In Arunachal Pradesh, the Chakma and Hajong communities are feeling warmth since the State government is supposed to perform a special census.

Also, the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) in its order directed the Ministry of Home Affairs and Arunachal Pradesh to submit an action taken report within six weeks against alleged racial profiling and relocation of the Chakmas and Hajongs from the State.

Who are the Chakmas and Hajongs?

The Chakmas and Hajongs of Arunachal Pradesh are settlers from the Chittagong Hill Tracts of erstwhile East Pakistan, now Bangladesh. Displaced by the Kaptai dam on the Karnaphuli River in the 1960s, they sought protection in India. They settled in relief camps in the southern and south-eastern parts of Arunachal Pradesh from 1964 to 1969. A majority of them live in the Changlang district of the State today. Mizoram and Tripura have a sizeable population of the Buddhist Chakmas while the Hindu Hajongs mostly inhabit the Garo Hills of Meghalaya and adjoining areas of Assam.

Issues with Chakmas and Hajongs

• In 2015, the Supreme Court instructed the State to give them citizenship, but this had not yet been implemented.
• Most of the Chakma/Hajong community members were born in the State and have been living peacefully, the Arunachal Pradesh Chief Minister’s announcement, in August 2021, that they would be relocated outside the State and that steps would be taken for a “census” of the communities was unwarranted.
• After that Chakma Development Foundation of India (CDFI) requested the urgent intervention of the NHRC against racial profiling of 65,000 Chakma and Hajong tribals of Arunachal Pradesh through illegal census which was scheduled to commence from 31st December 2021 (later plan of the census was dropped) for their deportation/expulsion/ relocation from the State.

Why was a special census?

The Arunachal Government has referred to resolving the long-winded issue of racial opposition. It seeks to rebuild the Chakma-Hajongs in other States. The census plan was however dropped after the Chakma Development Foundation of India petitioned the PMO.

Issues with the Special Census:

Chakma organizations said the census was nothing but racial profiling of the two communities because of their ethnic origin and violated Article 14 of the Constitution of India and Article 1 of the International Convention on Elimination of Racial Discrimination ratified by India.

Racial profiling is government or police activity that involves using people’s racial and cultural characteristics to identify people to investigate.

Article 14 says that no person shall be denied treatment of equality before the law or the equal protection of the laws within the territory of India.

The United Nation General Assembly in October 1966 proclaimed 21st March as the International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, to be commemorated annually.

Out of the 65,000 Chakmas and Hajongs, about 60,500 are citizens by birth under Section 3 of the Citizenship Act, 1955, after having been born before 1st July 1987, or as children of those who were born before this date. The applications of the remaining 4,500 surviving migrants following the 1996 Supreme Court order have not been processed to date.

The Citizenship (Amendment) Act of 2019, which amended two sections of the 1955 Act, has nothing to do with the Chakma-Hajongs since they were permanently settled by the Union of India in the 1960s.

And since 95% of the migrants were born in the North-East Frontier Agency or Arunachal Pradesh, the Inner Line Permit mandatory under the Bengal Eastern Frontier Regulation of 1873 for outsiders seeking to visit the State, also does not apply to them.

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