Colonial governmentality and Bangladeshis in the anthropocene: Loss of language, land, knowledge, and identity of the Chakma in the ecology of the Chittagong Hill tracts in Bangladesh

Abstract

“Can they do whatever they please. . . Turn settlements into barren land. Dense forests into deserts. Mornings into evenings. Turn fertile into barren. Why shall I not resist!. …. I become my whole self. . . Why shall I not resist”!. This is a section from a poem - ‘Joli No Udhim Kittei’ a Chakma poem written in Bengali script as ‘Rukhe Darabo Na Keno?’ (‘Why shall I not resist!’) by the author \Kabita Chakma in 1992, translated into English. It epitomizes the ongoing violation of human rights that Chakmas (members of one of the Indigenous communities in Bangladesh) experience in the Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT) where the highest number of Indigenous people in Bangladesh live. In this paper, the first author, a member of the Chakma community and a Lecturer at an Australian university is in conversation with the second author, a Professor at a university in a Bangladeshi university. With reference to Phillipson’s linguicism, and Foucault's notion of governmentality in the era of the Anthropocene, in their conversation, they reflect on the Anthropocene – the forced migration, displacement of Indigenous communities in Bangladesh from their traditional land, extinction of Indigenous languages, disengagement with Indigenous and local languages, and consequently, and the destruction of biodiversity of Chittagong Hill Tracts.