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Jumma: The First People in the Chittagong Hill Tracts

Dr. Prajnalankar Bhikkhu - 12/6/2006

Mohammad Zainal Abedin's article, "Stop propaganda on Chittagong Hill
Tracts - CHTs", reflects the Bangladeshi policy on the Jumma indigenous people of the Chittagong Hill Tracts. It tries to impose ban on our writings on the CHT. It reminds us of the pre-CHT Accord days (1970s - 1997) in the CHT when the Jumma indigenous people's fundamental right to expression was seized, when lands of indigenous people were grabbed with force for settlement of Bengali settlers and building mosques, madrassas (Islamic school) and military infrastructure, when indigenous women were raped and gang-raped indiscriminately and forced to embrace Islam and get married with Bengalis, when religious shrines (Buddhist monasteries, Christian churches and Hindu temples) and villages of indigenous people were set on fire, when thousands of indigenous people were genocided under strict national and international censorship, when 70,000 indigenous people were forced to leave their beloved homeland for India for survival, and when indigenous people lived sleepless nights and days with constant fear and threat from the brutal Bangladeshi army equipped with Chinese weaponries and the spirit of Jihad. Moreover, it depicts
the tears and cries emanating from the indigenous people for justice as "anti-Bangladeshi propaganda". A fundamentalist cannot unfold the realities of the empirical world, as he does not understand logic and lives out of the universe of reasoning. He does not respect the principles and values of democracy, human rights and cultural pluralism. No sound and rational dialogues can influence his mind-set. This is the problem with him and this is a big challenge to all free, democratic and civilized societies.

Mohammad Zainal writes, "The Prime Minister was not a party to the controversial treaty." If he had knowledge in political science and public administration, he would have not made such a stupid comment. It is clear he does not understand the difference between the Prime Minister Khaleda Zia and Khaleda Zia in person or Khaleda Zia of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP). For his education, I pen these lines on the point: Khaleda Zia has succeeded the Office of her previous Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina who was a party to the CHT Accord. So she is equally a party to it, and she is legally bound to respect it. If not, then she disqualifies for holding the Office of the Prime Minister. However, in Bangladesh, people like Mohammad Zainal see Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina and Prime Minister Khaleda Zia as merely Sheikh Hasina and Khaleda Zia.

This is the reason why the ruling and opposition parties are always in loggerhead in and out of the parliament and keep their country spinning around "Islamic democracy" -- the democracy where there is no governance, no human rights, no law and order and no respect to the indigenous peoples and religious minorities -- the democracy that has figured as the "most corrupt state" in the world in the five consecutive years (source: Transparency International Reports)! The Accord is a legal document signed by the democratically elected government of Bangladesh on behalf of the people of Bangladesh and the highest leadership representing the indigenous people of the CHT. And it has been welcomed and endorsed by the international community by appreciation. Therefore, any change or review of the Accord can alone be possible in consultation with and consent of the parties involved. Individual Bangladeshis -- Bengali or Jumma -- may support or oppose it depending upon their political choices. But this support or opposition cannot undo or change it. Therefore, the Accord is not "controversial".

Mohammad Zainal's judgment -- "Most Bangladeshis do not support the treaty" -- is purely subjective and without any reference to surveys or referendums on the issue. Bangladeshis like Mohammad Zainal do not support the Accord. They want to burn it down. However, I am sure there are intellectual, sensible, humane, progressive and peace-loving Bangladeshis who support it for survival of the Jumma indigenous identity and culture and for sustainable peace, stability and development in the CHT and for the greater interest of the country.

According to Mohammad Zainal, the CHT Accord is "contradictory" to the Constitution of Bangladesh. But he failed to point out even a single provision of the Accord that contradicts to the Constitution. Even if any provisions of the Accord do so, it is due to the inbuilt flaws of the Constitution. The Pioneer of the Jumma leader Late Manabendra Narayan Larma once and again tried to rectify these flaws while he was a member of the Legislative Assembly - the Assembly that drafted and adopted the Constitution. As a member of the body and as a lone representative of the indigenous people he advocated for a Constitution which is truly democratic, socialist (in terms of economic justice for all sections of the society) and secular and inclusive to all racial groups, languages, religions and cultures. However, the majority Bengali-speaking Muslim members of the body ignored all his voice. As a result, today we have a Constitution that makes Bangladesh an institution of one ethnic group (Bengali), one language (Bengali) and one religion (Islam) - an institution that treats its non-Muslim communities (the indigenous peoples and religious minorities) as either Bengali-speaking Muslims or infidels (Bangladesh Constitution: Part I, Article 2 A and Article 3). The Constitution of Bangladesh is Islamic and racially prejudiced in character. It is more like a holy Islamic scripture than a legal document to the indigenous peoples and religious minorities. The indigenous peoples and religious minorities will not be able to live with dignity and with their own identity and cultures in Bangladesh unless this defective character of the Constitution is amended.

