Chakmas of Chittagong Hills: 'Indians' on Aug 15, Pakistanis 2 days later & rebels by Aug 19

kolkata: Every year, motley groups of Chakma tribals gather in various parts of the country with placards

calling out August 17, 1947 as 'Black Day'.

Seventy-five years ago, the Chakmas lost the short-lived 'rebellion' they mounted to make their homeland in the Chittagong Hills a part of

India and since then, the tribe's now scattered diasporas lament that loss.

On August 15, 1947, Chakmas, Tripuris and other tribals, mostly Buddhist, living in the over 13,000 square kilometers of hills and dales in Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT) decided to raise the Indian Tricolour at the Deputy Commissioner's Bungalow at Rangamati to signify their new citizenship.

"My father Sneha Kumar Chakma, who was a member of the All India Excluded Areas Sub-Committee of the Constituent Assembly of India for CHT, engaged with Col GL Hyde, the then deputy commissioner of the district, and after he agreed that the hill tracts were part of India, raised the Indian flag on the morning of August 15, 1947," said Gautam Chakma, a professor of political science at Tripura University.

However, the jubilation that accompanied that momentous occasion was short-lived. On the evening of August 17, after the Radcliffe Award, which demarcated the boundary between India and Pakistan, was announced over the radio, it came to be known that Chittagong Hill Tracts had been given to the latter.

A few days later, the Baluch regiment marched in to tear down the tricolour and replace it with Pakistan's flag. In Banderban, also in the Chittagong Hill Tracts, some tribals who felt closer to Burma, now Myanmar, had raised the Burmese flag.

This too was torn down by the Baluch soldiers. An arrest warrant was issued against Sneha Chakma and

his associates, branding them traitors.

However, Sneha along with others, including Indramoni Chakma and Girish Dewan, the 'captain' of Chakma guards, had already left for

Agartala after an emergency meeting of tribal leaders on August 19 at the deputy commissioner's bungalow where it was resolved that "CHT shall not abide by the Radcliffe Award and that resistance be put up and squads be immediately set up with indigenous weapons".

Sneha Chakma's team was authorised to travel to Kolkata and Delhi to seek arms and to protest what they felt was "gross injustice".

Chakma tribals claim that Sir Cyrill Radcliffe dismissed a seven-page argument written by Justice Bijan Mukherjee and Justice Charu Biswas (non-Muslim members of the Bengal Boundary Commission) in favour of retaining CHT within India, and had agreed to give it to Pakistan.

While Chakmas in their memorandum, and justices Mukherjee and Biswas in their arguments pointed out that CHT had a 98 per cent Buddhist population whose tribal ethnicity made them clan-cousins to people living in Tripura and Assam, Radcliffe held that the area was the headwaters for Chittagong

port and without it, the port, the only major one in

East Pakistan, would be unsustainable.

"The Maharaja of Burdwan offered my father some Lee Enfield rifles and ammunition. But most Indian leaders counselled a legal battle rather than an armed rebellion," said professor Chakma. Raja Nalinaksha Roy, the titular tribal chief of the Chakmas despite being part of the decision to opt for an armed rebellion taken on August 19, later opted to work with the Pakistan government, perhaps to safeguard

his clansmen.