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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 19 April 2022
In the late 1950s, work began on the Kaptai hydroelectric dam, a massive project in the verdant Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT), an area bordering northeast India, east Pakistan (today Bangladesh), and Burma (now Myanmar), largely populated by indigenous hill communities. At the time, the CHT was situated in newly created East Pakistan, and Kaptai had become a focal site for the development of hydroelectric power. In the process, Pakistan relied upon international networks, including global aid organizations and American multinational construction firms, to fulfil its development dreams; in return the United States found a useful ally to contain Soviet influence and the growth of communism in Asia. In the high stakes exchange of economic aid for political alliance-making, East Pakistani administrators, US State Department officials, and American corporations became inherently entwined in a shared vision of development, to the detriment of local ecologies and the indigenous peoples who lived within them. This article will explore how both the public and private sectors used the language of primitivity, wildness, and atavism to marginalize minority ‘tribal’ populations in the devastating name of development and modernity.
1 T. H. Lewin, The Hill Tracts of Chittagong and the Dwellers Therein with Comparative Vocabularies of the Hill Dialects (Calcutta: Bengal Printing Company, Limited, 1869), pp. 3–4; also reprinted in T. H. Lewin, Wild Races of South-Eastern India (London: W. H. Allen and Co., 1870), p. 13.
2 Barua, Bijoy P., ‘Development Intervention and Ethnic Communities in Bangladesh and Thailand: A Critique’, Journal of Alternative Perspectives in the Social Sciences 2, 1 (2010), pp. 372–400Google Scholar, p. 382; Chowdhury, Arnab Roy, ‘Deluge amidst Conflict: Hydropower Development and Displacement in the North-east Region of India’, Progress in Development Studies 13, 3 (2013) pp. 195–208, pp. 201–202CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Ishtiaq Jamil and Pranab Kumar Panday, ‘The Elusive Peace Accord in the Chittagong Hill Tracts of Bangladesh and the Plight of the Indigenous People’, Commonwealth and Comparative Politics 46, 4 (2008), pp. 464–489, p. 468; Yasmin, Lailufar, ‘The Tyranny of the Majority in Bangladesh: The Case of the Chittagong Hill Tracts’, Nationalism and Ethnic Politics 20, 1 (2014), pp. 116–132, p. 122CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Amena Mohsin, The Politics of Nationalism: The Case of the Chittagong Hill Tracts, Bangladesh (Dhaka: The University Press Limited, 1997), p. 102.
3 Sunil Amrith, Unruly Waters: How Mountain Rivers and Monsoons Have Shaped South Asia's History (London: Penguin, 2018), pp. 177–179.
4 Postwar Soviet and American involvement in global development megaprojects, like large dams, in decolonized nations was associated with broader ideas of modernization and Cold War geopolitical strategy. Engineers and development planners saw dams as ways to revolutionize society through generating new forms of electricity and irrigation systems, and the United States used ‘water resource development’ as a way to broker political alliances with newly independent post-colonial states in Asia, Africa, and the Middle East. Christopher Sneddon, Concrete Revolution: Large Dams, Cold War Geopolitics, and the US Bureau of Reclamation (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2015), p. 3.
5 Amena Mohsin, The Chittagong Hill Tracts, Bangladesh: On the Difficult Road to Peace (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers 2003), p. 24.
6 Philip Gain, ‘Life and Nature at Risk’, in his The Chittagong Hill Tracts: Life and Nature at Risk (Dhaka: Society for Environment and Human Development, 2000), pp. 1–41, p. 37.
7 Barua, ‘Development Intervention’, p. 381; Raja Tridiv Roy, The Departed Melody (Islamabad: PPA Publications, 2003), p. 176.
8 As David C. Engerman has argued, the 1950s saw the American and Soviet governments engaged in various development projects in India to address issues of food scarcity, agricultural machinery, investment capital, or military hardware, which resulted in what he has termed an economic Cold War. David C. Engerman, The Price of Aid: Economic Cold War in India (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2018). I would argue this idea applies more broadly to South Asian nations, including East Pakistan.
9 Here I refer to neocolonialism as the continued exploitation of former European colonies by more powerful developed nations. In the American context, the United States sold military hardware, intervened in domestic trade and commercial activities, and advocated for democratic systems of government in exchange for the establishment of American military bases and the market dominance of American corporations in Third World countries. As William H. Blanchard argues, acts of American neocolonialism were not merely limited to formal American government intervention but also pressure by American corporations, who often behaved like states in miniature. William H. Blanchard, Neocolonialism American Style, 1960–2000 (London: Greenwood Press, 1996), pp. 7–8.
10 Jonathan Saha, ‘Is it in India? Colonial Burma as a “problem” in South Asian history’, South Asian History and Culture 7, 1 (January 2016), pp. 23–29, p. 24; Erik de Maaker and Vibha Joshi, ‘Introduction: The Northeast and Beyond: Region and Culture’, South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies 30, 3 (December 2007), pp. 381–390, p. 382; Joy L. K. Pachuau and Willem van Schendel, The Camera as Witness: A Social History of Mizoram, Northeast India (Delhi: Cambridge University Press, 2015), p. 3; Joy L. K. Pachuau and Willem van Schendel, ‘Borderland Histories, Northeastern India: An Introduction’, Studies in History 32, 1 (February 2016), pp. 1–4, p. 1. Historic states, which fell outside contemporary national borders, such as British Burma, were also largely excluded in scholarly or popular histories of South Asia. Saha, ‘Is it in India?’, p. 25.
