Neolithic Musings

(Edited version of an ‘open letter’ first pubished in the Daily Star on 27 August 2014, with a couple of sentences omitted from the DS version added herewith.)[*]

~ Prashanta Tripura ~

Dear Bangladesh,

I don’t know if you remember me, but I am writing to you in the hope that you do.  Having witnessed and celebrated your birth when I was little, and having grown up with you, I have always cared deeply about you, as I will always do.  But I am not sure that you feel the same way about me.   In fact, I am not even sure that you know or acknowledge that I exist.  I am saying this as a member of one of the many ‘small’ ethnic groups that have been consigned to the margins and darkest corners of your geography and history.  People who speak and write on your behalf have rarely made any serious effort to change this order of things.  On the contrary, many of them have been busy pushing these marginalized groups out of tracts that have nourished them for generations.  As if that were not enough, the same powers have lately sought to erase them from various government documents and public discourse as well. The latest instance of such efforts came recently when, two days before the International Day of the World’s Indigenous Peoples, a government press handout urged academics, newspaper editors and others to refrain from using the word ‘Adibashi’ (Bangla for ‘Indigenous People’).  The handout made use of an extraordinary logic:  The constitution does not talk about the Adibashis, so they don’t exist! I think we have had enough of such nonsense.  So I am compelled to write this letter to you and I sincerely hope that you will hear me out.

Let me start by reminding you of when and how we first met.  Do you remember a time when you began to take shape in the imagination of many, including those who would shout the slogan ‘Joy Bangla’?  The small rural town where I grew up, Khagrachari, was somewhat distant from big events sweeping the whole of East Pakistan at that time.  But sure enough, ‘Joy Bangla’ reached our town too, and sometime around March 1971, when I was just a 9-year old, I too took part in a procession that went around the whole town. I distinctly remember that we started chanting the slogan differently than how it is commonly done.  In our case, someone would say the first word “Joy”, and then, after a hesitant pause, the rest would say, “Bangla.”  Anyway, I wish to skip the traumatic and eventful period of nine months of the War of Independence that I witnessed as a small boy.  Instead, let us zoom to the time of your liberation in December 1971.  I suppose you cannot remember the face or voice of every single individual out of the millions that greeted your liberation, but I wonder if you happen to remember seeing a group of jubilant young Tripura boys aged 8-12 returning to their village in the outskirts of Khagrachari town, singing ‘Amar sonar Bangla’, just a day or two after your liberation.  If you remember such a group, know that I was one of those boys!  Anyway, on the road that day we were happy to see some of our heroes, freedom fighters, many of whom were fellow Tripuras, including a first cousin.  With ‘our side’ victorious, we came out of hiding, and made a happy return to our village, secure in the knowledge that there would no longer be any reason for us to run around in fear.  But we were so wrong!

I am not here to chronicle all that went wrong in the newly independent state that bears your name.  I know that you have lived through many upheavals, turmoil, and senseless losses of huge magnitudes that continued to sweep through the entire country.  But I wonder whether you realized that what was happening in the Chittagong Hill Tracts was by far the worst in many ways.  How did you deal with the immense suffering that many of the indigenous CHT communities endured for decades?  Since they barely accounted for half of 1% of the total population that are tied to you, is it possible that you chose to close your eyes and bear the pain quietly when so many of CHT people lost their lives, livelihoods, lands, homes and honour?  Would you believe if I told you that even I – who lived a relatively sheltered life – was once beaten up by an armed security man aboard a launch boat on Kaptai lake, on my way home from my college in Dhaka, for no justifiable reason?  The man even threatened to kill me, and might have done so if my father were not among the passengers of the boat.  Apart from actual violence, the people in the CHT had to put up with various rituals of humiliation and display of brute force as well, e.g. at security check points, soldiers would board buses and announce, “All tribal passengers, get down and get checked.”   

But I digress.  Let us return to the question of whether there are ‘Indigenous Peoples’ in Bangladesh.  Personally, the first time I had to deal with this question seriously was in 1993, when, as a lecturer of anthropology at Jahangirnagar University, I was tasked by a committee – jointly headed by two Awami League MPs of that time – to write a keynote paper to celebrate the International Year of the World’s Indigenous People.  The BNP-led government of that time had stated that the event did not merit official observance since the ‘tribes’ and ‘nomads’ who lived in Bangladesh were not really ‘indigenous’.  The then leader of the opposition, who happens to be the present Prime Minister of Bangladesh, however, expressed solidarity with the Adibashis of the country.  In that context, much of my paper dwelt on the question of whether the so-called tribal people of Bangladesh could be called ‘indigenous’, and what a Bangla equivalent for the term could be.  Our conclusion was that the ‘tribal’ people certainly qualified as ‘indigenous people’, in the sense the term was being deployed by the UN, and that ‘Adibashi’ could be used as a Bangla equivalent for the same.

Since 1993, governments have come and gone, promises have been made and broken, and various new issues have emerged to keep the nation bitterly divided on many counts. But over the years a rare level of national unity has emerged in the form of a widely shared view that the ‘tribal’ people are not the ‘true sons of the soil’ (somehow no one ever speaks of the ‘daughters of the soil’).  This is a refrain that has been repeated by countless people, including some of the best-known intellectuals of the country, who have come up with various [outlandish] arguments and faulty interpretations.  I have personally […] written a lot about all this and do not wish to rehash my past arguments here.  Instead, I would like to pose a few questions to which I must get some answers from you.  First, do you know that the terms that were introduced through Article 23A in the constitution – ‘tribes’, ‘minor races’ and ‘ethnic sects’ – are regarded globally as outmoded, and have been rejected by vocal segments of the very people for whom they are intended?   Secondly, please have another look at the constitution’s Article 9, which says: “The unity and solidarity of the Bangalee nation, which, deriving its identity from its language and culture, attained sovereign and independent Bangladesh through a united and determined struggle in the war of independence, shall be the basis of Bangalee nationalism.”  May I ask if this makes sense to you?  Why is ‘unity’ conceived of so singularly here, without any acknowledgement of languages and cultures other than that of the ‘Bangalee nation’?  What were the Adibashi freedom fighters doing in 1971? What made us sing ‘I love you, my Sonar Bangla’ in 1971? Does it make sense for us to sing it today?  Do we the Tripuras, the Santals, the Garos, the Mros and so on in fact exist in any meaningful sense?  This is a question that will remain even if the government were to declare tomorrow that there are indigenous peoples in this country.

