 1998, 198). This fact is related to the occupation of the so-called public space mainly by men while women are found in primarily domestic spheres of social life (Kabeer 1991, 129). In the Islamic Bengali society gender seclusion is a part of the gender order126 . As the public space is increasingly occupied by the Bengalis, gender seclusion related to public space seems to be transferred. Nevertheless dresses are connected with a symbolic value as expressions of cultural difference. Especially women have taken over the part to represent cultural difference by using
123
I was told by a Chakma that they use a mortar made out of clay, while the Bengali variant is to grind spices with the help of a stone roll 124 Where I could add a lot of other features 125 Photographs of Chakma and Tripura dresses are to be found in the Appendix
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markers in the Hill Peoples society as well as in the Bengali society (Kabeer 1991, 121). The clothing matters are a method of defining or representing a group identity on two levels: on the one hand it demonstrates the affiliation to ones own group, on the other the dress shows the demarcation from others (Tarlo 1996, 318). The highly developed diversity of the Hill Peoples dresses demonstrates the exclusiveness of every group. The dual processes of differentiation and identification therefore according to inclusion and exclusion can be understood as a matter of classification according to horizontal demarcation lines or regarding hierarchies and rivalry. In respect to the different Hill Peoples the diversity of dresses can be interpreted as a distinctive mark based on horizontal structures. Some groups, the Kuki or the Murong for example have been reported to be highly exclusive127 by several authors (van Schendel 1997, 105; Mohsin 1997, 20; Lffler 1986). This relates mainly to those living on the ridges of the hills128 . Limited infrastructure and mobility has left those groups largely isolated. Contact to strangers could mean threat to the space occupied by the group. A look at the areas of settlements illustrates this argument129 : The different peoples, except the Marma, are largely concentrated in particular areas, the Tripura for example in the northern part of the CHT, the Murong in the Southwest and the Khumi in the South. On the other hand there has been a complex structure of exchange between some groups, for example the Chakma and Tanchangya. Contact among some of the different groups has been quite intensive130 , especially when they share one religion (van Schendel 1997, 105; Lffler 1968). Hence differences in dressing illustrate the isolation of some groups, while similarities can be regarded as a result of hybridisation processes of the different indigenous societal systems. The Bengali influence, as well as the British, has furthermore transformed habits of dressing, particularly in respect to demands of clothing which cover certain parts of the body within ethic-religious conventions131 . The traditional dresses do usually not fulfil these norms. An informant explained that the traditional dress of the Murong for example has changed so that it covers the knees and now usually covers the breast. I could observe that some Murong do not even wear the traditional dress at all but shalwar kameez or sari however. Though this could be regarded as a sign for Bengalisation or foreign influence in general, nevertheless more pragmatic aspects have to be taken into account. Dresses as traditions are changeable
126 127
See the work of Astrid Marxen: Negotiating gender. Changing Lifestyles of Female Students in Dhaka An aspect which will be discussed in Chapter Language more broadly 128 For the main distinction of two groups, those living on the hill tops and those living in the valleys see Chapter 1 129 see map in Appendix 130 It would be interesting to examine the origin or meaning of similarities between the dresses of the Hill People and those in other parts of South(east)asia there are obviously similarities
according to needs and circumstances of every-day
life
(Bausinger
1986
cited
in
Kler 1995, 8). I would assume that especially those having regular contact to Bengalis prefer a sari or a shalwar kameez in order not to attract attention by their clothing. Dresses are an obviously visible mode of distinction. In respect to militarisation and threat132 , one would assume that assimilation is a strategy for being protected from risks to a certain extent. I have observed that especially women of higher status do not use the traditional dress any longer. Better situated Chakma women usually wear a sari or shalwar kameez at least when going out. One has to take in consideration that some of these women have been educated at the universities in Chittagong or Dhaka where they had to accommodate to the surrounding, as a Marma explained: When we are going to Dhaka or Chittagong, our women cannot wear these traditional dresses. Nevertheless it seems contradictory that especially those conscious about their distinct identity133 do not insist upon traditional dresses. Being aware of the contradiction one Chakma argued that it is more and more difficult to get the traditional dresses in the shops because of the Bengali cultural impact. But this is indeed, as I have observed, not the case. There are several shops selling the traditional clothes in Rangamati as well as in Bandarban134 . I would assume that the changes in dressing can merely regarded to be a result of processes of differentiation according to socio-economic status and therefore according to hierarchies. The structure of the Chakma society with its system determined by order a ccording to clan has been strongly influenced by Hindu elements
135
for years and therefore adopted
hierarchical structures (van Schendel 1997, 106). Distinctions can additionally be made between those having contact to the mainstream culture136 and those living more or less upon traditional values and habits. Among these two groups hierarchical structures are obviously related to socio-economic status. But the choice of a sari does not necessarily mean an assimilation to Bengali culture; it can merely be seen in respect to the previous argument as related to the influence of Hindu Culture. My data show that those Hill People, emphasising their distinctiveness from the Bengalis, try to construct a justification for the transformation of clothing matters, implying an assimilation to the dominant Bengali culture. One example is
132
the argument here relates to human rights violations and oppression which are examined in some of the other chapters, for example 6.3 133 The assumption that the awareness of the own identity and educational status are related to each other is discussed in Chapter 5 134 There are for example the government installed factories and BCSIC shops or the indigenous NGO Green Hill 135 A typical Hindu tradition I have observed during the field research is to touch the feet of somebody honourable and elderly people for greeting 136 The meaning of the term mainstream in the context here is indicated in Chapter 4. Mainstream means nothing more then the dominant Bengali society with its structures and content
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the explanatory construct for the shalwar kameez categorically given in a r eply by a Chakma to my question why some Chakma women wear it although it is a Bengali dress: the shalwar kameez is not a Bengali dress, it comes originally from Pakistan. I put the same question to someone in Bandarban concerning lungis, and his answer was: these lungis we are wearing are originally from Burma. Interestingly I could observe a difference between the Chakma and the Marma in respect to this: while the better situated Chakma women in Rangamati preferred a sari, I saw in Bandarban even among those belonging to the traditional and political elite wearing the Marma skirt. Recognising that the Marma dress itself leaves much more space for variations in style than the Chakma dress, which is relatively fixed in its design, I would assume that the changes of dresses among the Chakma should not be interpreted as a more advanced assimilation of the Chakma, but could be merely a matter of fashion or lifestyle based on hierarchical structures. Traditional dresses are a female phenomenon. Its a common occurrence in South Asia, that women are those for whom the interpretation of tradition intrinsic to communal identity has restrictive implementations, not just in clothing matters, but in regard to other rituals and practices as well (Dube 1998, 106). Dresses distinguish according to horizontal and hierarchical structures of society. The latter is, according to my data and interpretations, not necessarily related to questions of ethnic identity among the CHT peoples. The assimilation to Bengali culture in dressing matters does not imply the acceptance of Bengali culture in general, but can be traced back to processes of taking over parts of a dominating culture, which claims for itself to be advanced and modern, while the Hill People are backward according to the paradigm of Bengali nationalism. The process of constructing a nation out of cultural, linguistic, religious and ethnic attributes are determined as high culture which gets the prominence (Ahmed 1996, 109).The fact that men are attracted by wearing western clothes gives evidence for this assumption137 . By constructing justifications for the use of Bengali clothes the people demarcate themselves from Bengali culture on the basis of being conscious of the difference. Dress therefore, as one aspect of a very complex system of cultural boundaries, have to be seen in the context of political structures.
6.2. Language
137
In the case of women western clothes do largely not fulfil the claims determined by religious conventions of the dominant Bengali society
