Paper short abstract:

An examination of a hill community's response to the influx of climate refugees into their homelands which has been under military control since the 1970s. The paper refers to a PhD thesis on cultural identity and the film "To Be A Marma" which captures perspectives directly from the community.

Paper long abstract:

The paper describes the Marma group’s challenges in negotiating their continued existence in a region where landless refugees from the delta regions of Bangladesh move to the higher grounds of the hill tracts. The centre - the nation state - no longer recognizes the ethnic groups in these peripheries as separate ethnic entities, and there is a drive to force cultural assimilation to the majority culture.

The paper draws upon the findings from the author's PhD thesis. This anthropological research project at UCL illuminated the different ways of exploring identity processes for one minority ethnic group in the complex environment of the borderlands. More significantly, the project grapples with a community that has not assimilated with other groups and the nation state, but worked instead to do the exact opposite. Through constant cultural reinvention, the Marma have continued to differentiate and demarcate themselves in the hill tracts, in order to achieve legitimacy and some freedom in an otherwise highly politicized zone.

Whilst making the film, To Be A Marma, both film maker and anthropologist tried to empower the community to express their concerns for their future in the region whilst keeping the respondents safe in a highly watchful militarized zone.