I was also going to ask you if you buy the argument that since the constitution does not have the word ‘Adibashi’, there are no Adibashis in this country.  We all know how silly all this sounds.  But I do wonder about one thing.  We know that both Sheikh Hasina and Khaleda Zia have signed on messages of felicitation to the Adibashis on several occasions in the past.  We also have numerous photos of other leaders who have taken part, as a gesture of solidarity, in various programmes organized by people who call themselves ‘indigenous’ and would like the state to accord this recognition unambiguously.  Surely these leaders cannot be so forgetful or mindless as to look absurd in front of the whole world by endorsing the kind of faulty arguments that have been heard all over again [during the second week of August 2014].  But that is precisely what most of them – one big name after another – have been doing while in power.  So my real question to you is this: Who or what are the forces that compel all these leaders to act like the way they are acting?  I think we must find answers to this question.  [Here I am least concerned about my own existence or that of the Adibashis.  Rather, I am concerned about you, my dear Bangladesh.  Do YOU exist?]

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[*]The version originally published in the Daily Star is here. A few edits in the present version are indicated by square brackets. They include the last two sentences at the very end above that were in the original version that I had submitted to the Daily Star, though the editor opted to leave them out from the published version. The photo accompanying this post is the same as used by the Daily Star (without any credit mentioned) in its version of my letter.   

(An account of my Facebook life as of 2013, with an update a decade later)

~ Prashanta Tripura ~

When and how did Facebook become such an important part of our everyday existence?  I thought of posing this question to myself upon approaching the fifth anniversary of my Facebook life in 2013.[1]  What follows is a short answer that I gleaned from my timeline, presented in a light-hearted vein as indicated by the insertion of the word ‘Facebook’ in the following quote that originally had the word ‘read’ within the brackets shown:

‘Tell me how you [Facebook], and I will tell you who you are.’

– Martin Heidegger

2008: Quiet beginning with four Facebook friends

I Joined Facebook on November 14, 2008. But I turned out to be a very slow starter. At the end of 2008, I had only four Facebook friends: two of whom were my nephews living in Canada, and one was a long lost graduate school (Berkeley) friend whom I found on Facebook. Apart from adding these friends, I have no record of any other Facebook activities from this period.  In fact, as described below, my Facebook account would remain largely idle for the next three years.

2009: Two statuses, one birthday wish, and befriending my wife

I posted my first Facebook status on April 15, 2009. It was about an official trip to Rangamati, where I visited local dignitaries and indulged in special delicacies and drinks – as part of my official duty – on the occasion of Boi-Sa-Bi (festivities surrounding traditional New Year).  The post elicited no ‘like’, but got one comment, which was from a homesick relative living in South Korea.  My next status, posted during an official trip to Bangkok in June, went like this:  “Looking out the window of my hotel, had a striking view of a beautiful rainbow….Can’t remember the last time I saw such a thing.”  This post did not get any ‘like’ either, but led to a few comments. 

This was the year when I received my first ever birthday wish on Facebook. Left as a message on my ‘wall’ by one of my nephews, it was the only Facebook birthday greeting of that year, when I also received my first ever Facebook message in my ‘inbox’:  a thank you note from someone who had just become a Facebook friend.  

In 2009, I made a total of 130 new Facebook friends. Among them was my wife with whom I ‘became friends’ nearly a decade and a half after our marriage!  (By the way, she was also my first Facebook instructor in that she helped me with some tips on how to use some of the functions of this platform.)

2010: A year of zero posting, one-way tagging and unattended inbox

This year, apart from handling friend requests – I made over 500 new Facebook friends – I had no other activity on Facebook.  I did not post any status updates or photos of my own.  However, I started being tagged by others on their posts.

I was tagged in a Facebook note for the first time in June, by a friend who was the grandchild of a cousin of mine.  Another Facebook friend, who was senior to me, also started tagging me similarly. I was yet not in the habit of reading such material though, and was still about two years away from posting Facebook notes of my own.  (By the time I got into posting my own notes, none of these two Facebook friends seemed as active as before.  I wonder if this was just a coincidence, or part of a common trend, like how babies start running before they learn to walk at normal pace.)

In July 2010, I was tagged in two photos: one was a shot of me with former students; another was that of a street demonstration for constitutional recognition of Adivasis. In the following month, I was tagged in a note about a Chittagong Hill Tracts-related anthology that had a few articles of mine. I did not give any ‘like’ or comment in return to these tags.  Similarly, in October, I did not acknowledge a Puja greeting card on which I was tagged.  I even discovered a number of unread messages from this period.  I was either too irregular on Facebook, or was still unaware of Facebook etiquettes, or both.  Belated apologies to all concerned!

2011: Another year of quiet Facebook presence ends with a ‘journey down memory lane’

The third year of my Facebook presence also passed rather quietly, with hardly any activities on my part, except for making about 500 new Facebook friends.  Professionally, however, I spent a very busy year when I had to deal with a series of new challenges, including backstage management of a major public event that attracted considerable opposition, much of which found expression on Facebook.  However, I was not in a position to address the matter on Facebook.  Firstly, I did not have the skills or time to sift through all the stuff on Facebook. Secondly, my office had no clear guidelines on how to engage with the social media, though an expert had once advised us on how to handle bad press: “Do not be reactive. Do not get into rebuttals or rejoinders.  Just keep talking about what you do, and what your objectives and achievements are.”

Anyway, by around mid-December, after the stressful period of work was behind me, I found myself becoming a little active on Facebook, probably as part of an attempt to unwind my mind.  Initially, I was mainly into posting of photos, through which I became used (or hooked) to getting and giving ‘likes’ and comments.  The first ever Facebook photo that I posted – showing me and my wife on her birthday – elicited 183 likes and 56 comments, including some of my own that involved liberal use of emoticons.  I also posted a specially designed New Year’s card and added my first photo album titled ‘Down Memory Lane’, featuring family members.

