Tag: Chakmas

  • Chakmas of Chittagong Hills: ‘Indians’ on August 15, Pakistanis two days later and ‘rebels’ by August 19

    By PTI

    KOLKATA: Every year, motley groups of Chakma tribals gather in various parts of the country with placards calling out August 17, 1947 as ‘Black Day’.

    Seventy-five years ago, the Chakmas lost the short-lived ‘rebellion’ they mounted to make their homeland in the Chittagong Hills a part of India and since then, the tribe’s now scattered diasporas lament that loss.

    On August 15, 1947, Chakmas, Tripuris and other tribals, mostly Buddhist, living in the over 13,000 square kilometers of hills and dales in Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT) decided to raise the Indian tricolour at the Deputy Commissioner’s Bungalow at Rangamati to signify their new citizenship.

    “My father Sneha Kumar Chakma, who was a member of the All India Excluded Areas Sub-Committee of the Constituent Assembly of India for CHT, engaged with Col GL Hyde, the then deputy commissioner of the district, and after he agreed that the hill tracts were part of India, raised the Indian flag on the morning of August 15, 1947,” said Gautam Chakma, a professor of political science at Tripura University.

    However, the jubilation that accompanied that momentous occasion was short-lived.

    On the evening of August 17, after the Radcliffe Award, which demarcated the boundary between India and Pakistan, was announced over the radio, it came to be known that Chittagong Hill Tracts had been given to the latter.

    A few days later, the Baluch regiment marched in to tear down the tricolour and replace it with Pakistan’s flag.

    In Banderban, also in the Chittagong Hill Tracts, some tribals who felt closer to Burma, now Myanmar, had raised the Burmese flag.

    This too was torn down by the Baluch soldiers.

    An arrest warrant was issued against Sneha Chakma and his associates, branding them traitors.

    However, Sneha along with others, including Indramoni Chakma and Girish Dewan, the ‘captain’ of Chakma guards, had already left for Agartala after an emergency meeting of tribal leaders on August 19 at the deputy commissioner’s bungalow where it was resolved that “CHT shall not abide by the Radcliffe Award and that resistance be put up and squads be immediately set up with indigenous weapons”.

    Sneha Chakma’s team was authorised to travel to Kolkata and Delhi to seek arms and to protest what they felt was “gross injustice”.

    Chakma tribals claim that Sir Cyrill Radcliffe dismissed a seven-page argument written by Justice Bijan Mukherjee and Justice Charu Biswas (non-Muslim members of the Bengal Boundary Commission) in favour of retaining CHT within India, and had agreed to give it to Pakistan.

    While Chakmas in their memorandum, and justices Mukherjee and Biswas in their arguments pointed out that CHT had a 98 per cent Buddhist population whose tribal ethnicity made them clan-cousins to people living in Tripura and Assam, Radcliffe held that the area was the headwaters for Chittagong port and without it, the port, the only major one in East Pakistan, would be unsustainable.

    “The Maharaja of Burdwan offered my father some Lee Enfield rifles and ammunition. But most Indian leaders counselled a legal battle rather than an armed rebellion,” said professor Chakma.

    Raja Nalinaksha Roy, the titular tribal chief of the Chakmas despite being part of the decision to opt for an armed rebellion taken on August 19, later opted to work with the Pakistan government, perhaps to safeguard his clansmen.

    “The princely family and elite among Chakmas did not really support our struggle, some of them felt Pakistan would give them a better deal,” felt professor Chakma.

    However, the Chakma homeland in Chittagong Hills, did not remain a safe haven.

    In 1957, work on Kaptai dam, which eventually flooded hundreds of villages and submerged more than 1,300 sq km, started.

    Between 1962 and 1965, tens of thousands of Chakma villagers were forced to leave for India and Myanmar.

    READ HERE | Chakmas, Hajongs protest denial of residential certificates by Arunachal government

    “After the Kaptai dam was built (and tribals displaced), there was a rise in political consciousness among the Chakmas,” said Amena Mohsin, a professor of Dhaka University’s International Relations Department While some became refugees in neighbouring Tripura and Assam, where their clan brethren lived, others were resettled in Arunachal Pradesh.

    However, life in diaspora has not been a bed of roses.

    Most of those settled in Arunachal still do not have voting rights and periodically there are agitations, which seek their resettlement elsewhere, branding them “foreigners”.

    “There are just 60,000 of the 2.5 lakh Chakmas in India living in Arunachal Pradesh. Just 6,000 of them have voting rights, yet they face agitations,” said Suhas Chakma, the director at Rights and Risks Analysis Group, and author of several books on Chakma issues.

