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archive: Refugees Within, Refugees Without

Refugees Within, Refugees Without

Sanjoy Hazarika
http://www.south-asia.com/himal/April/chakma.htm
Posted on Tue, 06 Jul 1999 12:07:01 +0530


    Title: Refugees Within, Refugees Without
    Author: Sanjoy Hazarika
    Publication: http://www.south-asia.com/himal/April/chakma.htm
    Date:
    
    The Chakma are too few to be so fragmented and scattered, but there is
    little incentive for anyone to try and redress their condition.
    
    On 15 August 1947, the Indian tricolour went up a flagpost in
    Rangamati, the main town in the Chittagong Hill Tracts. The Chakma
    leaders had believed during the tortuous negotiations leading up to
    Partition that, given the religious composition of the largely
    Buddhist CHT, their district would be parcelled out to India.
    
    Not so, decided Sir Cyril Radcliffe, head of the commission with the
    task of apportioning the territories, and the Hill Tracts were awarded
    to (East) Pakistan. On 18 August, Pakistani troops marched into
    Rangamati, pulled down the Indian flag, and sent up in its place the
    star and crescent of Pakistan.
    
    The days of travail had begun for the Chakma, a minority which, over
    the following half century, has had more than its share of
    fragmentation, even by South Asian standards. Today, their own
    homeland, the CHT, is overrun with Bengali settlers from the
    overpopulated Bangladeshi mainland, and divided groups survive under
    trying circumstances in Tripura, Mizoram and Arunachal.
    
    However, for all the tragedy they have suffered, the world knows too
    little about Chakmas. Within Bangladesh, they pale to insignificance
    before the size of the mainland population and the suffering that
    regularly visits it. In India, Chakmas make up three segregated groups
    whose problem is one among so many in the increasingly violent
    Northeast, itself a region that suffers neglect from India's rulers.
    
    Colony to Bahini
    
    The Chakma form part of the great Tibeto-Burman language family whose
    antecedents, like those of the tribal communities stretching all the
    way east from central Nepal, go back to the central and eastern Asia
    of thousands of years ago. The jungles of the CHT are home to several
    such Tibeto-Burman tribes, among whom Chakmas and Marmas are the
    largest.
    
    The Hill Tracts, an undulating curiosity in a Bangladesh that is
    otherwise remarkable for its deltaic flatness, became a refuge for
    Buddhism even as the faith declined across the region in the face of a
    resurgent Hinduism and, later, Islam. The Buddhist character of what
    is today the CHT, in fact, seems to have been cemented in the 14th
    century when Sawngma (Chakma) Raja Marekyaja migrated from
    neighbouring Arakan hills into the Chittagong belt to establish his
    rule and dynasty here.
    
    During colonial times, the Chakma did not take kindly to new demands
    for taxes by the British, who had to make at least three major
    offensives to subdue the tribals until an agreement was extracted from
    them. However, relations with the British became progressively cordial
    afterward, to the extent that Chakmas under Rani Kallendi sided with
    the imperial rulers during the Great Mutiny of 1857.
    
    In 1860, the British divided the hill tracts into three subdivisions,
    under the control of three tribes. In 1900, in return perhaps for
    loyalty shown, they introduced a regulation banning the settlement of
    outsiders in the Hill Tracts and prohibiting the transfer of land to
    non-indigenous people. The 1935 Government of India Act defined the
    hills as a "Totally Excluded Area", taking it out of Bengal's control.
    
    These actions to protect the tribal identity and economy were strongly
    resented in Dhaka and Calcutta. The displeasure found expression
    immediately after 1947 in the open season that was declared for
    settlers. Successive regimes in East Pakistan, and later Bangladesh,
    supported the influx of Bengali-speaking Muslim migrants into the
    5,000 sq km Hill Tracts, which is sparsely populated in relation to
    the rest of the country. Today, as a result of the aggressive
    settlement policy, the Hill Tracts has a population of 900,000 which
    is evenly divided between Muslim homesteaders and the indigenous
    Buddhists.
    
    If the first political blow suffered by the Chakma was when their
    territory was placed with East Pakistan, the following decades saw
    successive measures that fuelled discontent. It started with the
    crackdown on the anti-Pakistan demonstrations of 1947. Then came the
    inundation of prime agricultural lands by the Kaptai Dam reservoir,
    one of the first mega- projects in all South Asia. The reservoir
    displaced tens of thousand Chakmas.
    
    During the 1971 war for Bangladesh's liberation, the CHT population
    backed the Mukti Bahini against the Pakistani army. The following
    year, Manobendra Larma, who had been elected to the national
    parliament from the Hill Tracts, called on Sheikh Mujibur Rahman with
    a delegation, seeking to place Chakma concerns on the new nation's
    political agenda. As it became clear that Shiekh Mujibur and the new
    establishment he represented was in no mood to listen, Mr Larma set up
    the Jana Sanghata Samiti as a political group, and later, its armed
    wing, the Shanti Bahini.
    
    Over the course of the following years, operations by the Bangladeshi
    army in the Hill Tracts against the Shanti Bahini led to an exodus of
    Chakma refugees into neighbouring Tripura, the Indian state which juts
    like a wedge into Bangladesh's east. Over the last 20 years, Indian
    security forces have supported the Chakma fighters and have provided
    training which is conducted for the most part in Tripura. During this
    period, the Bahini has carried out a series of attacks on Bangladeshi
    forces and on civilian targets as well.
    
    There was a split in the Bahini in 1983 and a faction surrendered to
    the Dhaka authorities. However, the leftist group that is backed by
    India battles on. Manobendra Larma was killed during the factional
    in-fighting, but his brother, Shanto, has continued the campaign
    against Dhaka. The hills are presently quiet, as a ceasefire is in
    force while peace negotiations continue.
    
