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This article suggests that territorialisation was the dominant concept that defined British expansion in the Chittagong Hill Tracts. It underlies the Company's efforts to impose sovereignty over the region and to exert its 'right' to collect tax from its inhabitants. The introduction of the plough and creation of a political economy of rule were some key means by which the Raj sought to tighten its grip over the territory and its people. Territorialisation in the Tracts manifested as the spatial, economic, agricultural, as well as political expansion of the Company state in the region. The article discusses how, in the aftermath of the raids of the early 1860s, the administration resorted to tougher policies to control, deter and counteract the raiders of the eastern hills. It suggests that by setting up institutions of economic control, as well as by modifying existing centres of political power, the Raj succeeded in capturing both the polities and the economies of the territory.

This article concerns ethnicity and identity politics in Chittagong Hill Tracts of Bangladesh. This article used the power relation approach of Foucault, Althusser, and Mills, Barth's idea of ethnicity and boundary maintenance, primordial and instrumentalist approaches to ethnicity, and primordial and socia-constructionist approaches to identity. The politics of identity formation and movements of Bangalee, Chakma, and Tripura ethnic communities are associated with multidimensional issues. Some of these are - collectiveness, struggle for existence, ensuring rights, protecting traditions, and securing land and natural resources of the hills. The study used qualitative data collection methods such as observation and participation, key informant interviews, life history, case studies, and narratives. Data analysis followed the qualitative technique by interpreting various aspects or layers of meaning and relationships among ethnic communities. The findings further show that Chakma and Tripura communities bear a nationalist and political ideology through the term Jumma, while Bangalees have a reconstructed image of the hill Bangalee. This article, thus, critically examines the politics of identity formation in CHTs, focusing on inter-ethnic relations of power and political practices.
Social Science Review, Vol. 39(2), June 2022 [Special Issue] Page 1-17

The destruction of indigenous, tribal peoples in remote and/or frontier regions of the developing world is often assumed to be the outcome of inexorable, even inevitable forces of progress. People are not so much killed, they become extinct. Terms such as ethnocide, cultural genocide or developmental genocide suggest a distinct form of "off the map" elimination. By concentrating on a little-known case study, that of the Chittagong Hill Tracts in Bangladesh, this article argues that this sort of categorisation is misplaced. The relationship between a flawed state power and genocide can be located. (DSE/DÜI)

Indigeneity, a concept and construct, is increasingly gaining currency in academia, in the political sphere, and in public debates. Indigeneity as an active political force with international support has become a resource in identity politics. This article focuses on the dynamics of how the transnational idea of indigeneity has been nationally installed and locally translated within the context of the ethnohistory of an Indigenous movement that stemmed from local–societal relations with the state. The idea of indigeneity is seen as both local and global because it is globally circulated but locally articulated as well as globally charged but locally framed. Focusing on the Chittagong Hill Tracts, in the borderlands of South and Southeast Asia and home to 11 Indigenous groups in Bangladesh, the article argues that the local translation of global indigeneity is necessary for ensuring the rights and entitlements of Indigenous Peoples. (J Southeast Asian Stud/GIGA)