    Chakmas living in Mizoram are similarly in a quandary with the state government seeking to conduct surveys to create a National Register of Citizens (NRC), which could identify “illegal” Chakmas living in the state.

    “In 1900, the British took a slice of Chittagong Hill Tracts and made it part of the district which is today Mizoram, making many Chakmas and Rheangs citizens of that area yet today, they face illegal censuses which could target them,” alleged Suhas.

    In Chittagong Hill Tracts where an estimated 7 lakh Chakmas still live, much of their ancestral lands have been encroached upon by settlers from the plains, often with the help from the Bangladesh Army.

    “Much more than partition or the Kaptai Dam displacements, the throttling of tribal identity by the Sheikh Mujib government in Bangladesh and the later displacement of Chakma tribals by plains settlers have been disasters for them,” said professor Ranabir Samaddar, the former head of Kolkata-based Maulana Abul Kalam Azad Institute of Asian Studies.

    The ‘Parbatya Chattagram Jana Samhati Samiti’ (Chiitagong Hills People’s Solidarity Committee) was formed in 1972, soon after Bangladesh became independent and its armed wing ‘Shanti Bahini’ (Peace Army) launched its first attack on that country’s army in 1977.

    “India was willing to assist them (Shanti Bahini) after the death of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman in 1975,” claimed Mohsin, a charge many Bangladeshis make, but one which India denies.

    In 1997, after Sheikh Hasina came to power, a peace accord was brokered, ending the two-decades-long bloody rebellion.

    However, as plainsmen-settlers continued to grab land in the hills, and as a strong army presence kept the tribals in check, the peace remained an uneasy one.

    KOLKATA: Every year, motley groups of Chakma tribals gather in various parts of the country with placards calling out August 17, 1947 as ‘Black Day’.

    Seventy-five years ago, the Chakmas lost the short-lived ‘rebellion’ they mounted to make their homeland in the Chittagong Hills a part of India and since then, the tribe’s now scattered diasporas lament that loss.

    On August 15, 1947, Chakmas, Tripuris and other tribals, mostly Buddhist, living in the over 13,000 square kilometers of hills and dales in Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT) decided to raise the Indian tricolour at the Deputy Commissioner’s Bungalow at Rangamati to signify their new citizenship.

    “My father Sneha Kumar Chakma, who was a member of the All India Excluded Areas Sub-Committee of the Constituent Assembly of India for CHT, engaged with Col GL Hyde, the then deputy commissioner of the district, and after he agreed that the hill tracts were part of India, raised the Indian flag on the morning of August 15, 1947,” said Gautam Chakma, a professor of political science at Tripura University.

    However, the jubilation that accompanied that momentous occasion was short-lived.

    On the evening of August 17, after the Radcliffe Award, which demarcated the boundary between India and Pakistan, was announced over the radio, it came to be known that Chittagong Hill Tracts had been given to the latter.

    A few days later, the Baluch regiment marched in to tear down the tricolour and replace it with Pakistan’s flag.

    In Banderban, also in the Chittagong Hill Tracts, some tribals who felt closer to Burma, now Myanmar, had raised the Burmese flag.

    This too was torn down by the Baluch soldiers.

    An arrest warrant was issued against Sneha Chakma and his associates, branding them traitors.

    However, Sneha along with others, including Indramoni Chakma and Girish Dewan, the ‘captain’ of Chakma guards, had already left for Agartala after an emergency meeting of tribal leaders on August 19 at the deputy commissioner’s bungalow where it was resolved that “CHT shall not abide by the Radcliffe Award and that resistance be put up and squads be immediately set up with indigenous weapons”.

    Sneha Chakma’s team was authorised to travel to Kolkata and Delhi to seek arms and to protest what they felt was “gross injustice”.

    Chakma tribals claim that Sir Cyrill Radcliffe dismissed a seven-page argument written by Justice Bijan Mukherjee and Justice Charu Biswas (non-Muslim members of the Bengal Boundary Commission) in favour of retaining CHT within India, and had agreed to give it to Pakistan.

    While Chakmas in their memorandum, and justices Mukherjee and Biswas in their arguments pointed out that CHT had a 98 per cent Buddhist population whose tribal ethnicity made them clan-cousins to people living in Tripura and Assam, Radcliffe held that the area was the headwaters for Chittagong port and without it, the port, the only major one in East Pakistan, would be unsustainable.

    “The Maharaja of Burdwan offered my father some Lee Enfield rifles and ammunition. But most Indian leaders counselled a legal battle rather than an armed rebellion,” said professor Chakma.

    Raja Nalinaksha Roy, the titular tribal chief of the Chakmas despite being part of the decision to opt for an armed rebellion taken on August 19, later opted to work with the Pakistan government, perhaps to safeguard his clansmen.

