A literature review includes the current knowledge including substantive findings, as well as theoretical and methodological contributions to a particular topic and works as secondary source of data of the topic. My research is on, “Against the Indigenous minorities: Socio-economic and political discrimination and social mobility among the Bagdi community of Jhenidah”. In this chapter some relevant literatures have been analyzed and reviewed to improve understanding about the different discrimination against indigenous minorities of Bangladesh. Indigenous people, minority groups, these terms are used to describe the social groups sharing same characteristic distinct from dominant groups in the society. International Labor Organization (ILO) and World Bank identified indigenous that they tend to maintain distinct social, economic, and political institutions within their territories. They typically choice to remain distinct culturally, geographically and institutionally, rather than assimilate fully into a national society. The existing studies mainly explored about socio-economic deprivation, alienation, lack of political participation, educational discrimination about the indigenous community. In the historical context, the British policies had brought about fundamental changes in the agrarian system of the tribals of Bengal by introducing the Permanent Settlement Act in 1793. The consequences of this act was alienation of Adibashi from the land and the migration of contract labour—in fact a form of bonded labour—to the tea plantation of Assam, to the coal-mines of Bihar, and to the indigo plantation of Bengal (Devalle 1992). Within the British divine and rule policy the Adibashi were given a subordinate role in the economic system. These are some major issues about indigenous people founded through the relevant writings. Now the explicit discussion about the literatures that are relevant to my research have been given in the next.
Socio-economic discrimination against indigenous people.
Rahman, M (2011) concluded how the indigenous community become discriminated and excluded politically, economically. In most, the majority Bengalis hold hegemonic power over indigenous minority in the domain of politics, economics and administration. He argues that the social policy of Bangladesh to manage the situation of indigenous minority and if the indigenous minorities being benefited by the policy. The indigenous minorities face various problems like poor economic condition, political barrier etc in comparison to the settle Bengalis. The study highlights how the indigenous people are deprived of their land rights. In the context, Barkat et al (2009) denoted CHT indigenous as one of the most vulnerable groups because of its lack of income and employment opportunity. He identifies that poor economic condition vary amongst the indigenous groups. The researcher emphasized mostly on the economic factors of discrimination, is related to my first research objective but missed the social and political.
Rahman, M (2011) also asserted another factor social exclusion as the deprivation of the marginalized people of economic benefits, social power, housing benefit, lack of access to social resource etc. Social policy is needed to the state to reduce the socio-economic gap of marginalized and mainstream by ensuring social benefit. The indigenous people of CHT claimed that establishing army camp is the causes of their land loss. Land losses generally disrupt their economic condition. This research is also about the economic difficulty and the cognition of the indigenous about their difficulty. It also reaches my research question, the perception of the indigenous.
Likewise, Samad, M (2006) concludes that grabbing of land and resources is one of the most tragic problems of the indigenous in Bangladesh. Influential settled people cheat with them by fake document and grab their land. Forest department also grab their land. Besides intruders and occupant became more dominant and the indigenous people were displaced and driven away from their ancestral homelands. These indigenous populations throughout the globe, including Bangladesh, are facing similar problems and are fighting for their land and way of life. Low economic opportunities, specific geographic locations, exclusion, deprivation and dispossession of lands are the main drivers of poverty among the Indigenous minorities in Bangladesh (Barkat et al., 2009 a. b.; Adnan, 2004; Kamal et al., 2006). . Sen and Ali (2015) argue that non-income poverty is also widespread amongst the indigenous, particularly education and health indicators, due to geographic conditions. The main difference in land grabbing between the hilly and plain land indigenous is that the hilly indigenous communities are deprived from their land most of the time for government schemes and project and the plain land indigenous loss land for the settlers. The levels of poverty and destitution observed in indigenous are related to the alienation of the indigenous minorities from their common and private land. (Adnan, 2004). There are some notions related to my research purpose like seize of land. The researcher only identified land grabbing as their economic vulnerability but I will describe several problem for their economic discrimination.
