Note4Students

From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :

Prelims level: Chakmas and Hajongs

Mains level: Not Much

In Arunachal Pradesh, the Chakma and Hajong people are feeling heat since the State government decided to conduct a special census in December 2021.

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.

The Chakmas 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.
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.

The Arunachal Government has cited to resolve the protracted issue of racial antagonism.
It seeks to rehabilitate the Chakma-Hajongs in other States.
The census plan was however dropped after the Chakma Development Foundation of India petitioned the PMO.

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 Indian Constitution.
It is against Article 1 of the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, ratified by India.

Members of the two communities had been settled in Arunachal Pradesh six decades ago with a rehabilitation plan, allotted land and provided with financial aid depending on the size of their families.
Although local tribes claim the population of the migrants has increased alarmingly, the 2011 census says there are 47,471 Chakmas and Hajongs in the State.
They are granted citizenship by birth under Section 3 of the Citizenship Act, 1955, after having been born before July 1, 1987, or as descendants of those who were born before this date.