2012: Facebook at life’s crossroads

During the first quarter of 2012, I turned 50. This special occasion prompted me to post my third Facebook status update in over three years. I wrote:

Thanks to all Facebook friends who sent messages wishing HBD. It is a special one in that if I were playing cricket, I would be raising my bat on reaching a special milestone ….But right now I am not in the middle of any stadium, nor even at work. I have chosen to spend a quiet day at home instead. In a short while … I may open my special notebook with life’s ‘things to do’ list. Sorry, the list is too private to share with you…. But let me end with one thought: I have never played cricket, but have come to like watching it on TV when I have time. T20 or 50-over matches provide a lot of excitement, but life is more like test matches. You have to pay attention to every ball, every over, and play it session by session….Right now, I am not thinking about any milestone, but just want to enjoy every moment, every first day of the rest of my life. Have a good day.

Soon after the above post, I made my marital status public on Facebook.  But the notification that followed this update led to all kinds of responses that my wife and I really enjoyed. Some who did not know us very well thought that our virtual (re)marriage had just taken place!  Anyway, on that auspicious day, I also posted part of an old poem – my first post of this kind – that dwelt on time spent with school friends,  some of whom I had just been reunited with on the occasion of a birthday party that a colleague (who also turned 50) and I jointly hosted. We called it 50/50 party!

Now – for reasons that I need not get into here – soon after my 50^th birthday, I decided to resign from my lucrative job, giving four months’ advance notice at my office.  Later, during a farewell party that my colleagues organized, I offered an explanation for my decision half-jokingly: “One is supposed to have mid-life crisis at the age of fifty.  People change spouses or jobs.  I opted for the latter, so that I could spend more time on Facebook!” By then, I had indeed started spending a lot of time on Facebook, which provided me with a ready audience for my posts.

In mid-April, at the start of the Bangla New Year, I posted my first ever Facebook note – in Bangla – under a title that could be translated as “The first page of the open halkhata of my life” [‘halkhata’ refers to new books of accounts traditionally opened by business people at the start of the Bangla New Year].  Later, I would go on to post or draft many more Facebook notes, some of which led to articles eventually published in newspapers and magazines. 

In terms of making new Facebook friends, 2012 was a record year, when the annual tally stood at 1200.

2013: Thinking about the road taken, and the bumps and turns ahead

At present I have a total of nearly three thousand Facebook friends.  They include both people that I know from before, and those that I don’t. Among the latter category, I have already met some by chance, in places like bus terminals, airports, or the park.  It is usually a pleasant surprise to be approached by someone with a familiar looking face who says, “Hello, are you Prashanta da?  I am so and so. We are Facebook friends!”

I understand that I could have another two thousand Facebook friends if I want.  But lately I have become a little unsure of what to do with requests from people whom I barely know, or who may conceal their real identities.  There are ontological or sociological questions that I have not sorted out yet: Is it possible or necessary to look for ‘real’ faces behind masks, either on Facebook or in ‘real’ life?  I have to also ask myself, how exactly should I keep presenting myself on Facebook?  Whether I go for having many more Facebook friends or not may depend on how I answer such questions.  However, there may also be unnoticed requests from people I know well.  To any such person who may be reading this note, I offer my apology.

These days, one has to also keep in mind that ‘Facebook’ has become a domain or name associated with various dangers (e.g., use of fake Facebook posts as excuses to terrorize minority communities in Ramu and Santhia).  There is also new legislation (Section 57 of the amended ICT act) that seems to be designed to curb freedom of expression (e.g. a university teacher just got arrested for writing a Facebook post deemed offensive by those in power).  Such developments make one worry over imaginary bumps and turns that may lie ahead on one’s timeline. Is this the year of living cautiously?

Cautions aside, all things considered, I have really enjoyed my Facebook experience so far.  Apart from reuniting with old friends and getting to meet new ones, Facebook has also helped me get back into writing the kind of stuff that I find very meaningful.  Thus far, I have posted some forty-five Facebook notes and many more statuses that I have not counted. Lately, I have also turned to blogging, a move that was in part prompted by suggestions that I received on Facebook, which I still depend on for reaching out to potential readers of my blog posts.  I should also add that I have also learned a lot, and had countless laughs, by going through countless posts of my Facebook friends.

I know that Facebook or blogging will not help me make a living, but they do make me feel very alive.  For this, it is you, my Facebook friends (including “followers”), to whom I owe the most.  So, dear friends, THANK YOU for all you have done to give shape to my present being and timeline on (and off) Facebook.

Update (2023)

After posting ‘Being and Timeline’, I went on to publish around 44 more Facebook notes during the period from February 2014 to September 2019.  However, Facebook would soon close down this feature, which became ‘read only’ by October 2020 and disappeared completely without any notice.  It is still possible to view old Facebook notes if one has the links, but it is no longer possible to find them easily.  Hence, I have tried to re-publish many of my old Facebook notes – mostly ones written in Bangla – on my personal WordPress blogs (in particular, my Bangla blog[2]).  

It may be mentioned that presently I have nearly 5,000 Facebook friends, but I am no longer as active or regular as I once used to be.  Nonetheless, I do still post status updates whenever I feel like, and I also try to post new or old articles of mine on my personal blogs and in such cases I always try to share the links to my blog posts on Facebook.  Thus it is from among my Facebook friends and followers that a significant proportion of the readers of my writings continue to come from.

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Notes

[1] This blog post is an edited and updated version of a Facebook note of mine, ‘Being and Timeline: An Account of My Facebook Life’, which was published on 13 November 2013.  The title of my note was fashioned after the German philosopher Martin Heidegger’s magnum opus Being and Time, which I had read about, but did not necessarily ever develop clear understanding of.  The cartoons accompanying this post – taken from different sources through the internet – were used in the original Facebook note as well.

[2]Interested readers may see the list of my main articles in the Bangla blog at its ‘index’ page:  https://ptripura1.wordpress.com/index/.

Prashanta Tripura

Around mid-April every year, the Chittagong Hill Tracts of Bangladesh go through days of festivities as the indigenous peoples of the region – collectively known as ‘Jumma’, ‘Pahari’, Hill People etc. – observe similar festivals for which there are different names used by different ethnic groups.[1]  Out of these various names, a new acronym – Boi-Sa-Bi – was coined sometime in the [late] 1980s or early 1990s[2] and was meant to represent the ‘unity in diversity’ of the cultures involved.

