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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