11 Schendel, Willem van, ‘Geographies of Knowing, Geographies of Ignorance: Jumping Scale in Southeast Asia’, Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 20, 6 (2002), pp. 647–668CrossRefGoogle Scholar; James C. Scott, The Art of Not Being Governed: An Anarchist History of Upland Southeast Asia (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009); David N. Gellner, ‘Introduction’, in Borderland Lives in Northern South Asia, (ed.) David N. Gellner (Durham: Duke University Press, 2013), pp. 1–23.
12 Nicholas Farrelly, ‘Nodes of Control in a South(east) Asian Borderland’, Borderland Lives, (ed.) Gellner, pp. 194–213, p. 198.
13 Sunil Amrith, Crossing the Bay of Bengal: The Furies of Nature and the Fortune of Migrants (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2013); Gunnel Cederlof, Founding an Empire on India's North-Eastern Frontiers, 1790 – 1840: Climate, Commerce, Polity (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2014); Indrani Chatterjee, Forgotten Friends: Monks, Marriages and Memories of Northeast India (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2013); Rajib Handique, British Forest Policy in Assam (New Delhi: Concept Publishing Company, 2004); Sanghamitra Misra, Becoming a Borderland: The Politics of Space and Identity in Colonial Northeastern India (London: Routledge, 2011); Joy L. K. Pachuau, Being Mizo: Identity and Belonging in Northeast India (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2014); Arupjyoti Saikia, Forests and Ecological History of Assam, 1826–2000 (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2011); Yasmin Saikia, Fragmented Memories: Struggling to be Tai-Ahom in India (Durham: Duke University Press, 2004); Jayeeta Sharma, Empire's Garden: Assam and the Making of India (Durham: Duke University Press, 2011); and Willem van Schendel, The Bengal Borderland: Beyond State and Nation in South Asia (London: Anthem Books, 2005). There have also been a number of journal special issues dedicated to the region including: Erik de Maaker and Vibha Joshi (eds), ‘Special Issue: The Northeast and Beyond: Region and Culture’, South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies 30, 3 (2007); ‘Special Issue: Borderland Politics in Northern India’, Asian Ethnicity 14, 3 (2013) was reprinted in Yu-Wen Chen and Chih-yu Shih (eds), Borderland Politics in Northern India (London: Routledge, 2014); Joy L. K. Pachuau and Willem van Schendel (eds), ‘Special Issue: Borderland Histories, Northeastern India’, Studies in History 32, 1 (February 2016).
14 Lalruatkima, ‘Frontiers of Imagination: Reading over Thomas Lewin's Shoulders’, Studies in History 32, 1 (February 2016), pp. 21–38. See also his larger project: Lalruatkima, ‘“Wild Races”: Scripts and Textures of Imperial Imagination’, Claremont Graduate University, 2014; Tamina Chowdhury, ‘Raids, Annexation and Plough: Transformation through Territorialisation in Nineteenth-century Chittagong Hill Tracts’, The Indian Economic and Social History Review 53, 2 (2016), pp. 183–224; also refer to Tamina Chowdhury, Indigenous Identity in South Asia: Making Claims in the Colonial Chittagong Hill Tracts (London: Routledge, 2016); Angma Dey Jhala, An Endangered History: Indigeneity, Religion and Politics on the Borders of India, Burma and Bangladesh (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2019).
15 Mohsin, The Politics of Nationalism; Willem van Schendel, Wolfgang Mey and Aditya Kumar Dewan, (eds), The Chittagong Hill Tracts: Living in a Borderland (Dhaka: The University Press Limited, 2001); Ahmed, Kawser, ‘Defining “Indigenous” in Bangladesh: International Law in Domestic Context’, International Journal on Minority and Group Rights 17 (2010), pp. 47–73CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Barua, ‘Development Intervention’; Chowdhury, Khairul, ‘Politics of Identities and Resources in Chittagong Hill Tracts, Bangladesh: Ethnonationalism and/or Indigenous Identity’, Asian Journal of Social Science 36 (2008), pp. 57–78CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Arun Kumar Nayak, ‘Understanding Environmental Security and Its Causal Factors with Reference to Chittagong Hill Tracts of Bangladesh’, The IUP Journal of International Relations VIII, 4 (October 2014), pp. 40–53; Uddin, Ala ‘Dynamics of Strategies for Survival of the Indigenous People in Southeastern Bangladesh’, Ethnopolitics 15, 3 (2016), pp. 319–338CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Nasir Uddin, ‘Decolonising Ethnography in the Field: An Anthropological Account’, International Journal of Social Research Methodology 14, 6 (November 2011), pp. 455–467; Wilkinson, Matthew, ‘Negotiating with the Other: Centre-Periphery Perceptions, Peacemaking Policies and Pervasive Conflict in the Chittagong Hill Tracts, Bangladesh’, International Review of Social Research 5, 3 (2015), pp. 179–190CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
16 For more on this topic refer to Debjani Bhattacharyya, Empire and Ecology in the Bengal Delta: The Making of Calcutta (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018); Arupjyoti Saikia, The Unquiet River: A Biography of the Brahmaputra (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2019); Sudipta Sen, Ganges: The Many Pasts of an Indian River (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2019); Sujit Sivasundaram, Waves Across the South: A New History of Revolution and Empire (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2020).