According to Rahman, M (2011) reserved forest, restricted forest and unclassified state forest system by government are also causes for land loss of the indigenous minority Moreover the settlers, armed force and government officer also destroy the natural settings of the indigenous community. Pal, N, M et. al. argues that the socio-economic status of Khasia indigenous community is not strong in compare to Manipuri.. They suggest that proper policy need to be taken to ensure their service availability Pal, N, M et al have mainly focused on khasia and Manipuri community and includes income, expenditure, occupation to describe the economic status of the indigenous people. The study claims that 73% of the reported Manipuri respondents are having well socio-economic status where Khasia community belong 6%. In the research the median value was 0.89 and almost 55% Manipuri respondents socio-economic position was it or above. In the khasia community, the median value was 0.66 and 35% respondents had socio-economic position above it. Hossain, D, M (2013) concludes that indigenous people face limitation in diverse kinds of occupation. They are mainly depending on agriculture but cultivation is also oriented with primitive and traditional techniques and technologies. So the indigenous people remain economically backward. Cultivation of crops is different and hard for the hilly land indigenous people. Years of discrimination have driven the indigenous people into poverty; this is damaging their chances at empowerment and opportunities to improve their situation. Karim, and Mansor, M (2011) states that as the hilly land indigenous people burn tree to cultivate land, they face environmental damage and infertility of land and this make them economically poor. Hossain, D, M (2013) argues that the entrepreneurship status is very poor among the indigenous people because though there are many industries that are contributing to the economy of the indigenous, these are controlled by the non-indigenous. The research basically focused on khasia and Manipuri community but my research in on Bagdi community. Though these are different geographically, these researches provide an idea about the basic economic discrimination of the indigenous which is helpful to better improving my research.
A study by Panda, S, C (1998) explored in-depth the barriers to providing quality education to the tribal people of the state of Orissa, India. The study identified low literacy rates among the tribal community despite their large demographic presence in the location of the study. He identified a number of issues as key factors in the failure of education in the tribal communities, including poverty, socio-economic issues, language, the background of teachers and guardians, gender discrimination, the dominance of majority groups, curriculum relevance, cultural issues, parental motivation, resources and their misuse due to corruption, and government policies and practices.
Sarker, P and Davey, G (2007) identified the existing lack of attention to indigenous children in education and the absence of educational opportunity in the north region of Bangladesh. This study illustrated in-depth how indigenous children dropout of school and are excluded from the school system. Besides some common factors they indicted seasonal migration as a barrier of education. Mohsin, A (2002) urged dominant society to practice a culture of tolerance and respect towards the minority communities.
“As a poor country Bangladesh has a low level of monthly income. Most of her people live under the poverty line. The tribal (population) undergoes a worse case.” (Mullah, Parveen and Ahsanullah (2007; 53). They strongly argue that the level of education achievement is very low amongst the indigenous community in spite of the improvement of the spread of education among the mainstream people. The schools for indigenous people are not well managed, lack of good teacher, good communication. Pal, N, and others argue that indigenous community people have less access to school, college, income generating activities and their children have to struggle to keep pace with major language and culture which creates a social discrimination. These researchers concluded the social separation of the indigenous, is related to my research question but none of them describe the problem in details and he skipped the political infraction of the indigenous community.
The findings from the SHED materials (Gain, P 1996, 1998; Gain,P & Moral, 1996) demonstrate the ways in which the lives of indigenous peoples are tied to the natural world and the destruction of the natural world by the profit-oriented, local and global, capitalist economic system. Gain, P mainly argued about the survival lifestyle of the indigenous in hilly and forest land and took a view that Manipuri is better in socio-economic condition than other indigenous communities and my research is on the plain land indigenous.
On the contrary, Chakma, A & Chakma, C (2014) stated a different factor psychology of superiority of mainstream society encourage a perpetrator to violate the economic, social and cultural rights of the indigenous community. They emphasized that perpetrator against indigenous are mainly from mainstream society. The perpetrator think indigenous are weak so they can be hurt, their properties can be looted, their houses can be burnt to ashes, their lands can be grabbed.
Human rights and political discrimination of the indigenous
Some of the reviewed literatures provide the enriched understanding about indigenous politics and rights similar to my research objective. Among them, Samad, M (2006) stated that the indigenous are facing human rights violation for a long time. Land-grabbing, threats, evictions, killings are the common phenomena which have made their life at stake.RDC reported that 92% adibashis of North Bengal works as day laborer. The life, culture and tradition of the indigenous are now threatened. They have been even suffering from identity crisis in Sylhet and Chittagong region. They have no access to decision making bodies. Indigenous people cannot resist the discrimination against them because of the fear of sexual harassment of girls and wives, settings house on fire. Because of the lack of education they also had been cheated by the land buyer at the time of land selling. This study shows that in the early 1980, forest Department occupied illegally 1500 acres of indigenous land in the northern Bangladesh. Sometimes they become harassed with false case by the settler for the lack of their political power.
Uddin, M. A (2008) in addition to understand the way of politics asserted that political life of the indigenous people begin with a certain feeling of impassivity and anxiety. They have to learn to survive oppression, marginalization, discrimination and violence by birth. These can be protected only if the government shows more awareness and sensitivity to indigenous causes and comes forward and take steps.