Mohammad Zainal writes, "Even the Shanti Bahini was sharply divided on the very day when the treaty was announced and the comrades of Shantu Larma floated another armed outfit named, United People's Democratic Front". Division among people on public issues or matters is normal. It is not an exception with regard to the indigenous people on the Accord as well. However, what is abnormal is that the Bangladeshi authorities, particularly military, have abnormalizsed and widened this normal division by engineering an anti-Accord group, United People's Democratic Front (UPDF), from amongst the indigenous people and by providing it with arms and resources apparently to get the Accord -- they signed with the indigenous people under growing international pressure -- suicided.

Santu Larma is the current Chairman of the CHT Regional Council which has been formed under Bangladeshi laws. He has no armed groups. Mohammad Zainal has either no knowledge about the CHT affairs or has purposefully accused Mr. Larma of floating the UPDF to justify the repressive and brutal Bangladeshi military regime in the indigenous territory.

Mohammad Zainal says, "the treaty nakedly ignored the minimum rights of the Bngalees, the sons of the soil. It made the Bengalees aliens in their own soil". The Accord is a milestone in terms of addressing the rights of the indigenous people and non-indigenous permanent residents (Bengali permanent residents). According to the residency status defined in the Acts in force in the CHT, the Bengalis in the CHT can be divided into two groups: (1) Bengali permanent residents and (2) Bengali settlers/outsiders/infiltrators. The first category includes those Bengalis who migrated to the CHT for economic reasons at various points of time before the early 1970s. According to the census reports, they constituted 1.5% in 1941, 6.29% in 1951 and 11.77% in 1961 of the total CHT population. The indigenous people have been co-exiting with them in peace and harmony over decades. And the second category includes those Bengalis who were moved from various plain districts of Bangladesh into the CHT under the state-sponsored population transfer policy designed to cleanse the region ethnically in between the late 1970s and the early 1980s.

Their number is over 400,000. Besides, Bengalis infiltrating into the region under direct and indirect support of the Bangladeshi authorities since the late 1980s are also treated as settlers/outsiders/infiltrators, according to the Acts in force in the region. As the authorities manipulate demographic data in the CHT for political reason, so we have no figure of them. It is estimated that their population may well be over 150,000. These Bengali settlers have forcibly occupied lands of thousands of indigenous families with direct support from the Bangladeshi army deployed in the CHT and thereby snatched away their main source of livelihood. This process is still going on unchecked. It is the hell of the CHT. The CHT Accord the government of Bangladesh signed with the indigenous people treats them as "non-permanent residents". The Bangladeshi authorities and policy-makers like Mohammad Zainal purposefully call them -- together with other Bengalis -- as "sons of soil" or "indigenous people" and the Jummas as "aliens" or "settlers" in the CHT as part of their conspiracy to Islamize the indigenous people and their ancestral homeland or as part of their hidden policy to do away with the distinct identity, history, heritage, language, religion and culture of the indigenous people. This is a recent conspiracy of the Bangladeshi authorities to theoritize their hidden Islamization policy and programs in the CHT which were started without a formal theory in the late 1970s. The extent of this conspiracy is very wide.