    “The princely family and elite among Chakmas did not really support our struggle, some of them felt Pakistan would give them a better deal,” felt professor Chakma.

    However, the Chakma homeland in Chittagong Hills, did not remain a safe haven.

    In 1957, work on Kaptai dam, which eventually flooded hundreds of villages and submerged more than 1,300 sq km, started.

    Between 1962 and 1965, tens of thousands of Chakma villagers were forced to leave for India and Myanmar.

    READ HERE | Chakmas, Hajongs protest denial of residential certificates by Arunachal government

    “After the Kaptai dam was built (and tribals displaced), there was a rise in political consciousness among the Chakmas,” said Amena Mohsin, a professor of Dhaka University’s International Relations Department While some became refugees in neighbouring Tripura and Assam, where their clan brethren lived, others were resettled in Arunachal Pradesh.

    However, life in diaspora has not been a bed of roses.

    Most of those settled in Arunachal still do not have voting rights and periodically there are agitations, which seek their resettlement elsewhere, branding them “foreigners”.

    “There are just 60,000 of the 2.5 lakh Chakmas in India living in Arunachal Pradesh. Just 6,000 of them have voting rights, yet they face agitations,” said Suhas Chakma, the director at Rights and Risks Analysis Group, and author of several books on Chakma issues.

    Chakmas living in Mizoram are similarly in a quandary with the state government seeking to conduct surveys to create a National Register of Citizens (NRC), which could identify “illegal” Chakmas living in the state.

    “In 1900, the British took a slice of Chittagong Hill Tracts and made it part of the district which is today Mizoram, making many Chakmas and Rheangs citizens of that area yet today, they face illegal censuses which could target them,” alleged Suhas.

    In Chittagong Hill Tracts where an estimated 7 lakh Chakmas still live, much of their ancestral lands have been encroached upon by settlers from the plains, often with the help from the Bangladesh Army.

    “Much more than partition or the Kaptai Dam displacements, the throttling of tribal identity by the Sheikh Mujib government in Bangladesh and the later displacement of Chakma tribals by plains settlers have been disasters for them,” said professor Ranabir Samaddar, the former head of Kolkata-based Maulana Abul Kalam Azad Institute of Asian Studies.

    The ‘Parbatya Chattagram Jana Samhati Samiti’ (Chiitagong Hills People’s Solidarity Committee) was formed in 1972, soon after Bangladesh became independent and its armed wing ‘Shanti Bahini’ (Peace Army) launched its first attack on that country’s army in 1977.

    “India was willing to assist them (Shanti Bahini) after the death of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman in 1975,” claimed Mohsin, a charge many Bangladeshis make, but one which India denies.

    In 1997, after Sheikh Hasina came to power, a peace accord was brokered, ending the two-decades-long bloody rebellion.

    However, as plainsmen-settlers continued to grab land in the hills, and as a strong army presence kept the tribals in check, the peace remained an uneasy one.

  • ‘Racial profiling’ of Chakmas, Hajongs: NHRC seeks report from Centre, Arunachal govt

    By Express News Service

    GUWAHATI: The National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) has directed the Ministry of Home Affairs and the Arunachal Pradesh government to submit, within six weeks, the report on the action taken against alleged racial profiling of the Chakmas and Hajongs and the state government’s move to relocate them.

    The Commission directed them to ensure the protection of human rights of people belonging to the two communities.

    Earlier, the Chakma Development Foundation of India (CDFI) had lodged a complaint with the NHRC alleging racial profiling and that the Arunachal government was planning to relocate the Chakmas and Hajongs through an illegal census which was scheduled to commence from December 11 last year.

    “Out of the 65,000 Chakmas and Hajongs, about 60,500 are citizens by birth; thousands are casting votes while the citizenship applications of 4,000 migrants are yet to be processed,” CDFI founder Suhas Chakma said.

    In October 1995, the NHRC had approached the Supreme Court seeking the protection of the lives and liberties of the Chakmas and the Hajongs. On January 9, 1996, the SC had pronounced its judgment, directing the Centre and the Arunachal government to process the citizenship applications of the people. However, nothing has happened on the ground till date, the CDFI founder lamented.

    In his complaint, he said on August 15 last year, Arunachal Chief Minister Pema Khandu had announced that the Chakmas and Hajongs would be relocated outside of the state and it was confirmed by Union Law Minister Kiren Rijiju.

    In order to implement the plan, he said the district magistrate of Changlang had on November 26 last year notified the conduct of “Census of Chakmas and Hajongs” in all Chakma/Hajong-inhabited areas of the district to prepare and submit a report to the government on or before December 31 the same year.