17 Amrith, Unruly Waters.
18 As Sneddon argues, American involvement in mid-twentieth century global dam building was inherently a hybrid project, straddling constructs of nature, technology, and society, with devastating results. Some 30–60 million people have been directly displaced, while the livelihoods of an additional 500 million people downstream were destroyed. Sneddon, Concrete Revolution, pp. 3–5.
19 Rajkumari Chandra Kalindi Roy, Land Rights of the Indigenous Peoples of the Chittagong Hill Tracts, Bangladesh (Copenhagen: IWGIA Document No. 99, 2000), p. 13; Christian Erni (ed.), The Concept of Indigenous Peoples in Asia: A Resource Book (Copenhagen/Chiang Mai: IWGIA Document No. 123, 2008), p. 337; Chowdhury, Khairul, ‘Politics of Identities and Resources in Chittagong Hill Tracts, Bangladesh: Ethnonationalism and/or Indigenous Identity’, Asian Journal of Social Science 36 (2008), pp. 57–78, pp. 61–62CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
20 Chowdhury, ‘Politics of Identities’, p. 62.
21 Erik de Maaker and Vibha Joshi, ‘Introduction: The Northeast and Beyond: Region and Culture’, South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies 30, 3 (December 2007), pp. 381–390, p. 382.
22 Chatterjee, Forgotten Friends, pp. 22–23.
23 Cederlof, Founding an Empire, p. 2.
24 Although there was much less influence on the more remote and inaccessible parts of the hill border. Mohsin, The Politics of Nationalism, p. 26.
25 Roy, Departed Melody, p. 28.
26 Misra, Becoming a Borderland, p. 25.
27 Mohsin, The Politics of Nationalism, p. 26.
28 Cederlof, Founding an Empire, p. 3.
29 Mohsin, The Politics of Nationalism, pp. 142–143. While the chief received the Islamic title of ‘khan’, the Chakmas were Buddhist practitioners. Khan was an honorific adapted during the Mughal era.
30 Mohsin, The Politics of Nationalism, pp. 28, 143; Serajuddin, A. M., ‘The Origins of the Rajas of the Chittagong Hill Tracts and their Relations with the Moghals and East India Company in the Eighteenth Century’, Journal of the Pakistan Historical Society 19, 1 (1971), p. 56Google Scholar.
31 Roy, Departed Melody, p. 38.
32 Mohsin, The Politics of Nationalism, p. 144; van Schendel et al. (eds), The Chittagong Hill Tracts, p. 24.
33 Chowdhury, ‘Politics of Identities’, p. 63.
34 Mohsin, Politics of Nationalism, pp. 33–34.
35 van Schendel et al. (eds), The Chittagong Hill Tracts, p. 24.
36 Pachuau and van Schendel, ‘Borderland Histories’, p. 1.
37 Mohsin, The Politics of Nationalism, p. 34.
38 Chowdhury, ‘Raids, Annexation and Plough’, pp. 183–184.
39 Pachuau, Being Mizo, pp. 93–104.
40 Ibid.
41 Mohsin, The Politics of Nationalism, pp. 34–35.
42 David Vumlallian Zou and M. Satish Kumar, ‘Mapping a Colonial Borderland: Objectifying the Geo-Body of India’s Northeast’, Journal of Asian Studies 70, 1 (2011), pp. 141–170, pp. 160–161.
43 Amrith, Unruly Waters, p. 11. Refer also to Richard Grove, Green Imperialism: Colonial Expansion, Tropical Island Edens and the Origins of Environmentalism, 1600–1860 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995); Vinita Damodaran, Anna Winterbottom and Alan Lester (eds), The East India Company and the Natural World (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015); Richard H. Grove, Vinita Damodaran and Satpal Sangwan (eds), Nature and the Orient: The Environmental History of South and Southeast Asia (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1998).
44 Amrith, Unruly Waters, p. 11.
45 Francis Hamilton Buchanan, ‘An account of journey undertaken by Order of the Board of Trade through the Provinces of Chittagong and Tiperah’, in Francis Buchanan in Southeast Bengal (1798): His Journey to Chittagong, the Chittagong Hill Tracts, Noakhali and Comilla, (ed.) Willem van Schendel (Dhaka: The University Press Limited, 1992), pp. 114–115.
46 See W. W. Hunter, A Statistical Account of Bengal. Volume VI: Chittagong Hill Tracts, Chittagong, Noakhali, Tipperah, Hill Tipperah (London: Trübner and Co., 1876); Robert Henry Sneyd Hutchinson, An Account of the Chittagong Hill Tracts (Calcutta: Bengal Secretariat Book Depot, 1906); Jhala, An Endangered History, p. 124; Willem van Schendel, ‘The Dangers of Belonging: Tribes, Indigenous Peoples and Homelands in South Asia’, in The Politics of Belonging in India: Becoming Adivasi, (eds) Daniel J. Rycroft and Sangeeta Dasgupta (London: Routledge, 2011), pp. 19–43, p. 20.
