How Nationalism Transforms into Violence against Ethno-religious Minorities: The case of the Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT) of Bangladesh

By: Glen Hill (he/him/his) and Kabita Chakma (she/her/hers)

Nationalism is often considered to be at the heart of ethnically or religiously based conflicts, whether they are described as wars, civil wars, internecine conflicts or ethno-religious displacements. In such situations of conflict, violence against women is chronic.

Despite this commonplace understanding, existing literature rarely articulates the particularities of the processes by which nationalism precipitates conflict and violence. Therefore, this article presents an original forensic examination of the mechanisms by which nationalism transforms into violence against those who are ethnically or religiously ‘other’. The article highlights the ways in which women become the targets of ethno-religious violence in situations of conflict.

While each war-space has its own unique set of circumstances that can create the conditions for violence, particularly sexual violence against women, it is nevertheless valuable to understand in detail the interplay of national and local structural conditions that have the potential to lead to the incitement of violence against those who from a nationalist perspective are viewed as ‘other.’

The specific focus of the article is the Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT) in Bangladesh. The Indigenous peoples of CHT have for many decades been the subject of violence from the occupying Bangladeshi military forces and Bengalis who have been encouraged to migrate from other parts of Bangladesh.

At the root of the violence in the CHT is ethno-religious nationalism. Like many other areas of conflict in the Indian subcontinent, the event that created the conditions for violence was the Partition of India. In the case of the CHT, the Boundary Commission left the Indigenous ethnic minority under the control of a majority population that did not share the same ethnicity, religion or heritage.

In 1971 Bangladesh gained independence from Pakistan. The newly formed majority Bengali-Muslim state viewed the Indigenous peoples who lived in the CHT as an inconvenience. As Major General Manzur, the Commander of the Chittagong Division of the Bangladesh Armed Forces announced at Bangladesh Independence Day celebrations: “We want the land, not people of CHT.”

After Bangladesh gained its independence, the nationalist ambition to take the CHT’s land and resources and to fill the area with Bengalis was pursued using a massive illegal transmigration of plainland Bengalis into the CHT. At the time of Partition, the CHT was a remote forested area where only 5% of the population were non-Indigenous. Now over 50% of the population of the CHT are non-Indigenous transmigrant Bengalis.

The article views the copious independent evidence of decades of dislocation and violence, especially violence against women, as criminal acts, and therefore examines the situation from that perspective. Theories of criminogenesis suggest that a person who commits a criminal act must have means, motive, and opportunity. In the article, we investigate how the means, motives and opportunities transformed in the CHT conflict zone to result in such high levels of violence, especially against women and girls. And we demonstrate how these means, motives, and opportunities link to nationalism.

Using situational and feminist theories of criminogenesis, the article identifies specific socio-economic motivations for violently dislocating Indigenous peoples along with specific opportunities for violence created by the impunity of the military, the strategic isolation of Indigenous villagers and the debasement of protective judicial, civil and political systems. It demonstrates how these motivations and opportunities arise from ethno-religious nationalism.

The article concludes by proposing strategies that the international community might undertake to counter the ways in which nationalism creates opportunities and motivations for violence, particularly violence against women. For example, it advocates (i) making a state’s lucrative participation in UN military peacekeeping operations conditional on that state’s internal human rights record, and (ii) tying the receipt of international aid for development projects in Indigenous areas to preconditions such as: obtaining Indigenous peoples’ informed consent; involving Indigenous people in the design of aid projects; and equitably sharing the benefits of aid projects with the Indigenous peoples.

Read the full article here: Muscular Nationalism, Masculinist Militarism: The Creation of Situational Motivations and Opportunities for Violence against the Indigenous Peoples of the Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT), Bangladesh

Each blog post gives the views of the individual author(s) based on their published IFJP article. All posts published on ifjpglobal.org remain the intellectual property and copyright of the author or authors.

Glen Hill is an Honorary Associate Professor and a previous Director of the Master of Architecture program at the School of Architecture, Design and Planning at the University of Sydney, Australia. His research focuses on design-related aspects of social and environmental sustainability. He has an interest in architectural design as an expanded practice, particularly its relation to Indigenous and disadvantaged communities.

Kabita Chakma is an architect and an independent researcher. She is a member of the Executive Committee of the Chittagong Hill Tracts Indigenous Jumma Association Australia (CHTIJAA). Her research interests include the history, literature, art, cinema, architecture, and sustainability of disadvantaged communities, particularly the Indigenous peoples of the CHT.

Recent publication: Glen Hill and Kabita Chakma. 2020. Silencing Films from the Chittagong Hill Tracts: Indigenous Cinema’s Challenge to the Imagined Cultural Homogeneity of Bangladesh. In South Asian Filmscapes: Transregional Encounters. (Eds.) Elora Halim Chowdhury and Esha Niyogi De. University of Washington Press, Seattle.

Blog