Ethnicization and (Counter)Governmentality in the Chittagong Hill Tracts

Abstract

On March 12, 2009, Dhaka hosted a festival to celebrate adivasi (indigenous) cultures in Bangladesh. Addressing the assembly, a Bengali named Bhuyian Shafiqul Islam—director general of the Shilpa Kola Academy, the state cultural organization, repeatedly identified the adivasis as upojati (subnationals). During the speech, an elderly adivasi man stood up and interrupted Islam, by saying, “Mr. President, if the speaker does not stop using the term ‘upojati,’ all of us will leave.”