47 Refer to Kyle Gardner's analysis of the ‘water-parting principle’ where watersheds were used to form borders in the colonial Himalaya. Gardner, Kyle, ‘Moving Watersheds, Borderless Maps, and Imperial Geography in India's Northwest Himalaya’, The Historical Journal 62, 1 (2019), pp. 149–170, pp. 150–151CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
48 The British would attempt to transition the hill tribes from swidden (jhum) cultivators to plough agriculturalists from the late eighteenth century onwards. After the 1900 Regulation, the British Raj tried to incentive tribal chiefs and their village headmen to adopt cultivated farming by giving them plough lands in exchange for their official duties. Despite these various incentives, the indigenous hill peoples remained largely uninterested in adopting plough agriculture. Hunter, A Statistical Account of Bengal 1876, pp. 79–80; R. H. Sneyd Hutchinson, Eastern Bengal and Assam District Gazetteers, Chittagong Hill Tracts (Allahabad: Pioneer Press, 1909), p. 66; Chowdhury, ‘Raids, Annexation and Plough’, pp. 183–184.
49 Uddin, ‘Decolonising Ethnography in the Field’, p. 462; Schendel, Willem van, ‘A Politics of Nudity: Photographs of the “Naked Mru” of Bangladesh’, Modern Asian Studies 36, 2 (2002), pp. 341–374, p. 346Google Scholar; Wilkinson, ‘Negotiating with the Other’, p. 180; Scott, The Art of Not Being Governed; Edward Said, Orientalism (New York: Vintage Books, 1978).
50 van Schendel, ‘Geographies of Knowing’, p. 20.
51 Lalruatkima, ‘Frontiers of Imagination’, p. 27.
52 Wilkinson, ‘Negotiating with the Other’, p. 180.
53 Hutchinson, An Account of the Chittagong Hill Tracts, p. 46.
54 From Amconsul Dacca to the Department of State, Washington; Ref: AmConGen Despatches 28 of August 15, 1957, and 143 of January 9, 1957; Karachi Despatch 873 of March 28, 1958; Subject: Karnafuli Multipurpose Project: Status Report, p. 3 in ‘Kernaphuli Multipurpose’, Project Files, 1952–1959; Entry P 421; Box 6; Record Group 469, U.S. National Archives, College Park, MD, USA.
55 Guyot-Réchard, Bérénice, ‘Tangled Lands: Burma and India's Unfinished Separation, 1937–1948’, The Journal of Asian Studies 80, 2 (2021), pp. 293–315, pp. 293–94CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
56 Jonathan Saha, ‘Is it in India?’, pp. 23–29.
57 Guyot-Réchard, ‘Tangled Lands’, p. 296.
58 Wolfgang Mey (ed.), J. P. Mills and the Chittagong Hill Tracts, 1926/27: Tour Diary, Reports, Photographs, annotated and commented edition, 2009, pp. 295–296: http://crossasia-repository.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/548/1/J.P._Mills_and_the_Chittagong_Hill_Tracts.pdf, [accessed 18 February 2022]; Jhala, An Endangered History, p. 196.
59 Guyot-Réchard, ‘Tangled Lands’, p. 300.
60 Chatterjee, Forgotten Friends, p. 353; Reid, Robert, ‘The Excluded Areas of Assam’, Geographical Journal 103, 1–2 (1944), pp. 18–29CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
61 There are slight discrepancies in population statistics during this time; some scholars believe it was 95 to 98 per cent non-Muslim. See the documentary ‘Life is Still Not Ours: A Story of the Chittagong Hill Tracts’, dir. Arnab Dewan, 2014, and Mohsin, The Chittagong Hill Tracts, Bangladesh, p. 17.
62 Saradindu Mukherji, Subjects, Citizens and Refugees: Tragedy in the Chittagong Hill Tracts (1947–1998) (New Delhi: Indian Centre for the Study of Forced Migration, 2000), p. 16.
63 Nicholas Mansergh, The Transfer of Power: 1942–47. Vol. XII: 8 July–15 August 1947 (London: Her Majesty's Stationery Office, London, 1981), pp. 674, 691, 732, 737; Mukherji, Subjects, Citizens, Refugees, p. 16; Mohsin, Politics of Nationalism, p. 36.
64 Sneddon, Concrete Revolution, p. 18.
65 Mazumder, Rajashree, ‘Illegal Border Crossers and Unruly Citizens: Burma-Pakistan-Indian borderlands from the nineteenth to the mid-twentieth centuries’, Modern Asian Studies 53, 4 (2019), pp. 1144–1182, p. 1149CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
66 Ibid., pp. 1163–1164.
67 Barua, ‘Development Intervention’, p. 374.
68 Amrith, Unruly Waters, p. 194.
69 Chowdhury, ‘Deluge amidst Conflict’, pp. 201–206; Amrith, Unruly Waters, p. 194.
70 Chowdhury, ‘Deluge amidst Conflict’, p. 196.
71 Nayak, ‘Understanding Environmental Security’, pp. 48–49; Nafis Ahmad, ‘Industrial Development in East Bengal (East Pakistan)’, Economic Geography 26, 3 (July 1950), pp. 183–195.