Every one of the different ethnic groups in the Hill has a language of its own. Nowadays most of the people are at least bilingual as they have to understand Chittagonian138 or Bengali when they communicate with Bengalis or, in some cases, with Hill People not belonging to their own group. The different languages are more or less connected to each other. Most of them belong to the Tibeto-Burmese linguistic family, like Tripura for example. The Marma language can considered to be a form of the Arakanese language in Burma in the spoken as well as in its written form (Bernot 1960). A second group is the Kuki-Chin group, to which the oral languages of the Pankhua, Bawm, Kheyang, Khumi, Lushai and Kuki belong. Interesting about these groups is that the Kuki for example neither learnt other languages nor allowed others to learn their language; the Khumi even believed that if they learn another language they will lose the power to resist evil (Mohsin 1997, 17ff). This characteristic can be related to the fear of being threatened by others, illustrated by Shelleys assertion that the Khumi build their houses on tree-tops on the top of the hills. The villages are protected by a bamboo wall. Nobody is allowed to enter without their permission (Shelley 1992, 61). The Lushai were extremely ferocious until they were pacified and Christianised by the British (Mohsin 1997, 18). Illustrated here is the extreme exclusiveness of the different, especially the smaller groups. These characteristics show that they had lived very isolated from others without contact or, as Lffler (1968) shows, in multiethnic communities where their own identity was greatly emphasised. This is indeed an important issue for identity construction as the rejection of contact with others is strongly related to a very strong feeling of belonging together within the group (Elwert 1989, 448). As my contact during the field research was concentrated mainly on Marma and Chakma, I would like to emphasise the case of the latter here . Bernot (1960, 145f.) writes: Very little is known concerning the ancient Chakma language. Nowadays, men and women of this group speak Bengali, only or more precisely the Chittagonian Bengali ... their ancient writing was very near to that of the Burmese though nowadays they use Bengali writing ... The Chakma group appears to be an example of a Mongoloid group giving up its own language to the benefit of the Indo-European. According to my own data this is not true. Language was an issue which interested me a lot, and I asked several times about it. My interview partners explained that the Chakma language is still used among members of the group besides Chittagonian dialect, which is especially favoured among those who have a close relationship to Chittagong (because of business for example). Additionally I realised, thanks to my infor-
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mants as well, that a creolisation139 of language has taken place. In a conversational context language mixing is quite common among the Chakma as well as the Marma. Several times when I asked in which language people are communicate they replied that it is everything together. The complexity of different groups living on a very limited territory has led the people to mix the different indigenous languages; only when a small minority of one group is living with members of another one, they do adopt the language of the other group, it was explained to me by a Marma. The former British influence means especially the older people to be m familiar with English then with Bengali. The more educated Chakma I met tend to ore mix Chakma with English and Chittagonian in informal conversations. The contradiction which appears here again can be explained according to Hannerz (1987) not as matters of rejection or assimilation, but as processes in which new cultural systems of meaning emerge. These creolisation processes in the case of language occur following the same mechanisms as has been assumed in the case of dress already. But to return to Chittagonian, which can be seen as the lingua franca of the area, as those tradesmen from the plains coming to the CHT were from the area of Chittagong and the dialect developed as the main medium of communication with them. The new settlers are living, according to my experience, relatively isolatedly140 . Although Bengali is the medium of instruction at school, the common language in newspapers and other written media (besides English), some Chakma let me know that they would never use it in informal conversations. This rejection of that language must be seen in the political context. Bengali is the language of the state of Bangladesh141 , used by the settlers coming with the settlement programmes to the Hills, while Chittagonian was known and used already before, as trade relations had made it necessary for communicating with outsiders and those naturally migrated Bengalis who have lived in the CHT already for a longer time. The Hill People seem to feel more attached to them than to the political settlers. An interviewee maintained: These Bengalis who are originally here are becoming like us. Bengali on the contrary was like a foreign language for the Hill People. One older informant maintained that he did not even know Bengali when it was introduced as the state-language.
138
Chittagonian is a dialect spoken in the south-east. According to my information it is a dialect of Bengali, but very different and for people coming from other parts of Bangladesh almost not understandable. I would compare it with the relation between Swiss German and German. 139 For the notion of creolisation see Hannerz 1987. Important here is that creolisation implies the formation of something new out of sources which are often originally widely different 140 my data reveal that the settlers live usually in separate villages or at least in separate areas of villages or towns. According to my experience there is no village to be found where Chakma and Muslim settlers are living together. 141 Bangladesh is by constitution a uni-lingual and uni-cultural state, see Chapter 3.
The Bengali language can therefore be seen as a symbol of the hegemony of the Bangladeshi state, as it is for the Bengalis a symbol for their unity. Thus the so-called jhumma-identity is based on non-Bengali language (Haque 1998, 132). Language is a good example to illustrate the complexity of identity construction along cultural differences which must always be analysed with regard to political issues. The rejection of Muslim religion becomes relativised when previously accepted language commonalties appear. Categorisation according to the socalled boundary markers is therefore always tied to political aspects of ethnicity.
6.3. Religion The variety of different religions is quite broad in the CHT. The Chakma, Marma, Tanchangya, Chak, Kheyang are Buddhists, the Tripura believe in Hinduism and the Murong, Khumi and the Kuki are Animists. Lushai, Bawm and Pankhua used to be Animists until they had largely been Christianised by the British. The complex structure of religious beliefs among the Hill People has its potential for conflicts in itself quite apart from the fact that none of the groups believe in Islam. Religious differences therefore play a tremendous role in processes of identity construction on two levels. First I will describe and analyse the conflicts arising out of the Hill Peoples relationship to the Bengali Muslim population, which are, remembering the importance of religion in Bangladeshi nationalism in particular, a constitutive feature of demarcation and group-formation. The second part will deal with the complexity of religious differences among the Hill Peoples themselves and the resulting consequences for a possible collective identity. With the militarisation of the CHT and the move towards an Islamic orientation in Bangladeshs state policies, religion became more and more instrumentalised and politicised within the armed conflict. 54 Buddhist temples were destroyed within eight months as well as 22 Hindu temples in 1986 (EMAIL 1993, 30f. cited in: Mohsin 1997, 179). Quite common has also been the prohibition of religious ceremonies, or sacrileges like entering a temple in shoes, which is a religious taboo for Buddhists (Mohsin, 1997, 32). Some of my interviewees insisted that it is a common practice for Muslims to convert tribal girls by forcing them to marry. This forced intermarriage was used as an instrument to integrate the Hill People into Bengali society and to change the demographic relations in the area142 . The Report of the CHT Commission outlines about 30 different cases of women who had been kidnapped, con142
A secret memorandum for example encouraged army officers to marry tribal women. I would assume that this was strategy to follow this aim. Although it could be considered as an imputation, it is at least represented by
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verted and married (CHT Commission, 1991, 108). With such incidents the Hill People became increasingly aware of the religious difference. A Tripura interviewee complained about the massive Islamisation of the CHT. From both sides religion was transformed into the distinctive guiding mark. Besides the threat the Hill People feared, especially under Ershads regime, that a paradigm of a mosque-centred society has been achieved. Although there were only 40 mosques in the Hill Tracts in 1961, their number had increased by 1974 to 200 and in 1981 there were already 592 mosques (Mohsin 1997, 179). Since then the number has ni creased manifold (Mohsin 1996, 74). For the Hill People the mosques are a symbol of their oppression. Once on a walk in the Hills I noticed a colourful mosque in a village. The Chakma who accompanied me saw my astonishment and maintained bitterly that the mosques are always built in such a striking way while the Buddhist temples are always modest and hidden. The noisy loudness of the Muslim prayer five times a day appeared to be disturbing as well. In regard to these issues directly related to religious symbols and practices, the Hill People develop prejudices against the Bengalis which focus on their Muslim faith. I was told for example that the Bengalis know just Allah and women, or that nearly all Bengalis would rape their wives. Besides cases of human rights violations caused by religious differences and those of the usage of visible signs for distinction, the Islamisation of state politics has its consequences on the institutional level as well. Various religiously motivated NGOs and political parties are highly influential in the CHT. Jammat-i-Islam143 is strongly supported by the Bengali settlers and works very closely together with the military in the CHT. The same is true for Al-Rabita, a Saudi government-founded NGO which works as a missionary organisation and is entrusted with the task of Islamisation backed by the military (Mohsin, 1997, 179). These Islamically oriented organisations seem to be supported by the officials, as an assertion of one of the Chakma interviewees shows. He maintained that a tribal association had organised the construction of a new hospital financed by South Korea, but the local government had abandoned the project, while another hospital financed by Saudi-Arabia was released for construction. It is obvious that these kinds of actions make people aware of their religious distinctiveness. Cases of being disadvantaged are directly traced back to religion. By rejecting Islam the Hill People construct a commonality that crosses their internal religious diversity, viz. not being
some people. See CHT Commission (1991, 108f.). Rape, which was perpetuated in the Hills as well can be considered to have the same background 143 Jammat-i-Islam is a political party which can be categorised as radical from the right-wing spectrum. Already existing in the 1970s, utilised Saudi-Arabian support for political and social welfare work to extend resources to the rural poor population (Feldman 1998)
