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In this chapter, we look at Bangladesh as a constituent part of the border zone between Mainland South Asia and the Asian Highlands and argue that the Bangladesh borderland with Northeast India and Myanmar makes an interesting and necessary addition to the idea of ‘Asian Highlands’, ‘Southeast Asian Massif’, ‘Zomia’, or other qualifications for the Asian uplands. At the same time, we do acknowledge the impact of political and geographical borders on the experienced realities of local ‘highland’ communities (de facto highlanders) as well as on the highly mobile Bengali peasantry (or de facto lowlanders), who, since the first decade of the 20th century, have started moving into the forested valleys of Assam and Burma in search of new lands to cultivate. The chapter also tries to show why and how historical and ethnographic research on the roots and routes that have historically linked Bangladesh with Highland Asia have remained outside the scope of mainstream national academia in Bangladesh. Apart from its academic significance, we emphasise the political urgency to highlight the historical and ethnographic realities of the borderland(ers), who are becoming increasingly marginalised in the national discourse on citizenship and belonging.

In this chapter, we look at Bangladesh as a constituent part of the border zone between Mainland South Asia and the Asian Highlands and argue that the Bangladesh borderland with Northeast India and Myanmar makes an interesting and necessary addition to the idea of ‘Asian Highlands’, ‘Southeast Asian Massif’, ‘Zomia’, or other qualifications for the Asian uplands. At the same time, we do acknowledge the impact of political and geographical borders on the experienced realities of local ‘highland’ communities (de facto highlanders) as well as on the highly mobile Bengali peasantry (or de facto lowlanders), who, since the first decade of the 20th century, have started moving into the forested valleys of Assam and Burma in search of new lands to cultivate. The chapter also tries to show why and how historical and ethnographic research on the roots and routes that have historically linked Bangladesh with Highland Asia have remained outside the scope of mainstream national academia in Bangladesh. Apart from its academic significance, we emphasise the political urgency to highlight the historical and ethnographic realities of the borderland(ers), who are becoming increasingly marginalised in the national discourse on citizenship and belonging.

The recent history of the Chittagong Hills in Bangladesh is marked by ongoing conflicts between minority (non-Muslim and nonBengali) locals and state-sponsored (Bengali Muslim) immigrants. In general, these immigrants are framed as land grabbers who have been receiving protection from a pro-Bengali military force. We propose instead, that the understanding of these Bengalis as a homogenous category of mobile perpetrators fails to take into account their complex histories as mobile landless peasants. Our ethnographic research reveals that the framing of the local minorities and the mobile Bengalis as two antagonistic categories with opposing interests obscures the fact that both categories have fallen victim to very similar regimes of mobilities and immobilities of the state and national and local (political, economic and military) elites. Here, we reject binary thinking that counterpoises mobility and immobility as two antagonistic concepts and argue that mobility and immobility are intrinsically related and their relationship is asymmetrical.

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Special Issue no ISBN ispartof: vol:19 pages:1-90 status: published