72 Roy, Departed Melody, p. 180.
73 van Schendel et al. (eds), The Chittagong Hill Tracts, p. 190.
74 Wayne Wilcox, ‘The Economic Consequences of Partition: India and Pakistan’, Journal of International Affairs 18, 2, (1964) ‘The Politics of Partition’, pp. 188–197, p. 195.
75 Amrith, Unruly Waters, p. 179.
76 Ibid., p. 193.
77 From Amconsul Dacca to the Department of State, Washington; Ref: AmConGen Despatches 28 of August 15, 1957, and 143 of January 9, 1957; p. 4 in Karachi Despatch 873 of March 28, 1958.
78 Ibid.
79 van Schendel et al. (eds), The Chittagong Hill Tracts, p. 195.
80 Wilcox, ‘The Economic Consequences of Partition’, p. 197.
81 Naheed Zia Khan, ‘Foreign Policy Motives of U.S. Aid to Pakistan: The Cold War Years’, South Asian Studies 12, 2 (1995), pp. 53–64, p. 54.
82 Robert J. McMahon, ‘United States Cold War Strategy in South Asia: Making a Military Commitment to Pakistan, 1947–1954’, The Journal of American History 75, 3 (December 1988), pp. 812–840, p. 812.
83 Murad Ali, The Politics of US Aid to Pakistan: Aid Allocation and Delivery from Truman to Trump (New York: Routledge, 2019), p. 31.
84 Khan, ‘Foreign Policy Motives of U.S. Aid to Pakistan’, p. 54.
85 O[ffice of] S[outh] A[sian] A[ffairs] memorandum, ‘Military Aid for South Asian Countries’, 1 Nov. 1949, [Department of State Records, US National Archives, College Park, MD], RG 59, A1 1447, Box 23, in Leake, Elisabeth, ‘The Great Game Anew: US Cold-War Policy and Pakistan's North-West Frontier, 1947–65’, The International History Review 35, 4, 2013, pp. 783–806, p. 785CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
86 Ali, The Politics of US Aid to Pakistan, p. 31; McMahon, ‘United States Cold War Strategy in South Asia’, p. 815.
87 McMahon, ‘United States Cold War Strategy in South Asia’, p. 818.
88 Paul M. McGarr, The Cold War in South Asia: Britain, the United States and the Indian Subcontinent, 1945–1965 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), p. 31; Benjamin Siegel, ‘“Fantastic Quantities of Food Grains”: Cold War Visions and Agrarian Fantasies in Independent India’, in Decolonization and the Cold War: Negotiating Independence, (eds) Leslie James and Elisabeth Leake (London: Bloomsbury, 2015), p. 23.
89 McMahon, ‘United States Cold War Strategy in South Asia’, p. 829.
90 Ibid., p. 813.
91 Ibid., p. 829. Indeed, the Americans and Soviets would competitively woo India as well with military technology in exchange for diplomatic and political alliances. Ultimately, however, it would be food and agricultural assistance that proved most persuasive during the 1950s, and in the end American aid far exceeded that given by the Soviets. See Siegel, ‘“Fantastic Quantities of Food Grains”’, pp. 22–23.
92 Ali, The Politics of US Aid to Pakistan, pp. 31–32; M. Z. Khan and J. K. Emmerson, ‘United States–Pakistan Mutual Defence Assistance Agreement’, Middle East Journal 8, 3 (1954), pp. 96–103.
93 Ali, The Politics of US Aid to Pakistan, pp. 31–32; Glassman, J., ‘On the Borders of Southeast Asia: Cold War Geography and the Construction of the Other’, Political Geography 24, 7, (2005), pp. 784–807CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
94 McGarr, The Cold War in South Asia, p. 21; McMahon, ‘United States Cold War Strategy in South Asia’, p. 812.
95 McMahon, ‘United States Cold War Strategy in South Asia’, p. 812.
96 Ali, The Politics of US Aid to Pakistan, pp. 30–31.
97 Ibid., p. 32.
98 Nirode Mohanty, America, Pakistan, and the India Factor (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), p. 40; Ali, The Politics of US Aid to Pakistan, p. 33.
99 Khan, ‘Foreign Policy Motives of U.S. Aid to Pakistan’, p. 59.
100 Ibid., pp. 56–57.
101 This was not uncommon. As Sara Lorenzini notes, the United States saw development broadly as a ‘cooperative task’ undertaken in collaboration with the larger, international community. Sara Lorenzini, Global Development: A Cold War History (Princeton: Princeton University Press 2019), p. 29.
102 Both the FOA and ICA were predecessors to the United States Agency of International Development (USAID), established in 1961 by President John F. Kennedy: https://www.archives.gov/research/guide-fed-records/groups/469.html#469.7, [accessed 18 February 2022].
103 Amrith, Unruly Waters, p. 199.
104 From Amconsul Dacca to the Department of State, Washington; Ref: AmConGen Despatches 28 of August 15, 1957, and 143 of January 9, 1957; p. 4 in Karachi Despatch 873 of March 28, 1958.
105 From Amconsul Dacca to the Department of State, Washington; Ref: AmConGen Despatches 28 of August 15, 1957, and 143 of January 9, 1957; p. 4 in Karachi Despatch 873 of March 28, 1958.
