Chakma and Hajong Communities

Context: In Arunachal Pradesh, the Chakma and Hajong people are feeling heat since the State government decided to conduct a special census in December 2021.
Key issue

• The North-Eastern States have had a history of being paranoid about outsiders outnumbering the indigenous communities and taking their land, resources and jobs.
• The threat from “non-locals” in a specific area has also been perceived to be from communities indigenous elsewhere in the region.
• This has often led to conflicts such as the recent attacks on non-tribal people in Meghalaya’s capital Shillong or an Assam-based group’s warning to a fuel station owner in Guwahati against employing Bihari workers.

About Chakmas and Hajongs

• They are ethnic people who lived in the Chittagong Hill Tracts, most of which are located in Bangladesh.
• Chakmas are predominantly Buddhists, while Hajongs are Hindus.
• They are found in northeast India, West Bengal, Bangladesh and Myanmar.
• They fled erstwhile East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) in 1964-65 and came to India and settled in Arunachal Pradesh. 
• Mizoram and Tripura have a sizeable population of the Buddhist Chakmas while the Hindu Hajongs mostly inhabit the Garo Hills of Meghalaya and adjoining areas of Assam.
• A majority of them live in the Changlang district of the Arunachal Pradesh today.

Reasons

• Chakmas lost their land to the development of the Kaptai Dam on the Karnaphuli River, Bangladesh.
• Hajongs faced religious persecution as they were non-Muslims and did not speak Bengali.

Issues with the census

• Chakma organizations said the census was nothing but racial profiling of the two communities because of their ethnic origin and violated Article 14 of the Indian Constitution.
• It is against Article 1 of the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, ratified by India.

What is their citizenship status?

• Members of the two communities had been settled in Arunachal Pradesh six decades ago with a rehabilitation plan, allotted land and provided with financial aid depending on the size of their families.
• Although local tribes claim the population of the migrants has increased alarmingly, the 2011 census says there are 47,471 Chakmas and Hajongs in the State.
• They are granted citizenship by birth under Section 3 of the Citizenship Act, 1955, after having been born before July 1, 1987, or as descendants of those who were born before this date.
• In 2015, the Supreme Court directed the Centre to grant citizenship to Chakma and Hajongs who had migrated from Bangladesh in 1964-69.
• They did not directly come into the ambit of the Citizenship Amendment Act, 2019 (CAA) because Arunachal Pradesh is among the states exempted from the CAA since it has an Inner Line Permit to regulate entry of outsiders.

Threats posed by extreme ethnic consciousness

• Though ethnicity and ethnic consciousness are a universal phenomenon, this is considered a unique feature of tribal societies.
• Such ethnic consciousness in their more extreme forms of expression are exclusion and hatred of the ‘Other.’
• Manifestations of the same have been observed in the recent attacks on non-tribal people in Meghalaya’s capital Shillong or an Assam-based group’s warning to a fuel station owner in Guwahati against employing Bihari workers.
• Violent ethnic assertions could bring in divisions within the society. This could take extreme forms of ethnic cleansing and civil wars. Ethno-nationalistic mobilisations could lead to calls for separatism.

Conclusion

• For a very long time local people have been protesting against Chakmas and Hajongs because of their differing ethnicity. If the Chakmas and Hajongs are ejected from Arunachal Pradesh, Assam shall be the dumping ground for all the unwanted communities in the States covered by the Inner-Line Permit (Manipur, Mizoram and Nagaland besides Arunachal Pradesh) and the Sixth Schedule areas (Meghalaya).