Chittagong Hill Tracts Welfare Association

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The Chittagong Hill Tracts Welfare Association (Bengali : Parbatya Chattagram Upajatiya Kalyan Samiti) was a clandestine political organisation created in East Pakistan in December 1966 to defend the rights of the tribal people of the Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT). [1] [2]

Pakistan government policy had dismantled piece by piece long standing protections of the CHT and the tribal people's way of life. Restrictions on Bengali migration into the CHT were lifted. Development projects encouraged logging and the establishment of rubber plantations. The Kaptai Dam, completed in 1962, submerged 40% of the arable land in the CHT and displaced 100,000 indigenous people. [3] [4]

The tribal population felt that these actions endangered their livelihood, culture, and ethnic identity. [3] Buddhists had historically been the majority in the CHT. Their majority status was threatened by large scale migration of Bengali Muslim settlers to the CHT. [5] Several indigenous associations, including, in 1966, the CHT Welfare Association, sprang up to defend the rights of the tribal people. [6]

University of Dhaka academics Zahid Ul Arefin Choudhury and Khairul Chowdhury described the association as student-based, with a "pro-Chinese radical Marxist" ideology. [7] It was led by Ananta Bihari Khisa and school teacher Jyotirindra Bodhipriya Larma. [2] [8] With the association's support, J. B. Larma's brother, Manabendra Narayan Larma, was elected to the East Pakistan Provincial Assembly in 1970 as an independent candidate. [2]

The association dissolved in 1972 after the Bangladesh Liberation War. [6] [8] It was the precursor to the Parbatya Chattagram Jana Sanghati Samiti, which emerged as the main political party in the CHT and founded the Shanti Bahini to carry out an insurgency against Bangladeshi state forces to gain autonomy and rights for the tribes and people of the Hill Tracts. [6]

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References

  1. ↑ Zaman, M. Q. (16 January 1982). "Crisis in Chittagong Hill Tracts: Ethnicity and Integration". Economic and Political Weekly. 17 (3): 78. JSTOR   4370578.
  2. 1 2 3 Majumder, Shantanu (2012). "Parbatya Chattagram Jana-Samhati Samiti". In Islam, Sirajul; Jamal, Ahmed A. (eds.). Banglapedia: National Encyclopedia of Bangladesh (Second ed.). Asiatic Society of Bangladesh.
  3. 1 2 Nayak, Arun Kumar (October 2014). "Understanding Environmental Security and its Causal Factors with Reference to Chittagong Hill Tracts of Bangladesh". IUP Journal of International Relations. VIII (4): 48–49. SSRN   2658012.
  4. ↑ Suzuki, Yasushi; Miah, Md. Dulal (December 2015). "Justice-seeking in the perspective of rent-seeking". Evolutionary and Institutional Economics Review. 12 (2): 298. doi:10.1007/s40844-015-0019-9.
  5. ↑ Barua, D. Mitra (2020). "Arakanese Chittagong Became Mughal Islamabad: Buddhist–Muslim Relationship in Chittagong (Chottrogram), Bangladesh". In Frydenlund, Iselin; Jerryson, Michael (eds.). Buddhist-Muslim relations in a Theravada world. Palgrave Macmillan. pp. 246–247. ISBN   978-981-32-9883-5.
  6. 1 2 3 Van Schendel, Willem (February 1992). "The Invention of the 'Jummas': State Formation and Ethnicity in Southeastern Bangladesh". Modern Asian Studies. 26 (1): 95–120. JSTOR   312719.
  7. ↑ Choudhury, Zahid Ul Arefin; Chowdhury, Khairul (15 March 2023). "A Rationalist Explanation for Violence and Peace in the Chittagong Hill Tracts of Bangladesh". Ethnopolitics . 22 (2): 133. doi:10.1080/17449057.2021.2000110.
  8. 1 2 Montu, Kazi (6 September 1980). "Tribal Insurgency in Chittagong Hill Tracts". Economic and Political Weekly. 15 (36): 1510–1511. JSTOR   4369049.


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