In specific terms, the acronym Boi-Sa-Bi was based on the initial parts of names like Boishu/Boishuk (as used by Tripuras), Sangrai/Sangrain (Marma) and Bizu/Bishu (Chakma/Tanchangya).  This name was meant to represent a family of festivities, as observed in the CHT, marking an astronomical/astrological passage when people give farewell to the old year, and usher in the New Year as per traditional calendars. The festivities go on for at least three days for most ethnic groups, with the penultimate day of the passing year being reserved for making all sorts of preparations in case of groups like the Chakmas and Tripuras, while the last day of the passing year is observed through rituals and festivities, and then the first day of the new year is also celebrated following customary practices.

Historically, these festivities were associated with vernal equinox, which is known as Vishuva Sankranti in Sanskrit, out of which the names used by most ethnic groups in the CHT, or in other parts of South and Southeast Asia for that matter, have derived.  Thus the Tripura,  Chakma or and Tanchangya words Boishu, Bizu, and Bishu respectively derive from ‘Vishuva’, denoting the time and space when the sun lies exactly above the equator, whereas the Marma word Sangrai(n) – just like many other names ranging from Mro ‘Chankran’ to Thai ‘Songkran’ – comes from ‘Sankranti’,  which means ‘passage’ or ‘transition’.  It may be mentioned that the first month of a system of agricultural/astrological calendar widely followed throughout South and Southeast Asia – called ‘Baishakh’ in several languages including Bangla – comes after the vernal equinox that falls on March 21.[3]

What is significant about Boi-Sa-Bi is that the ritual focus is more on the last day of the passing year than on the first day of the New Year. Actually, like most rural communities in the CHT, many Bengalis too traditionally observed ‘Choitro’ Sankranti, or the last day of the Bangla calendar, although celebration of Pohela Boishakh (or the first day of the ‘Bangla’ year) has become more pronounced among urban middle classes. Bengali traders and shopkeepers used to close their old books of accounts, and open new ones around this time.

From growing up in a rural setting in a Tripura community in Khagrachari, I remember that as the old year came to an end, villagers would start cleaning their houses, take special care of domestic animals, and visit the elderly, who were given baths by people seeking their blessing. Many people also visited sacred sites such as Matai Pukhiri or the Sacred Pond (known as Debata Pukur to non-Tripuras). On the last day of Choitro, people would start the day by sprinkling themselves with holy water. They (mostly children and men) would then visit neighbors and relatives, and be served with vegetarian delicacies and rice-based drinks.  On this day, no meat was normally served or any animals slaughtered, and people (i.e. Tripura villagers) even refrained from plucking flowers! Devotees of the lord Goriya and of lord Krishna would go around from village to village performing dances and songs.

Much has, however, changed over time, especially among the emerging urban middle classes. Many of the traditions have become quite divorced from their original cultural contexts, or have taken on new dimensions. Of course, traditions are never static. They change with the times, and are even invented or re-invented.  For example, many activists nowadays use Boi-Sa-Bi as an occasion for political expression. In fact the acronym Boi-Sa-Bi itself was invented by young activists who wanted to come up with a common name for the same types of festivities that different ‘Jumma’ communities in the CHT call by different names.  Regardless of how one views such matter, for many ordinary Jummas, whether they are still lviing in the CHT or away from it – including overseas – Bo-Sa-Bi, or Bizu, Sangrain, etc, is certainly an occasion that they look forward to spending together with their family and friends, amidst festivities that both help them feel reconnected with their ‘roots’ and be ready to start yet another annual cycle in the passage of time.

Notes

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[1]This blog post is an annotated version of an article that I authored, based on an older write-up of mine, for a “Boi-Sa-Bi” 2023 publication as planned by members of a Jumma community based in a North American city. The original version of that write-up was circulated through an email message that I sent to my colleagues at UNDP’s Chittagong Hill Tracts Facility in April 2011, and an edited version of the same was posted on Facebook in April 2015. I have written a more elaborate article in Bangla, which describes some of the matters presented in this piece along with discussion of other related issues.  

[2]In the version of this article prepared for the “Boi-Sa-Bi” 2023 publication as mentioned in the above note, “1980s” was mentioned as the time when the acronym “Bo-Sa-Bi” was coined.  However, later I realized that the actual time was probably around 1990 or 1991, when the name reported first appeared in a publication brought out by “PCP”.  I will add exact reference to the publication under consideration once I find out and can verify the details.  

[3]Strictly speaking, “Boi-Sa-Bi” festivities are not directly related to vernal equinox, but to another “Sankranti” or astrological/astronomical transition related to the Zodiac system.  In Bangla, this is known as Chaitra Sankranti, which is also seems to be known as Maha Vishuva Sankranti.    

~ Prashanta Tripura ~

This post consists of excerpts of an article of mine first published in 1992. A scanned copy of the full original article may be downloaded by following the link provided below.*

Introduction

In 1869, Captain T. H. Lewin, the first Deputy Commissioner of the Chittagong Hill Tracts and also one of the first ethnographers of the area, wrote: [1]

Among a simple people like our hill men there is no…desire [for excessive wealth]; their nomadic life precludes any great accumulation of wealth, and they enjoy perfect social equality.

Lewin may have overstated the simple, egalitarian nature of pre-colonial social life in the Hill Tracts, but he was certainly right in speaking of ‘our hill men’.   As an idealized type of humans, the ‘hill men’ were an invention; they existed not so much in any real time and place as in the imagination of the British. Of course, the ‘hill men’ of the British corresponds to the people of the Hill Tracts who identify themselves, and are identified by others, as ‘Pahari’ (i.e. hill people) or ‘tribal’.  Their existence is real enough.  But this does not mean that these Paharis always constituted a single category of people in the past.  My argument in this paper is that Pahari ethnicity was constructed during the British colonial period.

In British India, the term ‘hill men’ referred to all the ‘tribal’ peoples living in the hill tracts bordering Assam and Bengal. …

British views of the ‘hill men’ were also influenced by nineteenth century evolutionist thinking…. Accordingly, compared to the people of the plains—the ‘Hindus’, the ‘Bengalis’ etc.—the ‘hill men’ were seen to be at a lower stage of cultural evolution.  As such, the ‘hill men’ marked the boundary of the Indian civilization, of the Hindu caste system, of the pre-British empire of the Mughals, and so on.  Again, no truly historical perspective was adopted towards the ‘hill men’, who simply served as a prop for the British in their ethnocentric attitudes towards the colonized majority of the plains.  When the Indians (or the Hindus or the Muslims or the Bengalis) came to articulate their nationalist aspirations, they largely accepted British categories of ethnic differentiation.  That the Paharis or the ‘tribal’ people of the Hill Tracts cannot identify with the Bengalis today, or vice versa, is usually attributed to British ‘divide and rule’ policies.  In order to divide, however, what the British had to do was, first of all, to classify.  The real legacy of colonialism is that colonialist classificatory schemes continue to be meaningful to date, and perhaps more so than before.  At least, that is the case with the Pahari/Bengali (or tribal/non-tribal) dichotomy that we confront in the Hill Tracts today.

