Muscular nationalism, masculinist militarism: the creation of situational motivators and opportunities for violence against the Indigenous peoples of the Chittagong Hill Tracts, Bangladesh

Abstract

ABSTRACT Violence against the Indigenous peoples of the once-remote Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT) has been perpetuated by ongoing ethno-religious demographic engineering through state-sponsored mass transmigration in order to achieve Bangladesh's nationalist, masculinist aspirations of state security and power. This article uses the case of the CHT to explore how the hegemonic masculinism of the state and the military – pursuing an ethnically based nationalist security agenda – has manifested as pervasive existential violence for the CHT’s Indigenous peoples, especially Indigenous women. In order to understand the conditions created in the CHT that allow – or even encourage – violence against Indigenous peoples while shielding perpetrators, this article looks to recent theorizations of feminist and situational criminogenesis. These suggest that situational opportunity may do more than facilitate the actions of an already motivated offender; it may even create the motivation for criminal behavior. The article concludes by demonstrating how the cumulative transformation of the CHT’s political, military, and civil context has resulted in a potent set of situational motivators and opportunities for violence, particularly sexual violence, against the Indigenous peoples of the CHT.