Pushed to the margins: Adivasi peoples in Bangladesh and the case of Kalpana Chakma

Abstract

This article examines how, in rhetoric and practice, the post‐colonial politics of Bangladesh have come together in intricate and problematic ways that render the Adivasi invisible in society, and how this state‐sponsored narrative has become the regulatory mechanism for keeping the Adivasi at the margin of the state. It analyses the problematics of being an Adivasi in a nation‐state that reifies itself as Bengali and Muslim with reference to the Chakmas of the Chittagong Hill Tracts and, in particular, to the disappearance of the Adivasi human rights activist Kalpana Chakma.