In what follows, I discuss more fully some of the basic issues that relate to the colonial foundation of Pahari ethnicity.  First, ‘Pahari’ and ‘tribal’ are synonymous terms; in this context, the implications that the notion of tribe has had for the societies so designated need to be examined.  Secondly, as already indicated, categories such as ‘hill men’ or ‘hill tribe’ were meaningful not only in terms of a general Western discourse on the nature of human society, but also in terms of how Indian society and history in particular were viewed in this discourse; this latter aspect of the discourse will be dealt with more fully in this paper.  Thirdly, I will discuss how the British ignored certain theoretical as well as empirical inconsistencies in their construction of the category ‘hill men’/‘hill tribe’.   Finally, I will show how British discourse has altered the boundaries of ethnic differentiation for the ‘hill men’ of the Hill Tracts, and for the Bengalis as well.

Evolutionism, Colonialism, and the Notion of Tribe

In common usage the word ‘tribe’ has various meanings and connotations. …  Nonetheless, the concept of tribal society, whether clearly formulated or not, is applied by almost every anthropologist and by scholars in other disciplines. A tribal society is generally understood to be one in which social, political and economic relations are organized around kinship. By definition, tribal societies do not live under state organization, and this is the primary feature that distinguishes them from ‘peasants’.  This conceptualization forms part of the accepted view of human social evolution. It is the view that before the emergence of the earliest states—or civilizations as they are more popularly called—in a few isolated areas of the world, human beings everywhere were organized into small bands of hunter- gatherers or into larger tribal units of shifting cultivators and pastoralists. With the emergence and expansion of state-organized societies, tribal people everywhere began to be incorporated into, or displaced/exterminated by this new type of society, unless, of course, they themselves were to make a transition to the advanced evolutionary stage.

…

[While] Marx and his followers … saw European colonial expansion as bringing about a global system of exploitation, [in their view] in order to bring this system down, all societies needed to go through capitalism.  ‘Tribal’ societies thus came to be seen as pre-capitalist societies, or at best, as incipient forms of feudalism.  Their subjugation by states, whether capitalist or not, was mandated by history.

Thus the incorporation of ‘tribal’ peoples in colonial empires took place without any serious practical or ideological difficulties, except for the weak resistance the ‘tribal’ peoples themselves offered.  It was inevitable that the various ‘hill tribes’ living near Assam and Bengal would in time become subjects of British India, and thus citizens of the post-colonial states of Pakistan (Bangladesh) and India.

The Tribal/Non-Tribal Dichotomy in British Discourse

In British India, the category ‘hill tribe’ did not simply entail applying the notion of tribal society to people living in the hills.  It was part of a larger constellation of colonialist ideas, images and categories that formed the British ‘Orientalist’ discourse on Indian society and history.  In this discourse the category ‘hill tribe’ (or more generally ‘tribal’) was contrasted with various ‘non-tribal’ categories, e.g. ‘caste’, ‘Hindu’, ‘Indian’, ‘Bengali’ and so on.

…

Anomalies:  Peasants and Slaves

Although the hill men were generally seen to be simple, honest and egalitarian people—thus distinct from the people of the plains whose moral worth was more dubious—not all of them fit this ideal picture.  [Many facts pointing towards all kinds of anomalises] were known to Lewin, but he tried to stick to a homogeneous ‘Children of Nature’ representation of the ‘hill men.’ In a highly instructive manner, after a year of the publication of The Hill Tracts of Chittagong and the Dwellers Therein (published in 1869 from Calcutta), Lewin changed the title of his book to Wild Races of South-Eastern India (published in 1870 from London).  The idea of the wild races was no doubt a colonial fantasy.  Such a category of people ought to have existed, so they might as well be invented.  Thus the Chakmas, the Marmas, the Tripuras and others turned into ‘wild races’, though they were hardly worthy of such a romantic designation.

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The Shift of Ethnic Boundaries

However problematic the categories ‘tribal’ or ‘hill men’ may be from a historical or anthropological perspective, it is obvious that they are no longer simply a matter of British imagination.  In the Hill Tracts today, two terms, Pahari (‘hill people’) and ‘tribal,’ are used to designate the collective ethnic identity of Chakmas, Marmas, Tripuras etc. vis-à-vis the Bengalis.  That ‘Pahari’ denotes an ethnic category is obvious enough.  But it is not difficult to see that ‘tribal’ also functions more as an ethnic/racial label than as an anthropological concept. 

…

The significant thing about the tribal/non-tribal or Pahari/Bengali differentiation is that it had not existed, at least not in the same form, before the British introduced the categories ‘hill men’ or ‘tribal’. … When Lewin presented ‘his’ hill men as a single category of people, he was well aware that “none of them appear to have any general term for all the hill dwellers.” The British categories ‘hill men’ and ‘tribal’ more than fulfilled this ‘inadequacy.’ But one wonders whether the tribal/non-tribal (i.e. Pahari/Bengali) boundary would have carried any meaning today had the British not altered the ways in which different groups articulated their identities in relation to one another.

Conclusion

In 1906, Hutchinson, one of Lewin’s successors as an administrator of the Hill Tracts, expressed his concern about the future of the hill men in the following terms:[2]

The dark and silent forests, at present the home of the elephant and tiger, will be succeeded by fields of smiling corn.  But with this change the Hillman, with his simple ways and curious customs, will also disappear, and the charm and innocence of his present life will be a dream of the past.  That this fate will finally overtake the Hill Tracts I have not the slightest doubt, for the changes and progress of the last few years are in themselves an indication of what is to come.  It seems well, therefore, to collect while we may all available data as to the manners and customs of these interesting people ere, with the resistless march of evolution, they merge forth and become identified with the people of the plains.

