Victims to perpetrators

With the exceptions of politics in the Maldives and al-Qaeda-influenced jihad, Southasian conflicts are all about the exclusion of 'others', be it on grounds of religion, ethnicity or caste. Those espousing a Southasian Union, similar to the European Union, often point to the fact that Punjabis live on both sides of the border of two key actors, India and Pakistan. The discourse on Partition is largely about the Punjab. Bengal receives a footnote, because Mohandas K Gandhi visited Noakhali to calm rioters. But just a little further away, the destruction of an entire nation – the Chakmas and other Adivasis of the Chittagong Hill Tracts – rarely rates even a mention. Partition was a direct consequence of the fear of a section of Muslims about exclusion. Not that the umma was terribly successful. The situation in Pakistan has largely been one of Punjabi domination. Pakistan did not learn much from its own prior exclusion: once Urdu was imposed on Bengalis, the separation of East Pakistan was inevitable.

Bengalis also did not learn much from their period of exclusion. After independence, President Sheikh Mujibur Rehman asked the political leader Manabendra Narayan Chakma (Larma) to "go home and become Bengali". The continued implantation of Muslim plains settlers in the Chittagong Hill Tracts is a continuation of the same policy espoused by Mujib. The victims rather quickly become the perpetrators in Southasia. Pakistan did not learn much, either. Balochs may not have the numbers that Bengalis had, but the conflict in the western province will drain Pakistan's exchequer nonetheless. Pakistan's Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) sits in an anachronistic colonial legal limbo. 'Justice' is delivered by the government's political agents under the draconian Frontier Crime Regulation of 1901; otherwise, local 'justice' is dispensed by tribal jirgas.