On August 15, 1947, as most of the Indian subcontinent rejoiced in newly-won independence, the indigenous peoples of the Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT) – predominantly Chakmas along with Marmas, Tripuris, and others – celebrated under the assumption that they were part of India. In the hill town of Rangamati, thousands gathered at the Deputy Commissioner's bungalow and hoisted the Indian tricolour, believing their majority-non-Muslim homeland rightfully belonged in the Indian Dominion.

Yet just two days later, a radio announcement of the Radcliffe Boundary Award abruptly shattered those hopes, revealing that CHT had been assigned to Pakistan. August 17, 1947 became the “Chakma Black Day,” a day of mourning and protest that Chakma communities in Bangladesh, India, and the diaspora observe every year to remember this historic injustice.

Chittagong Hill Tracts: A Region Poised to Join India

The Chittagong Hill Tracts, an area of roughly 13,000 sq km of forested hills along what are now the borders of India and Myanmar, was an excluded area under British rule, populated overwhelmingly by non-Muslim indigenous tribes. At the time of Partition in 1947, over 97–98% of CHT’s population was non-Muslim (mostly Buddhist Chakmas and Marmas, with some Hindus). Culturally and ethnically, these hill peoples had closer affinities with the tribes of India’s northeast (e.g. Tripura, Assam) than with the Bengali Muslim majority of the adjacent plains of East Bengal. By the basic logic of the Two-Nation Theory and the agreed principles of partition (religious majorities dictating accession), CHT should have been allotted to India. Indeed, contemporary accounts noted that CHT’s demographic and geographic profile gave it a “clear alignment” with India.

In the months leading up to independence, Chakma leadership undertook vigorous legal and political campaigns to ensure CHT would join India. The Parbatya Chattagram Jana Samiti (PCJS), under the leadership of Sneha Kumar Chakma, lobbied the Indian National Congress and British authorities on CHT’s future. Sneha Kumar Chakma met top Congress leaders – including Jawaharlal Nehru, Maulana Azad, and Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel – and received repeated assurances that “under no circumstances” would the Chittagong Hill Tracts be given to Pakistan. According to accounts, Patel even concurred with the idea of arming the CHT youth to resist any Pakistani takeover attempt, reflecting how strongly Indian leaders (at least Patel) felt about keeping the region in India.

To bolster CHT’s case, Sneha Kumar was co-opted as a member of the Excluded Areas Sub-Committee of the Indian Constituent Assembly, representing CHT. He and other representatives submitted memoranda and petitions to the Bengal Boundary Commission in summer 1947. On 14 July 1947, Sneha Kumar Chakma presented a detailed memorandum to the Commission, laying out CHT’s historical, demographic, and legal claim to remain with India. Even the two non-Muslim judges on the Boundary Commission – Justice Bijan Mukherjee and Justice Charu Chandra Biswas – supported the inclusion of CHT in India and penned a seven-page argument in its favor.

Behind the scenes, however, the fate of CHT was slipping out of their hands. Sir Cyril Radcliffe, chairman of the Boundary Commission, was grappling with a dilemma: CHT was 97% non-Muslim, but it was geographically adjacent to the Muslim-majority Chittagong district (with Chittagong port) that was almost certain to go to Pakistan. In a letter to Viceroy Mountbatten on August 12, 1947, Radcliffe pointedly described the question: “To which State should the Chittagong Hill Tracts be assigned, an area in which the Muslim population was only 3 percent of the whole, but which it was difficult to assign to a State different from that which controlled the district of Chittagong itself?” Radcliffe ultimately leaned toward awarding CHT to Pakistan on grounds of contiguity and economic linkage, reasoning that the Hill Tracts were the watershed for the Karnaphuli River that sustained Chittagong port (East Pakistan’s only seaport) and that splitting the hinterland from the port would be impractical.