Despite the simplistic colonialist notions, Hutchinson did correctly forecast many of the changes that would take place in the Hill Tracts since he ruled it.  But he was completely mistaken in thinking that the hill men would “merge forth and become identified with the people of the plains.”  If anything, the Paharis have diverged greatly from the Bengalis since the British, having drawn the Pahari/Bengali line of division, left the scene.  Of course, objectively speaking, cultural interaction between the Paharis and the Bengalis must have increased manifold, but the politically unequal nature of this interaction has only reinforced the gulf of social and psychological distance that separates the two categories of people.

The problem facing us is primarily a political one.  But it seems to me that it is no less important a task for the Paharis and Bengalis to seriously examine many colonialist categories and notions by which they think about their identities and about the differences between them.  That the categories ‘Pahari’ (hill men) and ‘tribal’ are products of British colonialist discourse may by now seem clear enough, but a corollary of this is that the categories ‘Bengali’ or ‘Bangladeshi’ may also be bound by the same historical forces.  In order for us to free ourselves from such restrictive power of history, we must examine even our ‘scientific’ categories of classification.

…

All these issues [as raised above] are important because they influence how we imagine who we are, who we were, and who we want to be.  If we want to imagine the ‘imagined community’ of the nation-state of Bangladesh in such a way that the Paharis feel at home, and that the Pahari/Bengali differences do not translate into bloody conflicts, then we must begin to decolonize our received notions of who we are, our sociologies, and our histories.  This is a task both the Paharis and the Bengalis need to take up in earnest. 

~~~

A scanned copy of the full original article can be downloaded as a PDF file from the link below.

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Notes and References

*The article was originally published in The Journal of Social Studies (Journal of the Centre for Social Studies, Dhaka), No. 58, 1992.  It was later reprinted in Between Ashes and Hope: Chittagong Hill Tracts in the Blind Spot of Bangladeshi Nationalism, ed. Naeem Moyaiemen, Dhaka: Drishtipat Writers’ Collective, 2010. A Bangla version of the same article is also available at the following link: পাহাড়ি পরিচয়ের ঔপনিবেশিক ভিত্তি।

[1] Lewin, Thomas H., The Hill Tracts of Chittagong and the Dwellers Therein.  Calcutta:  Bengal Printing Co. Ltd., 1869

[2] Hutchinson, R. H. S.  An Account of the Chittagong Hill Tracts.  Calcutta:  The Bengal Secretariat Book Depot, 1906

~ Prashanta Tripura ~

What follows is a compilation of excepts from some of my writings on the question of what self-identification as ‘indigenous people(s)’ by the so called ‘tribal’ ethnic minorities of Bangladesh has meant for the proponents of this identity, vis-à-vis various attempts – by those in power as well as many ordinary citizens – to question or reject such identification.

I have uploaded this post against the backdrop of a recent government letter (dated 19 July 2022) issued by an official of the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting to the heads of various TV channels, urging all concerned to refrain from using the term ‘adibashi’ – Bangla for ‘indigenous people(s) – to refer to the so-called ‘tribes, minor races and ethnic sects’ of the country in talk shows organized on the occasion of the International Day of the World’s Indigenous Peoples. Such directives are hardly new in Bangladesh but were issued on several occasions in the past as well. For example, it was a similar directive – issued by the same ministry in 2014 – that prompted me to write an open ‘letter to Bangladesh’ that is one of the pieces that this compilation consists of.

The excerpts of my selected writings are presented below in reverse chronological order of their original publications or presentations. For each piece, I start with a piece of brief contextual information about it. Readers interested to read the full articles may do so by following the hyperlinks provided. I urge the discerning readers to reflect on not only what is explicitly addressed, but also on matters that are only dealt with tangentially or meant to be read in between the lines. 

Identity Grabbing, 7 September 2015, Himal Southasian  

‘Land grabbing’ is something that is often talked about in the context of the indigenous people, who are often the ‘victims’ of the process that the term refers to.  But in Bangladesh, those in power have resorted to an even more subtle form of appropriation in relation to the self-identifying indigenous peoples of the country.  They started saying that the ‘true’ indigenous people of Bangladesh are the Bengalis, and not the ‘tribal’ ethnic groups, who are nomads or recent ‘immigrants’ to the country!

For some years now, a bitter dispute has raged in Bangladesh over the question of whether the indigenous peoples of Bangladesh are entitled to that identification.

The indigenous people of Bangladesh constitute more than 45 ethnic groups according to the Bangladesh Indigenous Peoples Forum, although the Bangladesh government lists 27, while other independent reports estimate as many as 75. Averaging below two percent of the national population, they have been more commonly categorised as ‘tribal’ and ‘aboriginal’ in various official documents since British colonial times. In Bangla, the term ‘adibashi’, which used to be understood as ‘primitive’ and as being equivalent to ‘aboriginal’, was used quite freely by educated Bengalis to refer to various non-Bengali ethnic minorities.

The UN’s observation of 1993 as the International Year of the World’s Indigenous People marked the beginning of an era when the term ‘adibashi’ began to take on added significance, and became the focus of much discussion, debate and action within the country. From that year onwards, activists and organisations representing ethnic minorities started demanding that they be recognised as ‘indigenous peoples’ as per international law and that new provisions be included in the constitution. Despite all their efforts, however, the demands have not been met.

More than disappointment, the indigenous people feel a sense of betrayal, as official pronouncements dismissing their demands has become more frequent under the very political leadership that had previously promised otherwise.

…

What had happened? The answer to this question sheds light on the nature of the Bangladeshi nation state as seen from the margins. As we will see, the non-recognition of the indigenous peoples in Bangladesh was more than just a setback for ethnic minorities looking for some special safeguards under international law. More generally, from the perspective of all those who conceive of Bangladesh in more pluralistic terms – as consisting of multiple ethnicities, languages, cultures and so on – it was yet another signal that the inherent diversity of the country remained largely denied at a fundamental level.

Letter to Bangladesh from a Non-Existent Bangladesh, August 27, 2014, The Daily Star

This ‘open letter’ was written following a government press handout – issued around 7 August 2014 – urging academics, newspaper editors and others to refrain from using the word ‘Adibashi’ in referring to the so-called ‘tribes’ or ‘minor races’ of the country.

Dear Bangladesh,