Muslim. This involves all Hill People equally and the non-tribal Hindus and Barua144 living in the CHT as well. The we-group feeling (Elwert 1998) which is characterised by an antiIslam attitude thus comprises all groups equally regardless of their status as Hill People or not, and is developed solely out of the exclusion from the dominant Muslim society. It can therefore be regarded as one of the most universal factors of identity construction. At the same time a diversification of the Hill People can be observed. These differences relate mainly to political issues145 and the educational advantage of the Chakma in particular. Furthermore the dominance of Buddhist groups is recognised as well. In the early 1980s an organisation namely the Buddhist Minority Protection Committee (BMPC) was founded, which started a communal hate campaign against Bangladeshi authorities. The aim of the organisation was to accuse the GOB of religious intolerance and Islamisation of the CHT. The non-Buddhist peoples did not support the campaign and the final result was a trend to resent the Buddhist dominance among some of the other groups (Ahmed 1993, 53). During the field work I conducted, an expert interviewee at Dhaka inform me that some peoples, the Tripura in particular, have immense resentments against the Buddhist/Chakma majority in the JSS. In Bandarban I was told by a Murong that his community is thinking about conversion to Christianity in order to get more power to resist the Buddhist dominance in the CHT, which is seen as a problem, especially since the Peace Accord146 . The Muslim majority within Bangladesh and the hegemonial nature of the Islam based state policies has contributed substantially to the Hill Peoples alienation from the Bangladeshi society. Demarcation through religion is hence directly related to the political interests of the groups. Whenever one group starts to develop hegemony over others, religious differences become important for demarcation. In respect to the relationship of the Hill People and the Bengalis, being Muslim or not is a guiding aspect for constructing identity, which could be traced back to the immense gap between the majority and minority and the strategic use of religion by the GOB. On the other hand the Hill People use religious differences for identification whenever political disputes and discussions come up. In these cases religiously based identities become reinterpreted and instrumentalised according to political interests. As presented above, religion determines a large part of differences in culture, so that its importance
144
Barua is called a non-tribal group which believes in Buddhism and comes from the plains of Chittagong. Very little is found in the literature about them. During my stay I have met some Barua at Rangamati. Their outward appearance is only slightly different to that of the Hill People 145 As I have already presented in Chapter 3 and 5 146 The Peace Accord between the GOB and the JSS has been criticised as being an agreement between the Chakma and the GOB without taking into account the interests of the other groups. See Chapter 7
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in keeping groups apart is quite influential. Like dress and language, religion must be seen in the context of political events, which I will outline in the following part.
6.4. Cultural Habits as One Aspect of Identity Construction Recognising cultural differences does not necessarily provoke an ethnic conflict. In writing this chapter my aim was to investigate the complex structure of different causes and factors which maintain the construction of identities in the conflict context. I assume that these cultural aspects and the attempt to emphasise these by the different groups are heavily interconnected with political and economic aspects, which I will illustrate in the following by choosing several examples, which are appropriated due to the importance of language, culture and religion for the construction of the nation and a counter-model at the same time. The cultural features of the different groups are a result of historical processes and diversification due to the occupation of different ecological spaces as well as the result of a process of ascription and self-ascription. According to Barth (1969) ethnic groups are not just a result of stratification but are seen as a form of social organisation, that is, the usage of categorisations to define a person for purposes of interaction (Barth 1969, 13f). Further he mentions that the features that are taken into account are not the sum of objective differences, but only those which the actors themselves regard as significant ... some cultural features are used by the actors as signals and emblems of differences, others are ignored (Barth 1969, 14). Which features are regarded as important for ascription or demarcation is to a large extent the result of political processes of constructing147 the unity of a group. At the same time economic and political developments affect the relevance of cultural habits. Their results provoke an interpretation of political or economic measures according to cultural boundaries. My Chakma and Marma interviewees explained, that their women would never work in other peoples households for money and that a Hill Person would never beg, different than the Bengalis, because the Hill People would be too proud. That rejection is heavily connected to economic as well as political features of the Hill Peoples society as well: as an agro-based society having lived mainly subsistent, economic independence seems to be a very important issue for them. Working in other peoples household would reflect dependence on others. B eing independent is obviously a political aim of the Hill People as well.
147
for that assumption see Andersons notion of imagined communities where he examines the construction of a nation by using different strategies based on commonalties of a group
A basic issue is that of nationalism in Bangladesh.
While
Bengali
nationalism
constructed unity on the basis of language and cultural commonalties, Bangladeshi nationalism is based on religion. All these features maintain boundaries between the Bengalis and the Hill People, as none of them can be used for self-ascription by them. The boundaries drawn between the two groups can be seen as politically constructed. A good example is the formation of religiously based organisations for interest-representation, like the BMPC, which was founded during the Islamist regime of Ershad in the 1980s. Illustrative is my observation that the Hill People rejected the political settlers much more than the original ones, regardless their common religion. The artificial emphasis of cultural differences must be seen in the context of the extreme majority-minority-relationship which is demographically given in Bangladesh. The consciousness was sharpened by the demographic changes in the CHT as the Hill People were confronted, due to the settlement programme with the majority. In this process they became aware of their minority status within the hegemonial structures of the state. The relationship of Bengalis and Hill People in the CHT, as well as all over Bangladesh, turned out not to be symbiotic, as Barth describes the prerequisite for stability in such systems (Barth 1969, 20). In such a case the groups choose a strategy for the establishment of change. In our case the elite has chosen to ground their strategy on the emphasis of their distinct ethnic identity148 . The decision for that strategy must be seen in the context of the Kaptai-impact, the settlement programme and the hegemonial structure of the state system. Besides these cultural differences are used for ascription by the people themselves, namely religion (non-Islam), language (non-Bengali) and culture expressed in modes of cultivation (jhum) and dress for instance. Besides these, seclusion processes have meant that inter-ethnic relationships are categorically rejected. A characteristic feature becoming visible in the Hills is the total segregation of villages and areas of living in the towns. A typical multi-ethnic village in Rangamati has one quarter for the Chakma and another one for the Bengalis (not settlers), Barua, Hindus and others. There is a school in the middle holding the two areas together and apart in one. Asked for real multi-ethnic villages, the informant replied that I would never find a mixed village different from those previously described. As much as the boundary-markers seclude two groups which are per se segregated, they b ecome reinterpreted and instrumentalised according to rational decisions. Common patterns of
148
Barth distinguishes three strategies: becoming incorporated into the pre-established system, accepting the minority status but encapsulating cultural differences in sectors of non-articulation or, as chosen in the CHT case, emphasising ethnic identity and using it to develop new positions and patterns to organise activities in sectors formerly not found in their society (Barth 1969, 33)
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distinction lose relevance whenever it is considered to be required, others become the dominant ones. This is illustrated by analysing the dynamics of relationships among the different groups. As presented above, there are macroscopic cleavages between various groups which are directly related to the emphasis of c ultural boundaries in the context of political events. In these processes other identities become obvious: when within the indigenous community a struggle for political power arises, boundaries are drawn on religious lines, like Buddhist and non-Buddhist, or Chakma and non-Chakma for instance. (Ethnic) Identities are therefore never stable systems for ascription and self-ascription, but are changeable and fluent or, as Schlee (1996, 11) argues, multiple configurations149 . These taxonomies can be adverse or
overlapping. Whenever various taxonomies are considerable, the agents can emphasise one or another difference or commonality, whatever the adequate one in a given situation is (Schlee 1996, 15). Within that kind of perspective the actors can switch from one identity to another an accordance with the context. This is revealed by the famous statement of M.N. Larma given in 1972 in the parliament: I am a Chakma. A Marma can never be a Chakma, a Chakma can never be a Bengali ... I am a Chakma. I am not a Bengali. I am a citizen of Bangladesh Bangladeshi, You are also Bangladeshis but your national identity is Bengali ... They [Hill People] can never be Bengalis (Shelley, 1992, 110; Mohsin 10997, 62).
7. The Peace Accord A Political Solution

