Indigenous Identity in South Asia

After the creation of Bangladesh in 1971, an armed struggle ensued in its remote south-eastern corner. The hill people in the Chittagong Hill Tracts demanded official recognition and autonomy as the indigenous people of the Tracts, based on the claim that they were ethnically distinct from the majority 'Bengali' population. This book challenges the general perception that indigenous claims coming from the Tracts are a recent phenomenon, which emerged with the founding of the Bangladesh state. By analysing the processes of colonisation in the Chittagong Hill tracts, it is argued that identities of distinct ethnicity and tradition first began to evolve under British patronage in the 1920s.

Tamina Mahmud Chowdhury received her PhD from University of Cambridge, UK. Until September 2015, she was a Research Fellow/Associate Professor at the Brac Institute of Governance and Development, Brac University, Bangladesh.

1. Introduction 2. Raids, territorialisation, and agricultural penetration: The Chittagong Hill Tracts before and after annexation, 1760-1861 3. Police, post-raids polities and creation of an economy, 1865-1885 4. The case of the disparaged chiefs, 1891-1930 5. Last attempts to reclaim authority by the Hill elites and the making of indigeneity, 1920s-1930s 6. Political exclusion and the Tracts in the run up to partition, 1933-47 7. Conclusion