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Front Page >> Features  > Story

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The Damned Of The Earth
By Anil Bhat
The Chakmas today live along the eastern borders of Tripura, along the western border of Mizoram and in Arunachal Pradesh. Their total population in these three States will not total more than two lakhs. In Tripura they are not discriminated against, but they live in the most difficult area of that State, along a strip of land bordering the Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT). In the north, in Dholai district, this stretch has no roads and the Chakmas who inhabit this area have to walk two days to reach the nearest road head to get supplies of rice and kerosene. They have no access to medical care or education. The only other inhabitants of this area are the Border Security Force, who have border out posts (B.O.P) along this inhospitable stretch. Helicopters maintain these B.O.Ps.

The most dangerous threat is from cerebral malaria. Each B.S.F. post keeps Plasmodium Falsifarum identification kits. Any one developing a fever is immediately tested for the parasite and if found positive is immediately evacuated. Despite all the precautions taken, the BSF still take casualties. Further south, in Udaipur district, the border road from Katalcherra to Boalkhali and S.K. Para lends some measure of civilized support to the Chakmas who live along this stretch. Though living at the edge of civilization, they are at least not discriminated against by the Government. This is not the case in the two other States where the Chakmas live.

In Mizoram, the Chakmas probably gradually drifted and settled along the borders of the erstwhile Mizo Hills district of Assam, from their original home in the CHT. Today they are about ninety thousand to one lakh scattered along the western border of Mizoram state from Tuipuibari in the north to Parva in the south. In Mizoram today they are second-class citizens. They are discriminated against on all grounds. Luckily they were given a District Council, by the Central Government, when Mizoram was still a Union Territory. This is still resented by the Mizo political leaders. The District Council however covers only one-third of the Chakma population in the State, and the Mizo leaders steadfastly refuse to consider extending the District Council to the whole of the Chakma population. In the areas outside the District Council, as the older teachers retire, new teachers are not appointed, there is no college, and health care facilities do not exist. The Chakma population silently suffers. The Mizo leaders have forgotten the way Assam neglected their district for 20 years, and are treating the Chakmas worse than the Assamese treated them.

There are about one lakh Chakmas in Arunachal Pradesh, where they were settled way back in the 1960s, when they were displaced by the construction of a dam across the Karnaphuli River at Kaptai in the CHT. Here again the Arunachal political leaders treat them as second-class citizens. They have been denied citizenship, though the Government of India settled them there as refugees more than thirty years ago. Bangladeshi migrants, who migrated illegally into India from 1950 to March 1971, have been granted citizenship, while the Chakmas who were accepted as refugees and settled in India by the Government have not got citizenship.

The CHT is an area of 13,295 square kilometers in the southeastern part of Bangladesh. It is bordered on the east by the Arakan and Chin states of Myanmar and Mizoram state of India, and on the west by Tripura. From time immemorial, the CHT have been inhabited by 13 indigenous ethnic groups collectively identified as the Jumma people. They are the Chakma, Marma, Pankhua, Reang, Tripura, Tanchangya, Mro, Murung, Lushai, Khumi, Chak, Khayang, and Bawm. They are distinct and different from the Bengali Hindu and Muslim population of East Bengal in respect of race, language, culture, religion and ethnicity. The British annexed the C.H.T in 1860, and created an autonomous district, the Chittagong Hill Tracts, within undivided British Bengal. In 1900, the British enacted an act to protect the Jumma people from economic exploitation by non-indigenous people and to preserve their traditional cultural and political institutions based on customary laws and common ownership of land. 

Throughout the British period the 1900 Act functioned as a safe guard for the Jumma people prohibiting migration of the non-indigenous people to the C.H.T. In 1947 Radcliffe ceded the C.H.T. district to Pakistan, when the Indian subcontinent was partitioned on the basis of religion into Islamic Pakistan and secular India, though the district was 98.5% Buddhist and Christian, and against the express wishes of the Jumma people. On the 15th of August 1947, Chakma youths under the leadership of Sneha Kumar Chakma hoisted the Indian tricolour at Rangamati, while in the south; the Marmas hoisted the Burmese flag at Bandarban. Six days later the Pakistanis lowered the Indian tricolor at gunpoint.