The high priest was asked if he expects that the new government under Sheikh Hasina will do a better job than the former one. The priest answered: If you take a mango and it tastes sour, do you really expect that another one from the same tree will be sweet? After several years of negotiations between the GOB and the JSS a peace accord was signed on 2nd December 1997. The Peace Accord got international recognition and acknowledgement. On the 26th September 1999 Sheikh Hasina received the UNESCOs Felix HouphonetBoigny Peace Award as her reward in establishing peace in the Chittagong Hill Tracts150 . Especially its significance for stability and economic development in the region has been appreciated, as it ended 27 years of insurgency. The Peace Accord comprises the following provisions (Mohsin 1998; Rashiduzzaman 1998):
149 150
Schlee uses the term Pluritaxis here see: http://shobak.org/jumma/ and http://thirdculture.com/ipa/
1. The formation of a CHT Regional Council (CHTRC/RC) comprising 22 indirectly elected members151 including the chairman who is elected by the members. The three chairmen of the District Councils are ex-officio members enjoying the right to vote. The RC constitutes as follows: 12 tribal men and 2 female tribal members, 6 Bengali men and 1 Bengali female member. 2. Reformation and renaming of the District Local Government Council into Hill District Council. The Hill District Council is responsible for the recruitment of local police forces up to the sub inspector level. 3. The establishment of a Ministry for Chittagong Hill Tracts Affairs. 4. The withdrawal of all temporary army camps except the BDR and three cantonments. 5. A general amnesty for the Shanti Bahini fighters under the condition that they surrender arms and ammunition and return to normal life. If not, legal action will be taken against them. Every family receives Taka 50.000 for rehabilitation. 6. A land commission headed by a retired judge and constituted with the following members: the raja and Chairman of the District Council concerned, a Chairman representative of the RC and the Divisional Commissioner. The Commission shall have full power to annul all rights of ownership on Lands and Hills which have so far been given illegal settlements or encroached illegally. No appeal can be made against the verdict of this commission and the decision of this commission will be treated as final. This will be implied in case of fringe land (Independent 12th Dec. 1997). While the governments success in the negotiations is still celebrated, the opposition party BNP utilises the accord for their political aims and competition. On 25.08.1999 the Daily Star152 reports Khaleda Zias demand to rehabilitate the slum dwellers of Dhaka in the CHT153 . In the eyes of the supporters of the Peace Accord this demand looked like a provocation, but has, besides that, to be seen in the context of BNPs policies towards India 154 on the one hand and in respect to the process of policy-making in Bangladesh in general155 . India has played an important role and the negotiations finally got the necessary impetus, as India did not support the Shanti Bahini any longer156 (Rashiduzzaman 1998).
151
The RC members are indirectly elected by the directly elected members of the three Hill District Councils. These District Local Government Councils were established already in 1989 through the passage of a Parliamentary Act under Ershad 152 One of the more important Bangladeshi newspapers written in English 153 During that time the government set forth a forced eviction of many slums in Dhaka. The slums were systematically razed by bulldozers. This event was one of the most discussed political events in Bangladesh during August 1999 and provoked several hartals. The eviction started with several slums along the railway, where the GOB acted in co-operation with the railway company. On the 09.08.1999 The Independent reported about 4,000 razed shanties and 20,000 homeless people 154 BNPs policies are based on the notion of Bangladeshi nationalism, which demarcates the Muslim Bengalis from West-Bengal in India. The programme involves therefore a general rejection of India. Heavily discussed (and opposed by the BNP) was during that time the establishment of a corridor for transhipment to India 155 The state-system in Bangladesh is highly dependent on decision-making by utilising hartals. These strikes which mainly involve transport stops have the aim of influencing and disrupting the economic development and of putting pressure on the government 156 The times before the Shanti Bahini had recruited their fighters, mainly out of the refugee camps in India and had their training camps there
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Examining the results of the Peace Accord turned out to be the most problematic question of my work. Whenever I tried to find something out about continuities and change in relation to the Peace Accord, the results were frustrating. Only a few people seemed to consider the i m portance of the treaty to be such as it was celebrated in the international public and the Bangladeshi party policies. The treaty was merely considered to be something abstract, the people do not have much to do with. The opinions of my interviewees were very diversified. Generally three categories can be distinguished: those who are optimistic and who believe in the unifying character of the event, those who blame especially administrative and democracy problems and finally those who reject the Peace Accord in general. It was a striking phenomenon that especially those Hill People in official positions but not involved in party policies of the JSS expressed a lot of trust related to the peace accord. These idealists were nearly unreliable in their optimistic attitude. Several interview-partners of that category stated something like: We have to be patient, the Hill People must be unified with the Bengalis and live in peace. Already now the situation here turns back to normal life. Of course, there are some student protests or something, but these are a common phenomenon in Bangladesh. This must not be seen in relation to the Peace Accord. Sometimes I had the impression that these interviewees were reluctant to give statements which are not legitimised by their official position, a thesis which I cannot confirm comprehensively. A lot of people complained that the implementation of the Peace Accord is the most serious problem. As the land commission has not been installed, the temporary army camps not withdrawn and the local police force not recruited yet157 , a lot of people seemed to be disappointed and disillusioned. People blame either the GOB for these failures or the RC and the JSS itself. One interviewee expressed the opinion that the JSS would lose its contact to the base and as long as Bangladesh did not accept democratic values and realise these in state policies, the situation would not become better. A great problem according to him is that the Hill People are not facing the problem. A lack of education and their socio-economic status would not allow them to participate in the political decision-making process. Further administrative reasons were maintained quite often for the problems with the implementation of the Peace Accord. Those responsible are blamed because they recruited official personnel from the underground, who are not qualified for the administrative work in the RC. Nevertheless the Peace Accord in general was considered to be a step towards peace and stability in the region.
157
During the time of research in September 1999
