New book gives insight into the gradual extinction
NEW DELHI: Indigenous groups are vanishing in Bangladesh while minority Hindus are leaving the country in hordes because their home and hearth is taken away from them with tacit government support, showed recent reports.
Abul Barkat, a Dhaka University professor, in his recent book Political economy of reforming agriculture-land-water bodies in Bangladesh’, has described the plight of tribals and minorities in the country.
There are ethnic minorities — like Australoid, Tibeto-Burman and Sino-Tibetan races — in the Chittagong Hill Tracts, Sylhet and Rajshahi Divisions and Mymensingh District.
The total population of indigenous minorities was estimated to be over 2 million in 2010. A large number of indigenous tribes in Bangladesh comprises Buddhists and Hindus and the remaining few are Christians and animists.
The book, which is dedicated to Barkat’s childhood friends from the ‘Buno’ ethnic group, traces the gradual extinction of the minorities. “I have not heard about them for long. Maybe they were forced to leave the place by land grabbers and have gone to India and taken different names,” said the author.
Speaking at the book launch function, Bangladesh Adivasi Forum president Santu Larma said, “We need a people-oriented government. But the reality of state mechanism does not allow this to happen.”
Larma, who is also the chairman of the CHT Regional Council, claimed that over 50 indigenous groups were on the verge of extinction but they want to live with dignity with the remaining indigenous groups.
Hindus, the second largest religious affiliation in Bangladesh covering about 8.2% of the population, are also facing annihilation and hence resorting to large-scale migration to neighbouring India.
In terms of population, Bangladesh is the third largest Hindu state in the world after India and Nepal.
The book says an average of 632 people from the minority community leave the Muslim-majority country every day (230,612 annually), and at that rate of exodus, Bangladesh will be left with no Hindus after three decades.
Around 11.3 million Hindus have left Bangladesh between 1964 and 2013 due to religious persecution and discrimination.
The book based on Barkat’s 30-year-long research says the exodus mostly took place during military governments after independence in 1971.
Before the Liberation War, the daily rate of migration was 705 while it was 512 during 1971-1981 and 438 during 1981-1991. The number increased to 767 each day during 1991-2001 while around 774 persons left the country during 2001-2012, the book says.
DU professor Ajoy Roy said the government grabbed the properties of the Hindus during the Pakistan regime describing them as an enemy property and the same properties were taken by the government after independence as vested property, the report said. According to the book, these two measures made 60 per cent of the Hindus landless.
The tribal groups are distributed in different parts of the hill region in the delta country. Santals are inhabitants of Rajshahi and Dinajpur; Khasis, Garos, and Khajons in Mymensingh and Sylhet regions; and Chakmas, Tripuris who are mostly Buddhists are in Chittagong Hill districts.
Different tribal groups had varied social organisations, marriage customs, foods, birth and death and other social customs from the people of the rest of the country.
They have somehow managed to resist centuries of colonisation and in the process have retained their own customs, traditions and life, other studies have shown.