Abstract
The chapter with a case of the Rakhines, a migrant ethnic group in South and Southeast Asia, addresses some of the key questions relevant to academic debates on borders, migration, and community identity construction in the littoral Bay of Bengal in the twentieth century. Maritime historian Michael Pearson opines that the history of the Bengal Delta, like other littoral regions, should be studied in light of the broader trade and mercantile as well as migration flows that connected the region with the hinterland covering present-day Northeast India, Burma, and China. They are part of the ‘connected histories’ of the Bay of Bengal littoral rim. The chapter fits this premise in the case of the Rakhines of Bangladesh, an ethnic minority who have been historically forced to migrate due to political, social, and environmental vulnerability in Myanmar and Bangladesh. They migrated from the Arakan valley of present-day Myanmar in the early eighteenth centuries and settled in Chittagong, Khulna, and Borisal division of Bengal via the sea route and Sandwip island. They have maintained their distinct identity as a religious, linguistic, and ethnic group. Sectarian violence, burning of Pagodas, and ethnic conflict with the dominant Bengali community in Bangladesh, however, have forced the Rakhines to migrate back to their homeland in Myanmar and Chittagong Hill Tracts. The chapter answers to the following questions: What does motivate ethnic minorities to migrate in the Indian Ocean littoral region? What are the roles of state practices and policies in the process?
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Notes
- 1.
The ‘Coastal Frontiers: Water, Power and Boundaries in South Asia’ was a project funded by the European Research Commission. The project was hosted by Birkbeck College with Professor Sunil Amrith as PI. I worked as an anthropologist in the project looking at the lives of seafarers in the Bay of Bengal.
- 2.
Khas land means government-owned fallow land, where nobody has property rights. It is a land which is deemed to be owned by the government and available for allocation according to government priorities. “Khas land” or “land in khas possession”, in relation to any person, includes any land let out together with any building standing thereon and necessary adjuncts thereto, otherwise, than in perpetuity.
- 3.
An Indian landholder in the Mughal Empire and British Raj, responsible for collecting taxes from a district.
- 4.
“Chowdhury” is a term in Sanskrit, literally meaning “holder of four” (four denoting a measure of land, from chadhur (four) and dhar (to hold or possess).The name is an ancient Sanskrit term denoting the head of a community or caste.
- 5.
A zamindar in the Indian subcontinent was an aristocrat. The term means “land owner” in Persian. Typically hereditary, zamindars held enormous tracts of land and control over their peasants, from whom they reserved the right to collect tax on behalf of imperial courts or for military purposes.
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Das, D. (2019). Life on the Edge: Forced Migration and Ethnic Encounter in the Bay of Bengal. In: Uddin, N., Chowdhory, N. (eds) Deterritorialised Identity and Transborder Movement in South Asia. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-2778-0_11
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