How lowlands have historically shaped uplands determines the structure of the relationship between indigenous hill people. Therefore, indigenous people are disproportionately marginalized in the modern state system across the world due mainly to two reasons: (a) indigenous minorities have been deliberately excluded from the national space in the state making and (b) they tend to flee the modern state to avoid control, capital and complexities. Indigenous people of the Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHTs) in Bangladesh did not flee the state-making; rather they intended to be included with distinct ethnicity and identity but still, they live on the margin of the state.
Eleven indigenous groups have lived in the CHTs for centuries with distinct identities and ethnicities. During the "partition" in 1947, the CHT was awarded to Pakistan despite indigenous people being absolutely non-Muslims. During the Pakistan period, they faced severe oppression of massive displacement (100,000) for the construction of the Kaptai Dam and amendments to the CHT Manual 1900. During the Bangladesh period after 1971, excluding indigenous people from the constitution, state-sponsored Bengali migration to the CHT and deployment of the military etc. heavily impacted the lives of indigenous people.
The Indigenous people always wanted to join the state-making, but the process of nation-building and state-formation in the South Asian Subcontinent intentionally excluded them from national space to push them to the margin of the state. Given the context, the paper examines the dynamics of the politics of cultural differences and the structure of the relation between hills and plains in post-colonial state-making. It also discusses how understanding the politics of marginality in relation to indigeneity could provide a potential lens to look at the nature of center (state) from the margin (mountanian people).