Indian officials got wind of Radcliffe’s leanings in early August 1947. Sardar Patel was outraged at the prospect – he wrote an urgent “most immediate and personal” letter to Mountbatten on August 13, calling it “inconceivable that such a blatant and patent breach of [the Commission’s] terms of reference should be perpetrated” and warning of “serious consequences” if CHT were assigned to Pakistan. Patel even hinted that the CHT people would be justified in resisting by force and that the Indian government would support them. Mountbatten, taken aback by Patel’s vehemence, noted in dismay that Patel – “the one man I had regarded as a real statesman…had turned out to be as hysterical as the rest,” and that Patel was suggesting armed resistance in CHT with India’s backing. This extraordinary confrontation at the highest levels underscored how strongly India opposed losing CHT. In fact, Governor Frederick Burrows of Bengal had to assure the Viceroy that there were practical reasons to give CHT to East Bengal (Pakistan) – he argued that the hill tribes’ economic lifelines ran to Chittagong and there were no effective routes from CHT into India’s Assam, and even warned that if CHT’s forests were not under East Bengal’s control, “Chittagong Port would silt up” from unchecked logging.

Despite India’s protests, Radcliffe was unmoved. He reportedly crumpled up Patel’s letter, dismissing the Chakma appeals with disdain. Radcliffe finalized his boundary decisions in secret and, crucially, Mountbatten decided to delay announcing the Partition award until after August 15 to avoid disrupting the independence festivities. As historian Philip Ziegler noted, the furor over CHT “may have been a factor” in Mountbatten’s choice to keep the reports private until two days after Independence Day. Thus, on August 15, 1947, the people of CHT had received no official notice of any change – legally, under the Indian Independence Act, their district was still part of India.

August 15, 1947: A Flag of Hope in Rangamati

Independence Day dawned with optimism in the Chittagong Hill Tracts. Early on the morning of 15 August 1947, more than 10,000 people – Chakmas, Marmas, Tripuris and others – marched to the Deputy Commissioner’s residence in Rangamati, the CHT headquarters. The British Deputy Commissioner, Colonel G.L. Hyde, was respectfully queried by the Chakma leaders about the new status of their land. By eyewitness accounts, the following exchange took place:

• Chakma representative: “Sir, is not India independent now?”

• Col. Hyde: “Yes, you are independent now and on.”

• Representative: “Is not, Sir, CHT a part of India under the Independence Act of India?”

• Col. Hyde: “Yes, according to the Independence Act of India 1947, the Chittagong Hill Tracts is a territory of the Indian Dominion.”

• Representative: “So, should we not hoist our National Flag?”

• Col. Hyde: “Yes... Please come at dawn and hoist the Indian National Flag publicly in the football ground, and I will go and salute it.”

True to his word, Col. Hyde permitted and participated in the flag raising. At sunrise on August 15, the Indian tricolour was ceremoniously hoisted in Rangamati’s public ground with full official honors – the British administrator himself saluted the flag. The Chakmas and other hill people erupted in celebration, rejoicing that their homeland was finally free and part of India. The tricolour fluttered over Rangamati, and messages of Independence Day congratulations were exchanged. For six days, from the 15th until the 20th of August, the Indian flag continued to fly over CHT with the people’s heartfelt pride and conviction.

This brief moment of joy would soon prove tragically fleeting. Nonetheless, 15th August 1947 remains in Chakma memory as a day of hope – the day they believed their rightful place in the Indian Union had been achieved. As one Chakma leader later recounted, “We hoisted the Indian flag with pride, believing we belonged.”

August 17, 1947: Betrayal by the Radcliffe Award

Two days later came the blow. On August 17, 1947, the contents of the Radcliffe Award were finally made public (via All-India Radio announcements and press) – and to the shock of the CHT inhabitants, their district had been arbitrarily placed inside Pakistan (specifically, East Pakistan). The news struck like a bolt from the blue. No prior warning or consultation had been given to the hill people. They heard the grave announcement over the radio that the Chittagong Hill Tracts were awarded to Pakistan, contrary to all the assurances and the very logic of partition.

What had been jubilation on the 15th now turned to grief and anger on the 17th. The promises made by Indian leaders appeared broken, and the efforts of Sneha Kumar Chakma and his colleagues had been rendered futile by a secret decision in distant Delhi. The date 17th August 1947 instantly became emblazoned in Chakma history as “Black Day”, symbolizing the betrayal of their trust and the loss of their homeland through an unjust boundary award. The hill communities – who had not been party to high-level negotiations – felt cruelly abandoned. As Sneha Kumar Chakma later lamented, “On 17th August, a radio broadcast told us we didn’t [belong].”