Talking to JSS people I realised that they are merely discontented with regard to the implementation and the role played by the GOB. The not accomplished agreements implied in the Peace Accord, like the withdrawal of the army and the establishment of the land commission, which are very sensitive issues in the Hills158 , are interpreted as not fulfilled promises and fraud. That appreciation confirms stereotypes and prejudices the Hill People developed towards Bengalis over years. They never do what they have promised159 asserted a Chakma during my field work. The third category comprises activists complaining being sold out to the government, as original demands160 of the JSS were not recognised in the negotiations and the treaty (Mohsin 1998). The Pahari Chattro Parishad for example is one important fraction which clearly o pposes the Peace Accord for, among others, these reasons. The students organisation as well as the Hill Womens Federation (HWF), both attached to the JSS and the main political forum of the party largely reject the Peace Accord, as it brings about insecurity, inequality and further polarisation (Mohsin 1998, 107). Besides these politically organised groups especially those having, although highly educated, problems with integrating into the not sufficient socio-economic structure in the Hills, seem to reject the Peace Accord. The belief, that full autonomy and the withdrawal of the settlers would solve their problems derives from a nationalist attitude, developed out of the counter-nationalism movement propagated by the JSS over years. The Bengali settlers in the area oppose the Peace Accord largely, as they see their interests not properly represented. They see the Peace Accord as a measure to empower the Hill People, as they are not representatively taken into account in the newly established decision-taking institutions161 . Considering these diversified opinions and interests, the CHT today is divided in every sense of the word (Mohsin 1998, 107), not just along lines of ethnic segregation. A Chakma college student has written in a letter: But the government shows the reluctance in the field of problems solution. As a result, there organised two groups. Of them one is known as Agreement Supported Group and the other is Agreement Non-Supported group. Among these two groups JSS itself is one, the other is o pposite of JSS ... In exchange of many blood the Peace Accord is out todays crop. And there too occurred many obstacle in the ... implementation. Still the Chakma refugees ... did not get
158
As one has hopefully recognised after having read my paper: land problems and military threat combined with settlement problems are the most serious difficulties the Hill People had to face. The implementation of these points hamper the trust-building effect of the accord immensely 159 A hint at the Muslim Inshallah what means if God wishes 160 Like the withdrawal of all Bengali settlers and full autonomy within Bangladesh (see Chapter 3.2.) 161 This relates to the RC as well as to the power the land commission will gain
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their rehabilitation. The Land Commission is not in force yet ... The Temporary Army Camps have not been removed yet. These transient forces devastate and do great harm to us. This is the position of our country. Although the Hill People appear to be divided along political lines, my data reveal the assumption that most people perceive their every-day life as going as regularly as it was before. Some interviewees considered the shift from the military regime towards a democratic state policy as much more important. Interviewees asserted that until 1993 it was impossible for them to enter the streets after darkness162 . One could get the impression that the dtente during that time had been considered as a much more significant event than the Peace Accord. Examining the results of my field work in respect to the various opinions and views on the Peace Accord, I will concentrate in the following on two important questions. The first relates to development issues in the CHT. Like everywhere in Bangladesh, national and international NGOs constitute a substantial part of civil society. Therefore NGOs have to be seen as very important agencies for development. The NGOs are of particular interest, as they provoke, reflect and are utilised for, often not intentionally, the lines of ethnic segregation. The Chapter will be ended by looking at questions of stability and sustainability of peace in the CHT.
7.1. Developmental Issues National NGOs in the Chittagong Hill Tracts There is not much literature available about NGOs in the CHT as their establishment can be considered as a recent phenomenon. Nowadays especially the bigger national NGOs in Bangladesh, such as Proshika and BRAC, and international ones like Caritas and World Vision have established projects in the area. Besides there are several local ones as well, which are predominantly working for and with Hill People163 . Many people try to establish new NGOs based on specific Hill Peoples issues. One example is Green Hill, which claims to be a d evelopment organisation for the indigenous community (Annual Report 1995-97). Besides various smaller ones are to be found in Rangamati as well as in Bandarban.
162
During that time several measures were taken, such as a pacification programme and rehabilitation for indigenous families and returnees from India (Shelley 1992, 149ff.). Until that time five amnesties had been taken from 1983 till 1991. Already in 1987 the GOB started negotiating with the JSS (Shelley 1992, 140). The army used another strategy from then on: it has been partly more involved in stimulating and backing organisations of settlers. The democratic movement (Pahari Chattro Parishad and HWF) has been isolated and criminalised. Arens even assumes that Khaleda had negotiated only to satisfy foreign donors. That may be an exp lanation why more than 10 years of negotiation had to necessary for signing a Peace Accord (Arens 1997, 1817) 163 As well as those concentrating on the settlers interests, see Chapter 4
The local organisation I worked with, IDF164 , has
based
its
work
on
an
integrated
programme and serves both groups, Bengalis as well as Hill People. IDF, although concentrated on the Chittagong area and the CHT, is recognised as a national NGO by many Hill People as it is an Bengali initiative165 . Especially among the Chakma a lot of people mentioned IDF together with BRAC and Proshika in one breath. Some of my interviewees have blamed especially these three organisations for preferring the settlers in the Hills. Interviewees stated that those NGOs would exploit young indigenous women for field work, as the hierarchical structure of Bengali organisations would not correspond with the Hill Peoples organisational structure, especially related to the different gender order among the Hill People166 . The NGOs would not try to investigate the socio-economic situation of the C and HT their judgement would therefore be not accurate. As the institutions largely work with microcredit programmes167 , it was criticised that these would not be suitable for the Hill region, as people have a lack of knowledge how to nvest the money admitted in the micro-credit proi grammes. Besides the NGOs have been accused for preferring the settlers in providing loans, while the Hill People are left out of the scheme. These measures have been interpreted to have the objective of supporting the settlers s that they overcome the Hill People economically168 . o In the case of IDF the monthly statement June 1999 shows that in all Hill Districts the distribution is approximately equal169 . The contradiction can be explained in the context of nationalism and boundary drawing between the two groups. In every way the Hill People try to distance themselves from national institutions, or those being categorised as such, having the historical background of development in the CHT in mind. Along the above mentioned data the dynamic of demarcation from the Bengali society becomes clear again. It could be assumed that those interviewees recognised the rising NGO scene in the Hills as a sign of further Bengalisation, inasmuch as NGOs play a significant role in the development process in Bangladesh170 (White 1999, 307). The NGOs therefore are categorised along the boundaries between Bengali and indigenous culture. As a counter-model the Hill People tend to construct spaces for development based on their traditional way of life. Years ago already the
164