106 From Amconsul Dacca to the Department of State, Washington; Ref: AmConGen Despatches 28 of August 15, 1957, and 143 of January 9, 1957; p. 5 in Karachi Despatch 873 of March 28, 1958. Invariably road building preceded dam construction as dams were built in remote locations that were not easily accessible for construction materials and personnel. For instance, in the American West, when the Roosevelt Dam was built in the early twentieth century, a series of modern roads were built to facilitate travel to the construction site. J. Simon Bruder (ed.), ‘The Historical Archeology of Dam Construction Camps in Central Arizona. Volume 2A: Sites in the Roosevelt Dam Area, prepared for U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, P.O. Box 9980, Phoenix, Arizona, 85068’, Dames and Moore Intermountain Cultural Resource Services Research Papers, 1994, p. 383. Similarly, in Santa Rosa, New Mexico, in the 1970s access roads were built for construction purposes: see ‘Draft supplement to final environmental statement’, Los Esteros Lake, Santa Rosa, New Mexico, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Albuquerque District, New Mexico, January 1975, p. 8. This is a fascinating subtopic which could lead to further historiographies on the road–dam nexus and the ways in which hydropower created tangible, physical routes connecting remote landscapes to national infrastructure systems.
107 From Amconsul Dacca to the Department of State, Washington; Ref: AmConGen Despatches 28 of August 15, 1957, and 143 of January 9, 1957; p. 5 in Karachi Despatch 873 of March 28, 1958.
108 From Amconsul Dacca to the Department of State, Washington; Ref: AmConGen Despatches 28 of August 15, 1957, and 143 of January 9, 1957; p. 5 in Karachi Despatch 873 of March 28, 1958.
109 Foreign Operations Appropriations for 1962: Hearings Before the Subcommittee of the Committee on Appropriations, House of Representatives, Eighty-Seventh Congress, first session, Part 1, U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, 1961, p. 353.
110 Letter from W. C. Berry, Supervising Engineer, Karnafuli Project to Government of Pakistan, Embassy of Pakistan, Washington, DC, and International Cooperation Administration, 815 Connecticut Avenue, N. W. Washington 25, D.C, 6 March 1957; in ‘Kernaphuli Multipurpose’, Project Files, 1952–1959; Entry P 421; Box 6; Record Group 469, U.S. National Archives, College Park, MD, USA.
111 The Colombo Plan's members now include 27 countries. See the official website of the Colombo Plan organization: https://colombo-plan.org/history/, [accessed 18 February 2022].
112 International Cooperation Administration. Unclassified; From: Embassy Paris; Subject: Turbines for the Karnaphuli (East Pakistan) Project, August 15, 1957 Action: ICA Washington TOICA A-43; in ‘Kernaphuli Multipurpose’, Project Files, 1952–1959; Entry P 421; Box 6; Record Group 469, U.S. National Archives, College Park, MD, USA.
113 From Amconsul Dacca to the Department of State, Washington; Ref: AmConGen Despatches 28 of August 15, 1957, and 143 of January 9, 1957; p. 5 in Karachi Despatch 873 of March 28, 1958.
114 From the first, these partnerships revealed both cooperation and friction. Karpov would recommend that construction be deferred until final details could be better determined. However, his advice was largely ignored and dam building began under the direction of Azeemuddin and fellow Pakistani engineer, B. M. Abbass. The American Consulate in Dacca opined that the operation could have been much more efficient with better planning. What took several additional ‘working seasons’ would have been accomplished with more ‘proper organization and equipment’. From Amconsul Dacca to the Department of State, Washington; Ref: AmConGen Despatches 28 of August 15, 1957, and 143 of January 9, 1957; p. 4 in Karachi Despatch 873 of March 28, 1958.
115 From Amconsul Dacca to the Department of State, Washington; Ref: AmConGen Despatches 28 of August 15, 1957, and 143 of January 9, 1957; p. 5 in Karachi Despatch 873 of March 28, 1958.
116 van Schendel et al. (eds), The Chittagong Hill Tracts, p. 195; Roy, Departed Melody, p. 180.
117 Donald E. Wolf, Big Dams and Other Dreams: The Six Companies Story (Noman: University Of Oklahoma Press, 1996), pp. 19–21.
118 Ibid., p. 25.
119 Lesley A. Dutemple, The Hoover Dam (Minneapolis, MN: Lerner Publications Company, 2003), pp. 27–29; Arthur Herman, Freedom's Forge: How American Business Produced Victory in World War II (New York: Random House, 2012), pp. 52, 57.
120 Sneddon, Concrete Revolution, p. 18.
121 Utah Construction Company Annual Report 1953, pp. 4–11, online records, Harvard Libraries, Cambridge, MA 02138.
122 Ibid., p. 1.
123 Utah Construction Mining Company Annual Report, 1959, p. 1, online records, Harvard Libraries, Cambridge, MA 02138.
124 Ibid., pp. 8–10.
125 Ibid., p. 13.
126 William F. Fisher, ‘Going Under: Indigenous Peoples and the Struggle Against Large Dams’, Cultural Survival Quarterly Magazine, September 1999: https://www.culturalsurvival.org/publications/cultural-survival-quarterly/going-under-indigenous-peoples-and-struggle-against-large, [accessed 18 February 2022].