"Khagrachari: 2001-2005", a booklet in which the former Khagrachari Deputy Commissioner and Islamic cleric Mohammad Humayun Kabir tries to portrait the indigenous people as "settlers" and "tribes", the statements presented by the Bangladesh delegation at the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues in 2005 and 2006 in New York, and the writings of Mohammad Zainal Abedin are parts of this conspiracy. Who are the sons or indigenous people or first people of the CHT? Jummas or Bengalis? The answer to this question is very simple: study the demographic data recorded in the census reports of the CHT and draw the answer. According to the census reports, Bengalis constituted only 1.5% in 1941, 6.29% in 1951 and 11.77% in 1961 of the total CHT population (Constituent Assembly of India - Volume VII http://parliamentofindia.nic.in/ls/debates/vol7p1g.htm and census
reports). It means in 1941, Jummas constituted 98.5% of the total CHT population. It is clear who the sons or indigenous or first people of the region are. According to the census report of 2001, Bengalis increased to 49% (in fact, the figure is higher than 60%)! If the Islamization process goes on without check, Bengalis will be 80% in 2015, and this is the hidden target set by the Bangladeshi authorities. The Islamization policy is a sword to spread Islamic militancy and terrors in the CHT. It is a silent genocide -- a crime against humanity.

The Jummas are the first people or sons of soil in the CHT. It is the Jummas who first made the CHT inhabitable. Before them the region was a no-man's land. The CHT had been an independent Buddhist kingdom ruled by the Jumma Chiefs or Rajas. Even the long rule of the Mughals (1326-1757) failed to invade it for geo-political reasons. It was brought under the British India rule in 1860. From 1900 to 1947 it was specially administered by the Chakma, Bomang and Mong Chiefs under the CHT Regulation of 1900. It was integrated with East Pakistan during the partition of the Sub-continent in 1947 against the will of the people thereof. This integration is illegal, undemocratic and incomplete. East Pakistan, Bangladesh, was born very recently -- in 1971. The history of Bangladesh begins from 1971 onwards, while the history of the CHT began centuries ago. Bangladesh is a baby-state. And the CHT had never been part of this baby-state. The Jummas identify themselves as indigenous people, as they are, in the context of the Bangladeshi colonial rule in their traditional homeland. Bangladesh denies their identity as indigenous people and wrongly imposes "tribal identity" on them as part of its attempts to deny their right to self-determination and justify its colonial rule in the CHT. Bengalis started migrating from parts of Bengal into the CHT since the British colonized the region in 1860, while the Jummas had settled in the CHT and its neighborhoods including parts of present Chittagong district, centuries before the birth of Bangladesh in 1971.

Islam was born in the late 6th century i.e. 1400 years ago from today. It spread over South Asia in the 12th century. While the Vedic/Hindu and Buddhist periods in South Asia date back respectively to 3000 and 2500 years ago from today. Java, Borneo, Sumatra, Bali etc. islands of present Indonesia and Malaysia were Buddhist countries. Many centuries-old Buddhist monasteries like the Barabadur [a name deriving from an expression meaning "Mountain of accumulation of merits of the ten states of Bodhisattva" (http://www.sacredsites.com/asia/indonesia/borobudur_stupa.html
)] Stupa in Java built in the 6th century are still living witnesses of this historical fact.


Buddha statue, Borobudur, with Mount Semeru in background, 6th century,
Java Photo: http://www.sacredsites.com/asia/indonesia/borobudur_stupa.html

According to Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, Buddhism entered Bengal before Asoka's time. Bangladesh (historical Bengal) has a unique place in the history of Buddhism, mainly for two reasons. Firstly, Bengal was the last stronghold of Indian Buddhism where it could survive as a socio-cultural force until the 12th century, despite its disappearance from other parts of the Indian subcontinent. Secondly, it is generally claimed that Bengal was the home of a form of Buddhism, namely, the Tantric Buddhism. Tantric Buddhism is a later development in Bengal and therefore it remains to be seen what specific factors are responsible for turning the pure form of Buddhism into tantricism and whether the mystic and esoteric practices in the Buddhism of Bangladesh are of distinctively Bengali origin. The Mughals of India and the Bengali Muslims of present Bangladesh were, in fact, Hindus in the Vedic/Hindu period and peace-loving Buddhists in the Buddhist period. This historical fact is still alive in the Mahasthangarh Buddhist monasteries (3rd century BC) in Bogra, Paharpur Buddhist monasteries (7th century) in Rajshahi, now a World Heritage Site recognized by UNESCO, Mainamati Salban Viharas (8th century) in Comilla, Pandit Vihara (10th century) in Chittagong and Dhakeshwari Temple (12th century) in Dhaka.