I don’t know if you remember me, but I am writing to you in the hope that you do.  Having witnessed and celebrated your birth when I was little, and having grown up with you, I have always cared deeply about you, as I will always do.  But I am not sure that you feel the same way about me.   In fact, I am not even sure that you know or acknowledge that I exist.  I am saying this as a member of one of the many ‘small’ ethnic groups that have been consigned to the margins and darkest corners of your geography and history.  People who speak and write on your behalf have rarely made any serious effort to change this order of things.  On the contrary, many of them have been busy pushing these marginalized groups out of tracts that have nourished them for generations.  As if that were not enough, the same powers have lately sought to erase them from various government documents and public discourse as well. The latest instance of such efforts came recently when, two days before the International Day of the World’s Indigenous Peoples, a government press handout urged academics, newspaper editors and others to refrain from using the word ‘Adibashi’ (Bangla for ‘Indigenous People’).  The handout made use of an extraordinary logic:  The constitution does not talk about the Adibashis, so they don’t exist! I think we have had enough of such nonsense.  So I am compelled to write this letter to you and I sincerely hope that you will hear me out.

The Quest for Indigenous Identity in Bangladesh, 1993-2013, 17 December 2013, Alal O Dulal

Abridged version of a paper titled ‘The Quest for Indigenous Identity in Bangladesh:  Reflections on Achievements and Setbacks since 1993 ‘, which was presented at the 2013 International Seminar-Workshop on Indigenous Studies, 26-28 June 2013, Legend Villas, Mandaluyong City, Philippines, jointly organized by the University of the Philippines Bagui City and the Tebtebba Foundation.

There can be endless debates as to whether matters like Article 23A of the current constitution, or the status of the implementation of the CHT Accord, represent half-empty or half-full glasses.  However, faced with developments that seem to indicate lack of progress or setbacks, it is important to view matters against larger developments.  For example, we need to keep in mind the inordinate influence wielded by certain opaque institutions or interest groups, as seen behind the coming into power of the previous military-backed caretaker government, which had received considerable support from members of civil society as well as the international community.  We have to also keep in mind that the government as a whole rarely operates like a monolith.  For example, despite reported attempts by some quarters within the state machinery to ‘ban’ the term ‘indigenous people’, many important government planning documents still retain the same. Moreover, a number of ministers and MPs never stopped using this word, and have always expressed their support for the IP cause.

In search of adibashi (indigenous) consciousness, 11 August 2012, bdnews24.com

My own translation of an article that I originally wrote in Bangla and was published in a magazine in 2004. 

We may say, and usually do, that indigenous peoples have a heritage of having lived in harmony with nature for ages, in a manner in which it is rare for land to be treated as personal property. Sharing and reciprocity are powerful values among indigenous communities, thus it is unimaginable that in such a community some would be dying of hunger while others indulge in excesses of feasting and drinking. In such communities, there are also no permanent or clear differences among individuals on the basis of power, prestige or wealth. No individual or group imposes its decisions on others by brute force. The relations between men and women are based on mutual respect and interdependence. To sum up, indigenous peoples have those very qualities that the deprived and dispossessed classes of people throughout the world have fought to achieve throughout ages, for which many revolutions have taken place.

Now, in reality, to what extent does one come across the ideal version of indigenous life depicted above? 

Since most of the communities designated as ‘indigenous’ have undergone, and are undergoing, various changes in the course of time, what is their current standing in relation to the ideals described above? What will be the social-cultural-economic-political basis of maintaining indigenous identity? What will be place of equality, sharing and harmony with nature in all this?

International Year of the World’s Indigenous People and the Indigenous People of Bangladesh

This is my own translation of a Bangla article which was presented as the keynote paper at a seminar organized in December 1993 in Dhaka on the occasion of the UN’s observance of 1993 as the “International Year of the World’s Indigenous People”.   

Literally, the term ‘indigenous’ means ‘of local origin’.  If we go far back in the past in search of origins, we will find that in many parts of the world, there are people whose ancestors came there from different directions at different points in time.  Given this, identifying a group of people as ‘indigenous’ in relation to a given territory is to acknowledge that they are the descendants of the oldest known inhabitants of that place.  Clearly, such identification is a relative matter.  It depends on how we set the boundaries of time and space.  If we go back far into the prehistoric past, the word ‘indigenous’ loses its meaning.  In that case we can at best say that all humans are indigenous to this planet, i.e., that we are not the descendants of anyone from the heavens or alien planets, rather we all have a common origin.

The history of how European colonial expansion led to the decimation, displacement, or cultural destruction of the original inhabitants of continents such as the Americas and Australia, and of other parts of the world, are relatively well known to all.  The term ‘indigenous’ is most applicable to those descendants of the original inhabitants of these lands who have survived the colonial impact and have retained their distinct cultural identities. In the past, Europeans referred to these conquered peoples by different names such as savage, primitive, tribal, Red Indian, Aboriginal etc.  Usage of the term ‘indigenous’ began as a way of avoiding the derogatory and racist connotations of such words.  But that does not mean that the term ‘indigenous’ is only applicable in places like the Americas and Australia. On the contrary, it is equally applicable in many countries of Africa and Asia as well.

While there was European colonial rule in different countries of Asia and Africa, all local people were seen as ‘natives’, and inferior in the scale of civilization, in the eyes of the Europeans.  But in these countries, the new ruling classes and members of majority dominant ethnic groups have started colonial-style rule, exploitation, and oppression over different marginalized groups.  The latter groups of people who are victims of internal colonialism in many parts of Africa and Asia – particularly those who can be identified separately on the basis of distinctive cultures or socioeconomic characteristics, and who are interested in holding onto these characteristics – may also be termed indigenous.  It is such an expanded meaning of the term that is intended in the usage adopted by the United Nations.  In this context, the question as to when the ancestors of different groups of people settled in a given country is secondary.  Instead, basically all the people who are victims of so-called progress or ‘spread of civilization’ and have been designated by various colonial labels like ‘tribal’, ‘primitive’ etc., can all legitimately call themselves indigenous.

~ Prashanta Tripura ~