127 Mary Louise Pratt, Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation (London: Routledge, 1992), pp. 201–213; Anne McClintock, Imperial Leather: Race, Gender and Sexuality in the Colonial Contest (New York: Routledge, 1995), pp. 22–24.
128 Utah Construction Company Annual Report 1953, p. 19.
129 Ibid.
130 The American government invariably perceived underdeveloped regions in the newly independent states of Asia and Africa as ‘economically backward and politically immature’, and feared they were particularly vulnerable to Soviet anti-American propaganda. Sneddon, Concrete Revolution, p. 12. In many ways, economic assistance often went hand in hand with military aid, as evidenced in the relationship between the United States and Pakistan, and the perceived global strength of American corporations, manufacturing, and technological innovation was inherently interwoven with American military successes during the Second World War. This relationship between the language of war and development is a rich avenue for scholars to further explore.
131 Utah Construction Company Annual Report 1953, p. 19.
132 From Amconsul Dacca to the Department of State, Washington; Ref: AmConGen Despatches 28 of August 15, 1957, and 143 of January 9, 1957; p. 12 in Karachi Despatch 873 of March 28, 1958; van Schendel et al. (eds), The Chittagong Hill Tracts, p. 195.
133 From Amconsul Dacca to the Department of State, Washington; Ref: AmConGen Despatches 28 of August 15, 1957, and 143 of January 9, 1957; p. 12 in Karachi Despatch 873 of March 28, 1958.
134 From Amconsul Dacca to the Department of State, Washington; Ref: AmConGen Despatches 28 of August 15, 1957, and 143 of January 9, 1957; p. 10 in Karachi Despatch 873 of March 28, 1958.
135 In the document, jhum production is described as ‘burning over an area, usually “unclassified forest”, farming on the land this cleared (and fertilized by the ash) for a few years, moving on and burning another area when that soil is depleted’. From Amconsul Dacca to the Department of State, Washington; Ref: AmConGen Despatches 28 of August 15, 1957, and 143 of January 9, 1957; p. 11 in Karachi Despatch 873 of March 28, 1958.
136 See earlier discussion on plough agriculture versus jhumming.
137 From Amconsul Dacca to the Department of State, Washington; Ref: AmConGen Despatches 28 of August 15, 1957, and 143 of January 9, 1957; p. 11 in Karachi Despatch 873 of March 28, 1958.
138 It was not unusual for colonial administrators to read the work of their predecessors. When J. P. Mills toured the CHT in the winter of 1926–1927 to determine the effectiveness of tribal systems of governance, he read the work of earlier British deputy commissioners, census reports, and surveys. For more on this issue, see Jhala, An Endangered History, p. 203, footnote 39. Further, it was clear, as noted in a 1962 Congressional hearing that IEC employees were tasked with reading earlier surveys and data before creating their own proposals for Kaptai. Refer to Foreign Operations Appropriations for 1962: Hearings Before the Subcommittee of the Committee on Appropriations, House of Representatives, Eighty-Seventh Congress, first session, Part 1, U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, 1961, p. 353. It is very likely that American aid officers, like Bowles, had similarly read the work of their British forerunners.
139 International Engineering Company, Inc., From E. M. Bowles to P. F. Steinert. Subject: Reservoir Clearance, Rehabilitation of People & Land Acquisition, Kaptai, E. Pakistan, Dec. 29th 1957, in ‘Kernaphuli Multipurpose’, Project Files, 1952–1959; Entry P 421; Box 6; Record Group 469, U.S. National Archives, College Park, MD, USA.
140 International Engineering Company, Inc., From E. M. Bowles to P. F. Steinert. Subject: Reservoir Clearance, Rehabilitation of People & Land Acquisition, Kaptai, E. Pakistan, Dec. 29th 1957.
141 International Engineering Company, Inc., From E. M. Bowles to P. F. Steinert. Subject: Reservoir Clearance, Rehabilitation of People & Land Acquisition, Kaptai, E. Pakistan, Dec. 29th 1957.
142 Roy, Departed Melody, p. 175.
143 Ibid., p. 175.
144 Ibid., p. 176.
145 Ibid., p. 174.
146 Ibid.
147 Ibid., p. 175.
148 From New Delhi to Secretary of State, No. 707, September 23, 7 p.m., Rec'd September 24, 1958; 8:24 a.m., in ‘Kernaphuli Multipurpose’, Project Files, 1952–1959; Entry P 421; Box 6; Record Group 469, U.S. National Archives, College Park, MD, USA.
149 From New Delhi to Secretary of State, No. 707, September 23, 7 p.m., Rec'd September 24, 1958; 8:24 a.m.
150 Incoming Telegram, from New Delhi to the Secretary of State, No. 1529, January 7, 8 pm; Rec'd January 9, 1959, 4:13 a.m., in ‘Kernaphuli Multipurpose’, Project Files, 1952–1959; Entry P 421; Box 6; Record Group 469, U.S. National Archives, College Park, MD, USA.
151 Incoming Telegram from Karachi to Secretary of State, No. 450, August 20, 5 p.m., Rec'd: August 20, 1959, 10:47 a.m., in ‘Kernaphuli Multipurpose’, Project Files, 1952–1959; Entry P 421; Box 6; Record Group 469, U.S. National Archives, College Park, MD, USA.