From the beginning the Pakistanis discriminated against the Jumma people, in jobs, business and education. The Government of Pakistan amended the 1900 Act several times, against the wishes of the Jumma people. The Government then constructed a dam on the Karnaphuli River at Kaptai, inundating 1036 square kilometers of land and displacing about one lakh Chakmas. It was these Chakmas who were resettled in Arunachal Pradesh. Then came the liberation struggle of the Bangladeshis against Pakistan in 1971. The Jumma people did not participate in this liberation struggle; neither did they side with the Pakistanis, as did the Jamaat-e-Islami of Bangladesh. As soon as the Pakistanis withdrew, the Mukti Bahini went on the rampage against the Jummas in the C.H.T.

On the 15th of February 1972, a delegation of the Jumma people led by M.N. Larma called on Sheikh Mujibur Rehman and asked for autonomy for the CHT, retention of the CHT, regulation of 1900, recognition of the three rajas of the Jumma people, and a ban on the influx of non-Jummas into the CHT. All these demands were rejected, and in March 1972, M.N. Larma formed the Jana Samhiti Samiti (J.S.S)

In the late 1970s, President Zia started settling Bangladeshis from the plains in the CHT. In the beginning the Government did not make this public. It was only much later that the Government acknowledged this. The settlement was very cleverly implemented, by settling the plains people in-between the tribal villages. By 1981 Bangladeshis from the plains equal to more than one-third the population of tribals, had been resettled in the C.H.T. When peaceful overtures to the Government failed, the J.S.S. took to arms, and started an armed wing, the Shanti Bahini, on 7th January 1973.

The first attack of the Shanti Bahini was on a police post at Bilaichari on the 5th of May 1976. Initially the Shanti Bahini started their actions with weapons left behind by the Pakistani army. Later they were able to procure weapons from across the border where they set up camps. It is reported that the Shanti Bahini had got some training from the Myanmarese army and some Shanti Bahini cadres disguised as Myanmarese soldiers were also trained by the Chinese. Meanwhile in the C.H.T. a series of skirmishes took place between the Bangladesh army and the Shanti Bahini. The Bangladesh army was first inducted in C.H.T. in October 1976. The civilian population in the C.H.T. suffered insurgency for more than 20 years. While the army committed several atrocities against the Jumma people, the Bangladeshi settlers suffered at the hands of the Shanti Bahini.

While conducting counter insurgency operations, the Jumma people were often detained and tortured. There were extra judicial executions, tortures and rapes. It is reported that the Shanti Bahini killed 343 army and police personnel. The army killed 268 insurgents, while 238 Jumma people were killed. The Shanti Bahini killed 1054 Bangladeshi settlers, despite the protection given to them by the Government. From these figures it can be seen that the Shanti Bahini were holding their ground and even had an advantage over the army.

During this period there was a Government-sponsored attempt at converting the Jumma people to Islam. This was organized by Al-Rabita, a Saudi Government funded NGO. The Jamaat-e-Islami a religious and fundamentalist group worked in close liaison with the army. Besides trying to convert the Jumma people to Islam, there have also been several incidents of destruction of religious institutions.

By 1986 more than 50 Buddhist temples were burnt. Since 1980 there have been 13 instances of massacres of the Jumma people by Bangladeshi settlers with the security forces looking on. Frustrated at the attacks of the Shanti Bahini, the Bangladeshi settlers began to take it out on the Jumma people. The figure of Jumbo people killed by the Bangladeshi settlers and the security forces has been grossly reduced. Actually in each of the 13 massacres listed, more than 60 to 70 innocent Jumma people were killed. In many cases the dead bodies were not even recovered. Ultimately a large number of Jumma people, unable to bear the atrocities fled to Tripura. They migrated in waves. They were unfortunately not given refugee status by the United Nations. This was indeed very unfortunate. The Rohingyas, who were driven out by Myanmar, and the supporters of Aung San Su Kyis League for Democracy driven out by Myanmar were both granted refugee status by the UNHCR. The hapless Chakmas who had fled from their homeland were housed in slums of bamboo shacks, without sanitation and minimum standards of cleanliness. I had seen these camps and was ashamed that human beings were being kept in such primitive conditions. Their allowance was a pittance, barely enough to keep body and soul together.