What follows is a slightly edited version of the handout that I had prepared for a lecture that I delivered on 2 August 2017 at the Defence Services Command and Staff College at Mirpur, Dhaka.[1] During the actual talk, I used a PowerPoint presentation covering roughly the same points included in the handout, but I did not dwell on all of them equally. Moreover, I brought in additional stories and angles not indicated in the handout. It may be mentioned that I was the last of three speakers of the seminar that the host institution seemed to have organized as part of activities under what from their point of view was an umbrella called ‘counterinsurgency operations’. The two other speakers were Major General Md. Jahangir Kabir Talukder, the [then] GOC of Chittagong (24 Infantry Division) and Barrister Rokon Uddin Mahmud, a prominent legal expert of Bangladesh. Both also spoke on different aspects of the Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT) ‘Peace’ Accord from their respective professional perspectives. When my turn came, I began my presentation by pointing out that I was speaking as someone who wore many hats. However, it was the hat of a student of anthropology that I tried to keep on most of the time as I spoke. I also tried to make references to some of the points made by my fellow speakers, offering gentle critiques in a few cases in which I thought it made sense to do so. I like to think that I tried to turn the tables subtly to encourage my audience (some 200 officers of the armed forces of Bangladesh and 69 of their course mates from other countries) to dwell on bigger issues than what their professional roles might demand.[2]

Lecture Outline (Handout)

Challenges of Implementation of the Chittagong Hill Tracts Peace Process

Context

Overview of the Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT) as a special region of Bangladesh: Its distinctive features in terms of geography, ethnic diversity, livelihood patterns and governance structures

‘CHT Peace Process’ implies more than just the ‘Peace Accord’: The accord of 1997 is just one step of a process, which can be viewed in different ways, e.g., in terms of timeframes considered, levels of analysis, and the points of views of different historical actors involved.

Multiple perspectives: There is need for us to look at the given problem at various levels and from multiple perspectives. This speaker combines the perspectives of someone who wears different hats: an anthropologist who has researched on the CHT; a development professional who has worked in the region for many years; someone who happens to be a ‘son of the hills’ (cf. Tripura 1992, 1998, 2012a, 2012b, 2013, 2014, 2016)

Unpacking the quest for ‘peace’ in the CHT

Different meanings of the term ‘peace’: How one understands ‘peace’ depends on who is defining it and in what context, e.g., peace from the point of view of the colonial state vs. that of ethnic groups (‘tribes’) that sought to live without and outside of the state.

Historical background: The creation of the CHT and the category ‘Hill People’/’(Hill) Tribes’ (Tripura 1992); ‘pacification’ of the so-called Kukis by military force as well as a bit of colonial ‘magic’ (প্রশান্ত ত্রিপুরা ২০১৬); designation of the CHT as an ‘Excluded Area’.

The creation of the ‘Shanti Bahini’ or ‘Peace Force’: The armed wing of the PCJSS, one of the signatory parties of the CHT ‘Peace’ Accord of 1997, used to be popularly known as ‘Shanti Bahini’, which literally means, ‘Peace Force’; an interpretation of this naming.

Peace process as managing conflicts: ‘Peace’ is a relative concept, and a relational term that is meaningless without an antonym like ‘conflict’; to social scientists, conflicts are normal in social life – there can be no society, no country, no world of absolute peace; seen in this way, ‘peace process’ is another term for ‘managing conflicts’; to do this well, one has to identify the root causes of conflicts, and address them systematically.

The root causes of conflicts in the CHT: Historically, people in the CHT have had to deal with mounting threats to their livelihoods (declining access to land), top-down ‘development’ interventions (e.g., Kaptai dam) and cultural marginalization; the deeper factors behind this situation include ethnocentrism of the ruling elites (e.g. the view that ‘hill tribes are primitive’), poor governance, and denial of well-recognized rights.

Challenges specific to the implementation of the CHT Accord of 1997

Champions and opponents of the peace process: The CHT Accord of 1997 was a significant achievement for all parties directly involved; however, there were different quarters that opposed it from the outset, though not necessarily for the same reasons; to some, it was too little too late; to others, it involved too many concessions.

Early recognition of the challenges involved: That timely and full implementation of the accord would be challenging was always known; as early as in June 1998, a report in the Daily Star on an International Conference on Peace and Chittagong Hill Tracts’ (jointly organized by GOB and UNDP, June 21-22, 1998) had the expression ‘Challenges of Implementation‘ in its title (Haque 1998).

Disagreement over what constitutes ‘implementation’: An example would be the PM’s February 10, 2016 response in the parliament to a question by an MP (reproduced in Tripura, NBK 2016) vs. the PCJSS’s open letter to the PM on 16 February, 2016 as a rejoinder to the PM’s response (PCJSS 2016); an international institute, on the other hand, determined 49% implementation after 10 years of the accord (Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies, n.d.; cf. Roy, Chakma, Chowdhury and Raidang 2010).

Some of the more difficult areas of implementation: Resolution of land disputes (not a single case solved so far since the accord); identification and rehabilitation of ‘internally displaced people’; demilitarization; local government elections.

Issues of mutual trust and confidence, shared understanding, and democratic processes: A typical [misleading] question heard is, “If a Pahari from CHT can own land in Dhaka, why can’t someone from the plains not own land in the CHT?”; but there are more fundamental questions to be asked [that are overlooked], e.g. is there political will at different levels to solve some of the most difficult problems (land disputes, HDC elections), and who benefit from the status quo and who are the losers?

The importance of seeing the bigger pictures: CHT as a window to the situation of Bangladesh as a whole, and in fact of the entire planet; the worst abuses of power in the CHT took place at a time when there was no democracy [i.e. formally] in the country as a whole; the plight of the indigenous peoples of the CHT, or in other parts of the world, can give us a clue to the direction of humanity and the planet as a whole (cf. Tripura 2012b).

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Note
[1]An earlier version of this blog post was shared as a Facebook note on 3 August 2017. 

[2]A little before posting the Facebook note referenced in my note above, I also shared – on the same platform on the same day – a photo of mine that had been presented to me at the end of the previous day’s seminar at the DSCSC.  In that post, I commented, “I don’t know if I was able to win any hearts and minds among my audience… but having been invited to speak on a preset topic, I decided to handle my talk in a way that would encourage participants to reflect on bigger issues than what their professional roles might demand.”  Then, after sharing information about other speakers and my different ‘hats’ as indicated at the beginning of this post, I added, “Judging by the feedback that I received directly and indirectly, I think I was able to put across the points that I had planned to make quite clearly without ruffling any feathers.”  

References