Integrated Development Foundation has its project area concentrated on the three Hill Districts and Chittagong District 165 At the same time IDF has a policy of employing Bengali as well as indigenous workers equally. The interviewed staff members have never mentioned any problems at the working-place in respect to ethnic differences 166 Here again the problem of gender order in Islamic and Buddhist society becomes obvious, see Chapter 6 167 These micro-credit programmes were first developed by Grameen Bank and gained international recognition as they have been considered to be very effective for rural development in particular. It is a simple procedure: women receive a small amount of money to invest in cattle, a shop, or goods for trading. The rates are paid back weekly over a longer period. If these contributions have been paid back reliably, the member receives a bigger amount of money next time 168 Compare Chapter 4 169 The monthly statement mentions 19662 members in the Hill Districts of whom 8957 are tribal
Eva Gerharz
Chakma Raja Devasish Roy has stated that it was necessary to modernise jhum technology to fight back the government propaganda of their backwardness (Janakantha 13.5., 1994 cited in Mohsin 1997, 119). Green Hill tries to realise these aims by emphasising technological development combined with ecological and environmental issues and has the aim to
innovate sophisticated technology by preserving indigenous traditional system of plantation (Annual Report 1995-97). Besides Green Hill stresses the importance of the traditional indigenous hand loom, which is sold in a shop attached to the office in Rangamati. Nevertheless during my field work some people criticised the NGOs in general, regardless if Bengali or indigenous ones. That can be explained by the fact that the phenomenon NGO in general is seen as a Bengali one. Self-appointed representatives are no exceptions there, as distrust r emains. At the same time the NGO sector was mentioned as a potential provider of jobs which are badly needed in the area. Again the rational calculation determines the limits of cultural boundary-markers.
7.2. Another Insurgency? If necessary, I will not hesitate to shed blood for full implementation of the accord said Shantu Larma at the first anniversary meeting of signing the Peace Accord (The Daily Star 03.12.1998). That intimidation Shantu Larma shares with many Hill People. Two main objectives can be distinguished here. First the Peace Accord does not provide autonomy for the CHT, as has been wished by many Hill People. An interviewee told me: You can say that you are German, that you have a flag, something to be proud of, I cant say that. Among the Hill People there can be found one fraction which proclaims a nationalist view reaching full autonomy171 . For those people the Peace Accord means being sold out to Bangladesh. The second reason is the problems with the implementation of the Peace Accord, which partly difficult to achieve and has been mentioned above already. That is what Shantu Larma complains about. As long as the implementation of the Peace Accord is not pushed forward despair and frustration remain. Many interviewees complained about the law-and-order situation in the Hill Tracts. So-called tax-collecting in the villages, which was practised earlier too172 , was reported to be a great problem in the remote areas as well as on the streets where transport is been disrupted by opposing groups. Increasing drug-use and street-crime were also men170 171
Bangladesh is said to be the country with the greatest density of NGOs world-wide Compare to struggle about autonomy between M.N. Larma and Preeti mentioned in Chapter 3.2.1. 172 See Chapter 4
tioned. One interviewee stated: Before the Peace Accord there was their law and our law, but now there is no law any longer. Especially the Pahari Chattro Parishad are blamed for creating trouble reaching further than within the college at Rangamati. In the regular clashes between the Pahari Chattro Parishad and the other college parties, shopkeepers173 and police forces are quite often involved. On the 05.09.1999 at least 30 people were injured in Rangamati in such a incident (Bangladesh Observer 06.09.1999). During my stay in Rangamati shopkeepers were attacked several times by indigenous opponents of the Peace Accord. B esides, hartals are used for the disturbance of normality. Although these hartals are a national phenomenon, they are utilised in the Hills for the escalation of ethnically determined incidents, according to my informants view. Even when a hartal has a different political background, the indigenous and the Bengali population blames each other for damage. Mentionable are likewise cases in which disputes escalate. An incident which was heavily discussed during my field work happened in Dighinala174 : On the 22.08.1999 the Daily Star reported that at least 18 people had been injured in a dispute between some Hill People, settlers and the police. The Hill People, repatriated refugee families, sheltered in a schoolbuilding had been attacked by some Bengali people for reasons of revenge for another incident. The Daily Star (26.06.1999) reports that at least thirteen people were killed and about hundred kidnappings had happened since the signing of the Accord. On the 17.10.1999 about 60 people were injured in a clash between the police and Peace Accord opponents175 . Though these incidents give no representative picture of the Hill Peoples opinions, the increase seems to be alarming. Ethnic diversity, violence, economic pressure and political difficulties are involved in a process of strengthening each other. Just because a Peace Accord has been signed, the people do not change their minds overnight. Expectations and hope set upon the Peace Accord have been belied. That in turn strengthens the demarcation based on ethnic diversity and the outbreak of violence. The Independent (07.02.1999) reported that local police forces in Rangamati recovered 107 sharp weapons and 623 persons besides several more in other areas. Armed opposing groups were formed immediately after the signing of the Accord. Chakma Interviewees reported a group called Jhumma National Army176 is actively resisting the accord. Problematic are former Shanti Bahini fighters, are still without work although they were promised employment in the local police forces of the Hill District Councils, which have
173 174
As the shopkeepers are mainly Bengalis, they are of special interest for those who want to protest Belonging to Kagrachari district 175 http://www.shobak.org/jumma/ 176 that group is mentioned in Rashiduzzaman (1998, 661) as well. He also reports that besides the Pahari Chattro Parishad, the HWF, the Preeti group (see Chapter 3.2.1.) a faction of the former Shanti Bahini is involved into the armed resistance. The aims are the same as before the Accord: the withdrawal of the Bengali settlers from the CHT
Eva Gerharz
not been forthcoming. As they have not got the necessary skills for other jobs, engagement in insurgency actions is considered as a possible alternative. As long as the Peace Accord does not turn into a matter of every-day life of the people living in the Chittagong Hill Tracts, ethnic segregation will always provoke violence and bloodshed.
8. Conclusion
