The racial profiling of the Chakmas and Hajongs

when did these migrant communities arrive in Arunachal Pradesh? Where did they settle? Why does the State want to relocate them?

The north-eastern States have had a history of being paranoid about outsiders outnumbering the indigenous communities and taking their land, resources and jobs. The threat from “non-locals” in a specific area has also been perceived to be from communities indigenous elsewhere in the region. This has often led to conflicts such as the recent attacks on non-tribal people in Meghalaya’s capital Shillong or an Assam-based group’s warning to a fuel station owner in Guwahati against employing Bihari workers. In Arunachal Pradesh, the and Hajong people are feeling the heat since the State government decided to conduct a special census in December 2021.

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. and Hajongs of Arunachal Pradesh are migrants 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 asylum in India and were 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.