152 Incoming Telegram sent from Dacca to the Secretary of State, No. 223, January 19, 4 pm, 1960; Rec'd January 20, 1960, 7:24 a.m., in ‘Kernaphuli Multipurpose’, Project Files, 1952–1959; Entry P 421; Box 6; Record Group 469, U.S. National Archives, College Park, MD, USA.
153 van Schendel et al. (eds), The Chittagong Hill Tracts, p. 201.
154 Mohsin, The Chittagong Hill Tracts, Bangladesh, p. 24. Chowdhury, ‘Deluge amidst Conflict’, pp. 201–202; Ishtiaq and Panday, ‘The Elusive Peace Accord in the Chittagong Hill Tracts of Bangladesh’, p. 468.
155 Roy, Departed Melody, p. 176.
156 Gain, ‘Life and Nature at Risk’, p. 37.
157 van Schendel et al. (eds), The Chittagong Hill Tracts, p. 141.
158 Barua, ‘Development Intervention’, p. 381; Roy, Departed Melody, p. 176.
159 Chowdhury, ‘Deluge amidst Conflict’, pp. 201–202; Wilkinson, ‘Negotiating with the Other’, p. 182.
160 Eva Gerharz and Corinna Land, ‘Uprooted Belonging: The Formation of a “Jumma Diaspora” in New York City’, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 44, 11, 2018, pp. 1881–1896, p. 1885.
161 Uddin, ‘Dynamics of Strategies’, p. 324.
162 Chowdhury, ‘Deluge amidst Conflict’, pp. 201–202.
163 Yasmin, ‘The Tyranny of the Majority in Bangladesh’, p. 122.
164 Roy, Departed Melody, p. 177.
165 van Schendel et al. (eds), The Chittagong Hill Tracts, pp. 140–141.
166 Barua, ‘Development Intervention’, p. 382.
167 Roy, Departed Melody, p. 175; van Schendel et al. (eds), The Chittagong Hill Tracts, p. 202.
168 Barua, ‘Development Intervention’, p. 379.
169 Ibid., p. 385.
170 Ibid.
171 Ibid., pp. 386–387.
172 Ibid., p. 388.
173 Lorenzini, Sara, Global Development: A Cold War History (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2019), p. 3Google Scholar.
174 Ibid., pp. 26–30.
175 Guy Mountfort, ‘Pakistan's Progress’, Oryx 10, 1 (May 1969), pp. 39–43, p. 40.
176 Nasir Uddin, ‘Living on the Margin: The Positioning of the “Khumi” within the Sociopolitical and Ethnic History of the Chittagong Hill Tracts’, Asian Ethnicity 9, 1, February 2008, pp. 33–53, p. 43; Nayak, ‘Understanding Environmental Security’, p. 48.
177 Uddin, ‘Living on the Margin’, p. 43.
178 Nayak, ‘Understanding Environmental Security’, p. 48.
179 Uddin, ‘Living on the Margin’, p. 43.
180 Nayak, ‘Understanding Environmental Security’, pp. 46–47.
181 Wilkinson, ‘Negotiating with the Other’, p. 182
182 Gerharz and Land, ‘Uprooted Belonging’, p. 1885.
183 Mohsin, The Politics of Nationalism, pp. 166–167.
184 Mohsin, The Chittagong Hill Tracts, Bangladesh, pp. 34–35; Kabita Chakma and Glen Hill, ‘Indigenous Women and Culture in the Colonized Chittagong Hill Tracts of Bangladesh’, in Everyday Occupations: Experiencing Militarism in South Asia and the Middle East, (ed.) Kamala Visweswaran (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013), pp. 132–157; Meghna Guhathakurta, ‘Women's Survival and Resistance’, in Gain, The Chittagong Hill Tracts, pp. 79–95, p. 90; Jhala, An Endangered History, p. 217; Mohsin, The Politics of Nationalism, p. 166; Mohsin, The Chittagong Hill Tracts, Bangladesh, pp. 34–35; Jessica Skinner, Internal Displacement in the CHT and Rights-based Approaches to Rehabilitation (Dhaka: Refugee and Migratory Movements Research Unit, 2008), pp. 8–11.
185 Nayak, ‘Understanding Environmental Security’, p. 51.
186 Chowdhury, ‘Deluge amidst Conflict’, p. 196.
187 Ibid., p. 199.
188 Wilkinson, ‘Negotiating with the Other’, p. 182; van Schendel, Willem, ‘The Invention of the “Jummas”: State Formation and Ethnicity in Southeastern Bangladesh’, Modern Asian Studies 26, 1 (1992), pp. 95–128, p. 103CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
189 van Schendel et al. (eds), The Chittagong Hill Tracts, p. 211.
190 Ahmed, ‘Defining “Indigenous” in Bangladesh’, p. 56.
191 Surabhi Kanga, ‘Tears of a Thousand People: Exploring the Violence of Displacement in the Chittagong Hill Tracts’, The Caravan, 1 August 2019: https://caravanmagazine.in/photo-essay/exploring-violence-displacement-chittagong-hill-tracts, [accessed 18 February 2022].
192 Barua, ‘Development Intervention’, p. 383.