Die vorliegende Publikation dokumentiert die Arbeiten von James Philip Mills über die Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT) im heutigen Bangladesch. J.P. Mills war in den 1920er und 1930er Jahren als Regierungsethnologe in den Naga-Bergen im Nordosten Indiens stationiert und wurde 1926 von der britischen Kolonialregierung in die Chittagong Hill Tracts abgeordnet. Er sollte Vorschläge für eine effektivere Verwaltung dieses Gebietes entwickeln. Das Dokument besteht aus dem Tagebuch seines Aufenthaltes in den Chittagong Hill Tracts, einer Sammlung von 101 schwarz/weiss-Fotografien, einem (ersten) zweiteiligen Bericht mit Appendices, einer (zweiten) später überarbeiteten Fassung dieser Texte, einer Familiengeschichte des Bohmong-Chiefs, eines der drei lokalen Repräsentanten und mehreren Wort-Listen. Diese Arbeiten von J.P. Mills über die Chittagong Hill Tracts waren lange unzugänglich und sind in dieser Ausgabe zum ersten Mal in vollem Umfang dokumentiert und interpretiert worden. Seine Fotosammlung (101 Fotografien) von 1926/27 ist neben den wenigen Fotos von T.H. Lewin aus den 1860er Jahren, denen von S.R.H. Hutchinson (1909) und der etwa 50 Fotos umfassenden Sammlung von Julius Konietzko, (1927), die einzige Sammlung aus dieser Region. Er hat sie, anders als Konietzko, der sie als Dokumentation für seinen Ethnografica-Handel benötigte, nach ethnologischen Gesichtspunkten gemacht. Mit den Fotos und seiner ethnografischen Sammlung für das Pitt-Rivers-Museum hat er einen Teil der materiellen Kultur der CHT der 1920er Jahre dokumentiert. Er war bemüht, "authentische Zeugnisse der Stammeskulturen" der Völker der Chittagong Hill Tracts in der Perspektive typologischer Serien, der Grundlage der Sammlungen des Pitt-Rivers-Museums, zusammenzustellen. Seine "Reports" stellen die ersten Versuche dar, eine Geschichte der politischen Institutionen und der Ausbildung indigener Herrschaft in den CHT unter Berücksichtigung theoretischer ethnologischer Ansätze auf dem Hintergrund vieler vergeblicher und irreführender Versuche von früheren ...

THE DESTRUCTION OF INDIGENOUS, TRIBAL PEOPLES IN REMOTE AND/OR FRONTIER REGIONS OF THE DEVELOPING WORLD IS OFTEN ASSUMED TO BE THE OUTCOME OF INEXORABLE, EVEN INEVITABLE FORCES OF PROGRESS. BY CONCENTRATING ON A LITTLE-KNOWN CASE STUDY, THAT OF THE CHITTAGONG HILL TRACTS (CHT) IN BANGLADESH, THIS ARTICLE ARGUES THAT THIS SORT OF CATEGORIZATION IS MISPLACED. NOT ONLY IS THE DESTRUCTION OR ATTEMPTED DESTRUCTION OF FOURTH WORLD PEOPLES CENTRAL TO THE PATTERN OF CONTEMPORARY GENOCIDE BUT, BY EXAMINING SUCH SPECIFIC EXAMPLES, IT CAN BE MORE CLEARLY DELINEATED THE PHENOMENON'S MORE GENERAL WELLSPRINGS AND PROCESSES.

Abstract
Throughout antiquity, the Chittagong Hill Tract was a sparsely populated region. This population increased with the immigration of different speech communities, thus changing its linguistic mosaic, and creating conditions for language contact between vernacular Bangla and between its ancestral Indo-Aryan variety Pali, the superstrate, and the Tibeto-Burman variety, the substratum. In the changing language contact situation, language contact involved various phenomena, such as language maintenance, the creation of new contact languages, i.e. pidgins and creoles as well as the acquisition and integration into a dominant L2. Through this language contact, the processes of language contact have had particular linguistic, social, and political outcomes that have shaped the region. The linguistic outcomes include lexical borrowing, calquing, and structural convergence, as well as the creation of a new contact language combining both the Indo-Aryan vernacular and Tibeto-Burman vernacular. This paper discusses these outcomes, and describes that changes in the social and political makeup of the region have ultimately led to language change. The study argues that linguistic change appears at present in several ways: The lexical makeup, phraseology and syntactic structure of Indo-Aryan varieties spoken by the Tibeto-Burman speech communities; pidgins including Chakma and Tanchangya which have emerged from contact between the Indo-Aryan variety and the Arakanese vernacular; a Tibeto-Burman pidgin which has emerged from contact between the superstrata Marma and the substrates Chak, Khumi, and Kheyang, which are spoken by the Marma, Chak, Khumi, and Kheyang ethnicities. Ultimately, the study presents that these social and linguistic outcomes have manifested themselves in the form of bilingualism and so code-mixing, and where the political outcomes of language contact have forged the political makeup of the Chittagong Hill Tract to bring the region to become one part of the larger political superstructure of Bangladesh.