Eva Gerharz: „The Construction of Identities: The Case of the Chitta ...

Construction of Identities in the Chittagong Hill Tracts
Muslim. This involves all Hill People equally and the non-tribal Hindus and Barua 144 living
in the CHT as well. The we-group feeling (Elwert 1998) which is characterised by an anti-
Islam attitude thus comprises all groups equally regardless of their status as Hill People or
not, and is developed solely out of the exclusion from the dominant Muslim society. It can
therefore be regarded as one of the most universal factors of identity construction.
At the same time a diversification of the Hill People can be observed. These differences relate
mainly to political issues 145 and the educational advantage of the Chakma in particular. Furthermore
the dominance of Buddhist groups is recognised as well. In the early 1980s an
organisation namely the Buddhist Minority Protection Committee (BMPC) was founded,
which started a communal “hate campaign” against Bangladeshi authorities. The aim of the
organisation was to accuse the GOB of religious intolerance and Islamisation of the CHT. The
non-Buddhist peoples did not support the campaign and the final result was a trend to resent
the Buddhist dominance among some of the other groups (Ahmed 1993, 53). During the field
work I conducted, an expert interviewee at Dhaka inform me that some peoples, the Tripura
in particular, have immense resentments against the Buddhist/Chakma majority in the JSS. In
Bandarban I was told by a Murong that his community is thinking about conversion to Christianity
in order to get more power to resist the Buddhist dominance in the CHT, which is seen
as a problem, especially since the Peace Accord 146 .
The Muslim majority within Bangladesh and the hegemonial nature of the Islam based state
policies has contributed substantially to the Hill People’s alienation from the Bangladeshi
society. Demarcation through religion is hence directly related to the political interests of the
groups. Whenever one group starts to develop hegemony over others, religious differences
become important for demarcation. In respect to the relationship of the Hill People and the
Bengalis, being Muslim or not is a guiding aspect for constructing identity, which could be
traced back to the immense gap between the majority and minority and the strategic use of
religion by the GOB. On the other hand the Hill People use religious differences for identification
whenever political disputes and discussions come up. In these cases religiously based
identities become reinterpreted and instrumentalised according to political interests. As presented
above, religion determines a large part of differences in culture, so that its importance
144 Barua is called a non-tribal group which believes in Buddhism and comes from the plains of Chittagong. Very
little is found in the literature about them. During my stay I have met some Barua at Rangamati. Their outward
appearance is only slightly different to that of the Hill People
145 As I have already presented in Chapter 3 and 5
146 The Peace Accord between the GOB and the JSS has been criticised as being an agreement between the
Chakma and the GOB without taking into account the interests of the other groups. See Chapter 7