Field work in the CHT and in Bangladesh in general was a great experience. It provided an insight into the methodological issues of social research as well into the reality of social life in areas of ethno-political conflict. Unfortunately a lot of interesting data had to be left out of the scheme in this paper, as the issue is a very complex one. The guiding theoretical question, how identities are constructed, has been investigated in combination with a very shortened description of historical processes, economic features and cultural differences. The analysis has shown that ethnic diversity and the resulting conflict are predominantly bound to historical and economic processes. Policies in the age of the nationstate are always determined by the attempt to construct entities based on cultural features, as is the case in Bangladesh. Its independence is based on the idea of establishing one entity characterised by linguistic, cultural and religious features. Minorities in such a relatively homogeneous systems are marginalised and devaluated in order to create one people. That in turn provokes processes in which minorities establish counter movements. Exclusion leads to inclusion and vice versa. This dynamic permeates all spheres of social life. The economy, as a highly state determined aspect, is characterised by the relationship between the majority Bengali society and the Hill People as a minority. Land has a key role here, and in addition economic development shows an interethnic dynamic, characterised by marginalisation, preference and deprivation. Education has been treated as an exclusively Hill Peoples matter in this work. Inasmuch as interethnic relationships within the state-system determine social life, the complexity of interethnic relationships among the 13 different indigenous groups in the CHT embraces processes of domination and marginalisation. The aspects of political, economic and educational life are deeply interwoven with cultural features. As key elements of ethnic identity construction, they determine and are determined by the various processes. Summarising the most important processes, the paper is theoretically embedded in the end of Chapter 6. The last Chapter about the Peace Accord gives an impression of the present situation in the CHT in respect to questions of what the future of the CHT will look like. The main thesis here is that peace cannot be established as long as it does not become a matter of every-
day life. Animosities will remain and conflict can break out at any time, whenever ethnic differences are utilised in the attempt to gain power.
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Islam, Syed Nazmul 1981: The Chittagong Hill Tracts in Bangladesh: Integrational Crisis between Center and Periphery, in: Asian Survey, Vol. XXI, No. 12, December 1981, pp. 1211-1221 Jahangir, B.K. 1986: Problematics of Nationalism in Bangladesh, Dhaka, Centre for Social Studies Jessen, Brigitte 1997: Zerfall und Elend einer Agrarkultur, in: Reinhardt, Dieter: Die Katastophe, die Not und das Geschft. Das Beispiel Bangladesch, Mnchen, Becksche Reihe, pp. 57-68 Kabeer, Naila 1991; the Quest for National Identity: Women, Islam and the State of Bangladesh, in: Kandiyoti, Deniz (ed.): Women, Islam and the State, Philadelphia, Temple University Press, pp. 115-143 Khaleque, Kibriaul 1995: Ethnic Communities of Bangladesh, in: Gain, Philip (ed.): Bangladesh. Land Forest and Forest People, Dhaka, Society for Environment and Human Development (SEHD), pp. 1-25 Kler, Reinhart and Schiel, Tielman 1994: Nationalstaaten und Grundlagen ethnischer Identitt, in: Kler, Reinhart and Schiel, Tielman (eds.): Nationalsstaat und Ethnizitt, Frankfurt a.M., Verlag fr Interkulturelle Kommunikation Lee, Shin-wha 1996: A Vicious Cycle of Tripolary: The Environmental-Refugee-Conflict Nexus in Bangladesh, in: Theoretical Perspectives, Vol. 3, No. 1, Dhaka, Bangladesh Study Group for Alternative Thinking (BASGAT), pp. 57-82 Lentz, Carola 1992: Quantitative und qualitative Erhebungsverfahren im fremdkulturellen Kontext. Kritische Anmerkungen aus ethnologischer Sicht, in: Seibel, Hans-Dieter et. al. (eds.): Empirische Sozialforschung ber Entwicklungslnder. Methodenprobleme und Praxisbezug, Saarbrcken, Breitenbach Berlag, pp. 317-339 Levi-Strauss, Claude 1951: Miscellaneous Notes on the Kuki of the Chittagong Hill Tracts, Pakistan, in: Man, No. 283, December 1951, Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland, pp. 167-169 Levi-Strauss, Claude 1978: Traurige Tropen, Frankfurt a.M., Surkamp Lewin, T.H. 1869: The Hill Tracts of Chittagong and the Dwellers Therein, Calcutta Lffler, Lorenz G. 1968: Basic Democracies in den Chittagong Hill Tracts, Ostpakistan, in: Sociologus. Zeitschrift fr empirische Soziologie und Sozialpsychologie, No. 18, pp. 152-171 Mahmud Ali, S. 1993: The Fearful State. Power, People and Internal War in South Asia, London & New Jersey, Zed Books Marshall, Gordon (ed.) 1998: Oxford Dictionary of Sociology, Oxford, Oxford University Press
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Mey, Wolfgang (ed.) 1988: Wir wollen nicht euch wir wollen euer Land. Macht und Menschenrechte in den Chittagong Hill Tracts, Gttingen, Gesellschaft fr bedrohte Vlker Mohsin, Amena 1996: The Nationalist State and the Chittagong Hill Tracts: 1971-1994, in: The Journal of Social Studies, No. 74, Centre for Social Studies, pp. 32-61 Mohsin, Amena 1997: The Politics of Nationalism. The Case of the Chittagong Hill Tracts, Bangladesh, Dhaka, University Press Limited Mohsin, Amena 1997a: Democracy and the Marginalisation of Minorities: The Bangladesh Case, in: The Journal of Social Studies, No. 78, October 1997, Dhaka, Centre for Social Studies, pp. 90-105 Mohsin, Amena 1998: Chittagong Hill Tracts Peace Accord: Looking Ahead, in: The Journal of Social Studies, No. 82, Dhaka, Centre for Social Studies, pp. 106-117 Prue, Kyaw Shwe 1994: A Brief History of the Maramas of Chittagong Hill Tracts, in: Publication by the Tribal Cultural Institute Bandarban (No. 2), Bandarban, pp. 1-12 Quddus, Abdul / Ahmed, Tofail / Ali, Easin 1996: An Evaluation of Integrated Community Development Programme for the Chittagong Hill Tracts, Comilla, Bangladesh Academy for Rural Development (BARD) Rashiduzzaman, M. 1998: Bangladeshs Chittagong Hill Tracts Peace Accord. Institutional Features and Strategic Concerns, in: Asian Survey, Vol. XXXVIII, No. 7, July 1998, pp. 653-670
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Schlee, Gnther and Werner, Karin (eds.) 1996: Inklusion und Exklusion. Die Dynamik von Grenzziehungen im Spannungsfeld von Markt, Staat und Ethnizitt, Kln, Rdiger Kppke Verlag Shelley, Mizanur Rahman 1992: The Chittagong Hill Tracts of Bangladesh: The Untold Story, Dhaka, Centre for Development Research (CDRB) Siddique, Quamrul Islam 1997: Potentials for Development of Rural Infrastructure in Chittagong Hill Tracts, Paper from: Round Table Discussion: Legal and Economic Perspectives of Chittagong Hill Tracts December 21, 1997, Dhaka, Society for Development and Co-operation (SODAC) Tarlo, Emma 1996: Clothing matters. Dress and Identity in India, London, Hurst The Chittagong Hill Tracts Commission 1991: Life is not Ours. Land and Human Rights in the Chittagong Hill Tracts Bangladesh, Denmark/Netherlands Torres-Trueba, Henry E. 1968: Brandrodungsfeldbau im Tropenwald des Amazonas: seine technisch-umweltbedingten Begrenzungen und Mglichkeiten fr kulturelle
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Appendix 1
Glossary of Foreign Words hartal headman jhum jhumia kalong Bengali word for strike principal of a mouza shifting cultivation, burn and slash method of cultivation those people who are cultivating in the jhum basket made of bamboo which is carried on the back with the help of a leather-stripe on the forehead karbari principal of the para
khadi traditional Chakma dress which is a piece of cloth bounded around the breast
Eva Gerharz
lakh lungi
equally with 100.000 kind of skirt which is commonly worn by men in parts of South Asia
mouza para raja rajbari sari shalwar kameez Shanti Bahini thana
union of several paras village clans chief, king the kings residence long piece of cloth worn by women in South Asia loose trouser shirt armed wing of the JSS, means literally peace force organisational unit according to the responsibility of a police station
Appendix 2
List of Abbreviations
BCSIC BDR BMPC BNP BRAC
Bangladesh Cottage and Small Industries Co-operation Bangladesh Rifles, a quasi-military border control Buddhist Minority Protection Committee Bangladesh Nationalist Party Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee, biggest NGO in Bangladesh
CHT CHTDB CHTRC/RC GOB HWF IDF NGO PCP
Chittagong Hill
Tracts
Chittagong Hill Tracts Development Board Chittagong Hill Tracts Regional Council Government of Bangladesh Hill Womens Federation, associated to PCJSS Integrated Development Foundation Non-governmental Organisation Pahari Chattro Parishad, Hill Students Federation, associated to PCJSS
PCJSS/JSS
Parbattya Chattragram Jana Samhati Samiti, The United Peoples Party of the Chittagong Hill Tracts

