Summary
Contents
Subject index
This comprehensive study explores issues pertaining to the ‘stateless’ status of the ethnic Buddhist Chakma refugees in the Indian state of Arunachal Pradesh, who originally belonged to the Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHTs). What sets it apart is its holistic overview of the social history of the Chakmas from the colonial period onwards. While analyzing and emphasizing the current plight of the Chakmas in India as stateless refugees, it raises the concomitant question of what it takes to qualify as citizens of a modern postcolonial state.
Setting a new dimension in refugee studies, the arguments in this book are developed on the framework of oral narratives, incorporating the self perceptions of the Chakmas as well as the people of the host nation. Stateless in South Asia: The Chakmas between Bangladesh and India examines national and international official documents and policy statements to critically analyze the absence of legal-institutional and legislative structures to address the concerns of refugees both at regional and national levels. While its core issue revolves around the socio-political status of the Chakmas, it also highlights pertinent issues regarding ‘statelessness’ in South Asia in general. Some of these are:
The present academic and political conceptions of nationalism, citizenship and ethnicity; Partition, boundary making and state formation; The dominant development models examining the lived experiences of refugee communities
This book will be a rich resource for scholars and students of politics, international relations, sociology, anthropology, and history. It will also be immensely useful for policy makers and advocates working on issues pertaining to refugee studies, partition, development-induced displacement, indigenous peoples, and human rights.
Arunachalis' Self-Perceptions: Assertion and Reconstruction of Identity and Ethnic Nationalism
Arunachalis' Self-Perceptions: Assertion and Reconstruction of Identity and Ethnic Nationalism
Rarely ever is the self-perception of the actually refugee-hosting community taken into account either before or during the period of settlement of a refugee population. The need for seeking free, prior and informed consent can be more easily disregarded if the given host community itself happens to be located on the margins of society. Ironically, this is so not because of any overwhelming consensus on the urgency to attend to the more pressing problems of refugees, but because marginal people are less likely to pose any challenge to the ‘prerogative’ of the state in settling such uprooted people in their land. The existence of weak regional ...
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