    Fourfold Division
    
    The number of Chakma who continue to live in their homeland of the
    Chittagong Hill Tracts is said to be about 300,000. Another 80,000
    Chakmas are to be found concentrated in the southwest of Mizoram, the
    Indian state that is sandwiched between Burma and the CHT. Most of
    this population is now regarded as Indian, having lived in Mizoram for
    generations. A third group of most recent arrivals is located in
    Tripura, and numbers 50,000. Here since 1988, these Chakma refugees
    fled the Bangladesh Army operations against their villages in the CHT.
    Today, they live in decrepit settlements that are euphemistically
    termed refugee camps by the Indian government.
    
    A fourth group of Chakma consists of those displaced by the Kaptai Dam
    reservoir in 1964, who were forced to fend for themselves when the
    erstwhile government of East Pakistan failed to pay compensation.
    About 30,000 of these Chakma "development refugees" ended up in the
    Cachar and Lushai hills (which later became the Mizo Hills, and then
    the state of Mizoram). At least 20,000 more left for the Arakan hills
    in Burma, where they are now settled.
    
    "They came in a hopeless, pathetic condition, just with the clothes
    that they wore," recalls one senior Mizoram official, who was part of
    the Assam government team that received the Chakma in the Cachar and
    Lushai hills. At one point, the Indian authorities toyed with the idea
    of moving the Chakma en masse to the Andaman and Nicobar islands, but
    it was later decided to shift the refugees to the North East Frontier
    Agency, now the state of Arunachal Pradesh. 
    
    No Honour, Nor Dignity
    
    The Chakma encampments in Tripura are not "refugee camps" as the
    United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees would define them. They
    have none of the facilities available to, say, the Bhutanese refugees
    in the Jhapa camps of Nepal. The Chakma huts are of mud and thatch,
    and for years they have received from the Government of India a measly
    daily quota of 400 grams of rice, some salt, and 20 paisa on the side.
    
    Because this dole is hardly enough, many Chakmas work outside the
    camps for wages lower than what the locals ask. This has created
    tension, and recently, the Tripura state government passed an order
    restricting the refugees to the camps. This year, for the first time
    since the Chakmas arrived in Tripura, refugee students were not
    allowed to sit for school-leaving examinations of the state education
    system.
    
    Repatriation talks between the Bangladesh authorities, the Indian
    Government and the Chakma leadership have continued over the past few
    years, but there appears little hope that the refugees will be
    returning anytime soon with the "honour and dignity" that their
    leaders insist on. Assurances from the Bangladeshi authorities do not
    seem enough, and the Indian side does not favour forced repatriation.
    Conditions are far from settled, especially as the ceasefire between
    Dhaka and the Shanti Bahini is due to end on 31 March.
    
    The Chakma of Mizoram, while they seem to be the most secure among the
    displaced groups, have problems of their own. Regarded as Congress
    party backers, they were granted an autonomous district council back
    in 1972. The local Mizo, who see a cultural and demographic threat in
    the Chakma presence (they now make up ten percent of Mizoram's
    population), resent the granting of the council, especially as it was
    done without consulting them. Besides, the Mizo also suspect that many
    of the state's Chakmas are subsequent migrants from Bangladesh, and
    not part of the original settlers.
    
    The Mizo are predominantly Presbytarian and they recently celebrated
    100 years of the coming of the Church to their hills. The growth of
    the Chakma population, whether natural or through illegal influx, has
    sparked a campaign of intimidation by the militant Mizo Students
    Union. Chakmas have been assaulted, their houses torched, and names
    struck off the electoral lists. The anti-Chakma campaign is set to
    resume this spring and continue through the summer. "The Chakma are
    foreigners, and they do not belong here," is the refrain among the
    Mizo student leaders.
    
    Another 70,000 or so Chakmas are into hard times in nearby Arunachal
    Pradesh, where a student-led campaign is underway to drive out the
    Kaptai 'oustees' who were settled here by the Indian government 32
    years ago. Here, too, a campaign to frighten them is on, which
    recently forced hundreds to flee to the relative safety of Assam. The
    Supreme Court of India has given directives against the anti-Chakma
    drive, but Arunachali leaders and agitators insist that the campaign
    will continue. The Central government has appointed a committee to
    review the situation, but with both the state government and
    opposition agreed on the question, uncertain times loom ahead for the
    Chakma of Arunachal.  
    
    Demographic Threat
    
    In their homeland of the Chittagong Hill Tracts as well as in their
    Northeast India exile, the Chakma are about as vulnerable as it is
    possible for any community to be. A tenuous peace prevails in the Hill
    Tracts themselves, and in the points of their diaspora in
    India-Tripura, Mizoram, and Arunachal-they face hostile locals and a
    rising threat of eviction. The politics of demography is all the rage
    in the Northeast, and the Chakma have no constituency. The New Delhi
    authorities may try to show understanding, but that is no match for
    the rising animosities on the ground. The fact that the Chakmas of the
    Northeast are fragmented into three different populations makes their
    voice that much weaker.
    
    If there were to be a common effort by New Delhi politicians and
    bureaucrats, the chief ministers and opposition leaders of the
    Northeast states, the Chakma leaders, and eminent members of the
    public, a humane solution that addresses the interests of long-time
    residents as well as the demographic concerns of the locals may be
    found.
    
    Even in the unlikely event of the Chakma problem in the Northeast
    being resolved in a few swift strokes, however, the problem of Chakma
    in the Chittagong Hill Tracts would remain. That was, after all, how
    it all began.
    
    
    (S. Hazarika is a Delhi-based writer with special interest in the
    Indian Northeast.)
    



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