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Construction of Identities in the Chittagong Hill Tracts

1. Introduction Bangladesh and Its Minorities

Construction of Identities in the Chittagong Hill Tracts

Construction of Identities in the Chittagong Hill Tracts

interaction and therefore constructed by the actors

Construction of Identities in the Chittagong Hill Tracts

predominantly Chakma24 turned out to be a structural con-

Construction of Identities in the Chittagong Hill Tracts

3. The Chittagong Hill Tracts and the Nation-State

Construction of Identities in the Chittagong Hill Tracts

Construction of Identities in the Chittagong Hill Tracts

government and represented a new wave of Chakma and

3.2.2. A Question of Identity Bangladesh and the Hill People

Construction of Identities in the Chittagong Hill Tracts

Construction of Identities in the Chittagong Hill Tracts

rituals confronted the Hill People massively with the

4. Economy and Disadvantage Land as an Essential Need

Construction of Identities in the Chittagong Hill Tracts

sparse population in the CHT

(Mohsin, 1997, 114). Some people tried to cultivate in the

Construction of Identities in the Chittagong Hill Tracts

Construction of Identities in the Chittagong Hill Tracts

and cultivating land in such a society determines

4.4. The Tribal Market in Rangamati

Construction of Identities in the Chittagong Hill Tracts

Construction of Identities in the Chittagong Hill Tracts

Construction of Identities in the Chittagong Hill Tracts

Construction of Identities in the Chittagong Hill Tracts

Construction of Identities in the Chittagong Hill Tracts

6. Cultural Differences Cultural Habits and Their Importance

Construction of Identities in the Chittagong Hill Tracts

Construction of Identities in the Chittagong Hill Tracts

according to needs and circumstances of every-day

for years and therefore adopted

Construction of Identities in the Chittagong Hill Tracts

Construction of Identities in the Chittagong Hill Tracts

Construction of Identities in the Chittagong Hill Tracts

Construction of Identities in the Chittagong Hill Tracts

A basic issue is that of nationalism in Bangladesh.

7. The Peace Accord A Political Solution

Construction of Identities in the Chittagong Hill Tracts

During the time of research in September 1999

Construction of Identities in the Chittagong Hill Tracts

Construction of Identities in the Chittagong Hill Tracts

The local organisation I worked with, IDF164 , has

Construction of Identities in the Chittagong Hill Tracts

Construction of Identities in the Chittagong Hill Tracts

Construction of Identities in the Chittagong Hill Tracts

Construction of Identities in the Chittagong Hill Tracts

BCSIC BDR BMPC BNP BRAC

Construction of Identities in the Chittagong Hill Tracts

CHT CHTDB CHTRC/RC GOB HWF IDF NGO PCP

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