In 1997 after Sheikh Hasina and her Awami League came to power, after protracted negotiations a peace treaty was signed between the Jana Samhati Samiti, which was a total sell out of the Jumma people. The Bangladesh Government did not accept the main issue of returning the Bangladeshi settlers from the C.H.T. All that was conceded was that the C.H.T. would have a tribal head who would have the status of a Cabinet Minister. His deputy would however be a settler from the plains! Naturally a faction of the JSS refused to accept this agreement, and remained behind in India. The 50,000 odd refugees who had been treated so shabbily trekked back to the C.H.T. only to find that the Bangladeshi settlers were even more firmly entrenched than before. Despite several meetings in 1997, the year the Jumma refugees trekked back, and in 1998, 1999 and 2000 the agreement could not be finalized. The Government has till date, not transferred to the Regional Council, powers provided under the accord. As a result the Government is still directly administering the CHT. The Land Commission which was to oversee the resettling of the refugees on their respective homesteads and land has not yet been set up. Only 29 of the 500 military camps have been withdrawn from the C.H.T. Bangladeshi Muslims from the plains continue to be settled in the C.H.T.

When Sheikh Hasina started the peace talks with the JSS, the opposition party of Khaleda Zia opposed the talks and the agreement later arrived at. In 2001, Khaleda Zia's party the B.N.P. won the elections in a coalition with the Jamaat-e-Islami. The Jumma people were naturally supporters of Sheikh Hasinas party, the Awami League. The minority Hindus were also supporters of Sheikh Hasina. With the victory of the BNP, a wave of violence was unleashed against the Hindus as well as the Jumma people, for having supported the Awami League. The latest in a series of such incidents is the attack on Madarbania village near Ukhia. This is a small village of Chakmas wedged between the hills and the sea. A temple, which had been constructed by the Chakmas, was destroyed in a cyclone in 1994. When they tried to rebuild it after some years, the Bangladeshi Muslims objected. 

The local Awami League M.P. intervened and negotiated an agreement. As soon as the B.N.P. party came to power, the local Bangladeshi Muslims attacked the Chakmas of the village when they were laying a foundation stone for their Buddhist temple. This led to a riot in which one Muslim was killed. In the retaliation that followed, the local government looked aside as the mob attacked the village. All the males of the village ran away to the forest. A Chakma woman Chanio Chakma has come forward and testified in the district court at Cox’s Bazaar. Several Chakma women were raped. Chanio Chakma courageously beat off her attackers and has filed a complaint against 11 named attackers all of whom are supporters of Khaleda Zia’s B.N.P.

The biggest mistake made by the Chakmas was in agreeing to negotiate with Sheikh Hasina’s Government. It was crystal clear to those who were deployed on the border with Bangladesh that Sheikh Hasina’s writ did not run very much beyond her own secretariat. The Bangladesh army and police and civil bureaucracy were against the minority Hindus and Buddhists. The B.S.F had specific evidence of camps of the ULFA, NSCN (IM), NLFT, ATTF and other insurgent groups in the C.H.T. Interrogation reports of arrested insurgents gave us specific locations of camps. We even had photographs of these camps seized from arrested insurgents. When such information was given to the Bangladesh counterparts, all that the nearest Bangladesh Rifles unit would do was to go to the camp and tell the insurgent group to shift their camp. In the next border meeting we would be told that no such camps existed at the places mentioned.

It is quite clear now that there is no hope for the Chakma people. They are doomed to extinction. They were doomed from the time that Jawaharlal Nehru, agreed to let Pakistan have the C.H.T, after promising Sneha Kumar Chakma, the representative of the Parbattya Chattogram Jana Samity, that the Bengal Boundary Commission had no jurisdiction over the C.H.T. Sneha Kumar Chakma had met Sardar Patel, and Jawaharlal Nehru in July 1947 and was promised by both, that C.H.T. would remain with India.

Then on the 18th of July 1947, when the Indian Independence Act was published, it showed that Radcliff had not listened to the submissions of the two Hindu members of the Bengal Boundary Commission, Justice Bijon Mukherjee and Charu Biswas, that C.H.T should be with India. Sneha Kumar ran to Delhi after hoisting the Indian Tricolor at Rangamati on the 15th of August 1947, to meet the Indian leaders to try and revise the decision of Radcliffe.

He met Sardar Patel, who told him that he was with him but he should meet Jawaharlal Nehru. It took 50 days for Sneha Kumar Chakma to meet Nehru. When he finally got an audience and told Nehru the C.H.T. should be with India, and the Chakmas were ready to fight for this and would India help with arms, Nehru got up in anger and shouted "Do you propose to bring India under foreign rule again?" That decision sounded the death knell for the hapless Chakmas.

Courtesy: The Sangai Express

  

 

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