To describe to political status of indigenous people Chakma, M, K (2014) concludes that the political participation of indigenous people is not strongly recognized. He states that there are no reserved seats for indigenous people in the governing body so they become discriminated. He asserts that UNDRIP has affirmed self-determination to the indigenous so that they can freely determine their political status. Political and civil administration by the military forces has a negative impact on indigenous people. He shows in this study that Housing Developing Corporation (HDC) is a demographic institution for the development of the indigenous but it is still limited in paper and HDC take any decision about indigenous even without the presence of the chief of the Indigenous group. Territorial autonomy is also limited for both hill and plain land indigenous people. He strongly argues that though article 27 and 28(4) states about indigenous right but government does not pay proper attention for reserved seat for indigenous in the local government. He contends that most of the plain land indigenous enclaves mainstream Bengali-population area so the mainstream people don’t allow them to elect to the local government. For the absence of seat reservation, getting nomination in the election for the indigenous depends on political favor.
Besides, Barua, B, P (2010) argued another factor that the western development model has disdained the indigenous culture to flourish a Eurocentric-monoculture. The large divergence of commercialization superintends to restrain the lifestyle of the indigenous minorities. He also concluded that over the last four decades the oppressive politics and policies of development misused rights of indigenous people. Despite voluminous spread of western development and socio-cultural oppression, there is a growing cultural and political barrier among the indigenous to regenerate their traditional knowledge and cultural rights. This paper is related to my research in some factor as like social and political aspect. But there is a gap that the researcher emphasized on socio-cultural oppression rather than socio-economic factor. I will explain the socio-economic factors of discrimination of the indigenous.
Another study about political rights of indigenous by Chakma, M, K (2014) asserts that even if they win on the election, they become controlled by the respective political party and they cannot promote indigenous rights also. Political intimidation is one of the crucial issues for the indigenous and sometimes government agencies misused their power to arrest innocent Indigenous. There is a sharp discrepancy between indigenous leaders and Bangladesh government on the issue of identity (Roy, 2009).
In the context, Guhathakurta, M (2004) analyzes the failure of the nation state Bangladesh to safeguard, both constitutionally and politically, the minorities and indigenous peoples, by discarding secularism and propagating communalism. In this article Guhathakurta touched on various contested issues, including the discrimination of Adivasis through religion and language in the Bangladeshi context. Guhathakurta, M (2004) discussed numerous issues, such as the cultural and linguistic hegemonies and economic marginalization also. In difference to others, Ahmmed, M. M. (2014) stated religious deficiency as a factor of discrimination against the indigenous. They are vulnerable for being religiously exiguous and due to their relatively limited influence with political elites. They are often reluctant to seek recourse from a corrupt and ineffective criminal justice system. Authorities are often ineffective in upholding law and order and are sometimes slow to assist them. This promotes an atmosphere of excuse for acts of violence against them. Religion becomes a modus operandi to gain political interest then the true sense of democracy. This literature is relevant to my research as how is the political rights of the Bagdi indigenous community.
Mobility of indigenous community
Raitapuro, M & Ball, E (2016) explore about the social, political and economic mobility of indigenous people specially Garo. Generally the indigenous communities are characterized by static and stillness but they are trying to change their status through the new form of mobility. They argue that indigenous people in Bangladesh have not only been discriminated by the Govt. in terms of right and recognition but also reifying their tradition. They are discriminated by their indigenous identity and socio-economic backwardness. But now- a –days they are being mobilized. Dhaka and other big cities have become their desire destination for employment and higher education. Beauty industry had created new job opportunity for indigenous women. They argue that globalization has constructed future aspiration of young indigenous, they are moving urban centers and abroad for education and well paid job.
This paper critically argues mobility of the indigenous people by paying attention to inequalities and exclusion. Raitapuro, M & Ball, E (2016) observes that the indigenous children are now dreaming to leave locality for both individual desire and to develop local community. They states that the entry into computer science and communication technology is very much discriminated for the indigenous people. Though it is the main concern to digitalize Bangladesh, internet access, connectivity and electricity are still limited in most indigenous area. They asserts that sometimes the increased mobility bring new insecurities and discrimination for indigenous. This research explored capably the factors of mobility of the indigenous which is related to my research. But this research skipped to identify social status of the indigenous and I want to study this area.
A few researches were conducted on Bagdi community. So the secondary data is not available illustratively and I have to depend on the literature about another indigenous community of Bangladesh. Among various indigenous communities Bagdi communities in Bangladesh are known for their distinct culture, belief system, economic activities, political system, customary laws, and languages. The socio-economic needs, health-seeking behavior, perception of family planning, practices affecting nutritional intake and aspirations vary from one tribal community to another. Indigenous peoples usually live within geographically distinct ancestral territories. In this context Bagdi community in a geographically nearby area introduces another challenge. Compared to the rest of Bangladesh there is huge diversity in type of land, ownership of land, unit of measurement and management of land. There are some types of land ownership, individual registered ownership, traditional ownership (recorded or non-recorded with Headmen) under usufruct rights and usufruct rights to ownership of Common Property Resources. This study motives to pursue the socio-economic, political situation and the mobility status of the Bagdi community.