Politics, Education and Ethnicity

A friend works in the Chittagong Hill Tracts Commission, a body designed to oversee some degree of even handedness in the governance of the area. The Chittagong Hill Tracts are an anomaly in that they were awarded initially to East Pakistan by the Radcliffe Commission at partition in 1947 because it was deemed important that East Pakistan have a deep water port. The tracts constitute the hinterland of Chittagong and are populated mostly by non-Bengalis. The people are mostly Buddhist, some are Christian and others animist. In short they form a distinct minority group in Bangladesh quite different to the majority Muslim population . They have been subjected to all sorts of assaults; at the heart of which is the Bengali peasant hunger for land. There has been insurrection in the region and its still generally regarded as unsafe for outsiders to visit and there is a large military and paramilitary presence stationed to protect the local people and maintain peace - or so it is alleged.

In the past the Awami League has had quite a good track record on the CHTs. It did after all bring about the peace settlement in 1991, which led to the formation of the CTH Commission, which is charged with representing the interests of the people of the region. So, one can understand the bewilderment and consternation of the Commission when the present Bangladeshi Foreign Minister, Dipu Moni, lectures foreign journalists and diplomats on the terminology to be used when discussing the people of CHT. They are no long to be referred to as 'indigenous people' because as the Oxford Dictionary points out indigeneity refers to original people and the current population arrived in the CHT in the 16th Century. However, they retain their ethnicity.

So what you may ask? What is the significance of this semantic pedantry? Put simply, it means the Bengali peasants are placed on an on equal footing with the ethnic people when it comes to land claims because they, like the original inhabitants, are only arriving and competing for land in a legitimate and legalistic way. They are not displacing a people. In short all of the good work done in protecting the rights of the people of the CHT has been undone by a dictionary not a rifle. This convenient solution, however, raises as many questions as it solves. Does Bangladesh have any indigenous people? Apparently not and how important is ethnicity. Does this hitherto nebulous concept invest a people with inalienable rights? Who knows. Maybe we should consult the Oxford Dictionary.

Today the HSC results were announced. These are taken very seriously in Bangladesh and the papers publish league tables of results by school board (there are 9), ranking the schools and colleges by their results. The fact that Dhaka College has slipped in the ranking is cause for comment. Over 580 000 students successfully completed their HSC, some 75.08% of those sitting, of whom some 78 000 achieved a GPA of 5. These are the best ad brightest and they have high expectations. Most will apply to Dhaka University, Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology (BUET) and other public universities but there are insufficient seats (as places at university are referred to in Bangladesh) for the sheer volume of successful graduates. Some will apply to the 51 private universities but but over all approximately 40% of the top candidates will fail to get a place in a tertiary institution. One wonder what happens to this with GPAs of 2.5,3.00 and 4.00. In my view Bangladesh can ill afford this situation.