    Viewing this as an act of racial profiling, the CDFI founder said, “The recent measures being taken by the state with respect to Chakmas and Hajongs are absolutely contrary to the laws of the land and judgments pronounced by the Supreme Court on their rights.”

    The Chakmas and Hajongs trace their roots to Bangladesh. Displaced by a dam in the then East Pakistan (present day Bangladesh), the Buddhist Chakmas and the Hindu Hajongs were resettled in Arunachal during 1964-69 by the central government.

  • Students’ body serves 15-day deadline on Arunachal government to resume census of Chakmas, Hajongs

    By Express News Service

    GUWAHATI: Against the backdrop of the charge of racial profiling of Buddhist Chakmas and Hindu Hajongs, the All Arunachal Pradesh Students’ Union (AAPSU) served a 15-day deadline on the state’s BJP government demanding the resumption of the census of the “refugees”.

    The students’ body claimed the government had stopped the exercise after receiving a letter from the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO).

    AAPSU general secretary Tobom Dai said the PMO had on December 7 sought a response from the state government after the Chakma Development Foundation of India (CDFI) petitioned it, alleging racial profiling of the people belonging to the two communities. Dai dismissed the charge.

    “It was a regular administrative exercise, aimed at maintaining the data of the refugees for safeguarding the interests of the indigenous people. The state government must not buckle under any external pressure,” he said.

    On December 1, the extra assistant commissioner of Diyun circle in Changlang district of eastern Arunachal held a meeting with Chakma and Hajong leaders days after, what the CDFI claimed, the district magistrate had notified the “Census of Chakmas and Hajongs 2021” at all Chakma and Hajong-inhabited areas of the district “for a report to be submitted to the government on or before December 31, 2021”.

    The CDFI said the census had sought personal information such as bank account and employment details and pending criminal cases.

    “This exclusive census is an act of racial profiling as only the Chakmas and Hajongs are being singled out. Arunachal shares its borders with China and Myanmar from where illegal migration has been taking place since independence,” CDFI chairman Suhas Chakma said.

    But Changlang DM, Devansh Yadav had said the December 1 meeting was convened not to start a census but inform the villagers how the process would be executed if at all approved.

    There are about 65,000 Chakmas and Hajongs in Arunachal. After being displaced by a dam in the then East Pakistan (present day Bangladesh), they were resettled in Arunachal during 1964-69 by the central government. 

  • Chakma body rejects Arunachal’s move to relocate 60,000 Chakmas, Hajongs

    Express News Service

    GUWAHATI: The Chakma Development Foundation of India (CDFI) has rejected the Arunachal Pradesh government’s purported move to relocate 60000 Chakmas and Hajongs to other states. 

    In a memorandum to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Home Minister Amit Shah, RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat, Arunachal CM Pema Khandu and Assam CM Himanta Biswa Sarma, the foundation said Chakmas, Hajongs and ex-Assam Rifles personnel were settled in the then centrally-administered North East Frontier Agency from 1964 to 1968 in defence of the country following the 1962 Indo-China war.

    The foundation said Khandu had spoken about the resettlement of Chakmas and Hajongs outside Arunachal while Union Law Minister Kiren Rijiju stated in various public meetings that the Citizenship (Amendment) Act of 2019 was enacted to undo the Supreme Court judgment of 1996 granting the Chakmas and the Hajongs citizenship and as such, the Chakmas must not have any illusion and they would have to leave the state. 

    “This is nothing but an act of racial profiling of the Chakmas and the Hajongs. This is proven from a number of actions of the state government. Arunachal had granted citizenship to the Lisus/Youbins who migrated in the 1960s en masse…

    ALSO READ | Tension eases on Mizoram border after Assam returns seized construction materials

    “This grant of citizenship to the Lisus is absolutely illegal because under the Citizenship Act of 1955, each applicant has to submit his/her application individually and there is no provision in the Citizenship Act to declare a category of people as “citizens” en masse,” CDFI founder Suhas Chakma said.

    He said when Arunachal implemented special programmes for the Tibetan refugees, no question was raised. 

    The population of the Chakmas and the Hajongs, which was 14888 during 1964-69, increased to 47471 as per the 2011 census while the population of non-tribals rose from 36,614 persons in 1961 to 3,84,435 persons in 2011. 

    “Many of these non-tribals were not settled by the Union of India unlike the Chakmas and the Hajongs. Therefore, targeting the Chakmas and the Hajongs for settlement outside of Arunachal proves we are being targeted because of our ethnicity,” Chakma said.

    He said it was not the first attempt to dump the Chakmas and the Hajongs of Arunachal. He said when they were given the September 30, 1994 deadline to leave the state, the then CM Gegong Apang had tried to dump them in Assam and some 2,000 Chakmas had fled to Assam.