The Radcliffe Award’s rationale for CHT’s inclusion in Pakistan was never fully explained by its author (Radcliffe destroyed most of his records before leaving India). In retrospect, it’s understood that the decision was driven by strategic concerns about Chittagong port and pressure from the Muslim League’s demand for contiguous territory, rather than the population’s wishes. In effect, CHT’s 98% non-Muslim population and their democratic choice were sacrificed for Pakistan’s territorial convenience – a fact widely seen as a grave injustice, even by some British officials of the time. Sardar Patel bitterly described the award of CHT to Pakistan as “monstrous” and a “patent breach” of the agreed principles. Yet, despite Indian outrage, the decision was final.

August 19, 1947: Resisting the Unjust Award

Determined not to passively accept this outcome, the Chakma leadership in CHT mobilized to resist. On 19 August 1947, just two days after the announcement, an emergency council of tribal leaders convened again at the Deputy Commissioner’s bungalow in Rangamati. At this meeting – which included Chakma chiefs and leaders of other communities – a unanimous resolution was adopted rejecting the Radcliffe Award as it pertained to the Chittagong Hill Tracts. The leaders declared that “CHT shall not abide by the Award” and that they would defend their land by force if necessary. Plans were laid to form “resistance squads” – essentially volunteer militias – armed with indigenous weapons, to oppose any Pakistani authority attempting to take over.

Recognizing that they faced an incoming Pakistani army, the CHT leaders also decided to appeal to India for help. They entrusted Sneha Kumar Chakma and a small delegation to urgently seek political and military support from India. Sneha Kumar and his comrades (including Indramoni Chakma and Girish Chandra Dewan, the captain of the Chakma Guard) slipped out of CHT and crossed into Indian territory (Tripura) en route to make their case to the Indian government. As they departed, the Pakistan authorities branded these leaders as “traitors” to the new state; arrest warrants were issued against Sneha Kumar and others for their open defiance. (Fortunately, by the time the warrants were announced, the men were already safely away in India.)

Sneha Kumar’s team headed first to Kolkata and then to New Delhi in late August 1947, bearing the plea of the Chittagong Hill Tracts people. They carried reports of what they saw as a “gross injustice” and requested arms and ammunition to continue their rebellion against Pakistani rule if necessary. For a brief moment, it appeared that their appeal might find sympathy: Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, now India’s Deputy Prime Minister, reportedly told Sneha Kumar that he was “quite ready to supply arms & ammunition” for the CHT resistance. However, Patel emphasized that as Deputy PM, he needed the approval of Prime Minister Nehru for any such action. He directed Sneha to confer with Jawaharlal Nehru to obtain the government’s sanction, then report back to him.

With a glimmer of hope, Sneha Kumar Chakma went to Nehru. But the meeting with the Prime Minister dashed any prospect of help. Nehru was adamantly against getting involved in a military conflict in far-off CHT. According to Sneha Kumar’s recollection, Nehru reacted with anger at the request, rising from his chair to thunder: “Do you propose to bring India again under foreign rule?” – implying that starting a fresh armed conflict with Pakistan over CHT could invite international intervention or jeopardize India’s fragile new peace. Nehru flatly refused any military assistance to the Chakmas, effectively abandoning the CHT resistance for the sake of avoiding another war with Pakistan. He may have been mindful that India was already entangled in a dispute with Pakistan over Kashmir at that very moment, and was unwilling to open a second front.

This refusal was a crushing disappointment. Sardar Patel, despite his personal sympathies, toed the government line once Nehru had decided. No weapons or military support would be forthcoming. The fledgling Chakma resistance was left isolated and unsupported. As one chronicler put it, “Nehru’s refusal to help us underlined our endless agony, sufferings and sorrow.” For the people of CHT, it was a sense of betrayal on top of betrayal – first by Radcliffe’s award, then by India’s leaders who chose realpolitik over rescuing them.

Fall to Pakistan and the Aftermath

By the third week of August 1947, events on the ground in CHT reached a climax. As the Chakmas’ pleas in Delhi went nowhere, Pakistan moved swiftly to take control of the region. Around August 21, 1947, units of the Pakistani 1st Baluch Regiment marched into the Chittagong Hill Tracts. They entered Rangamati and other key points, taking down the Indian tricolour that had been flying for days and hoisting the Pakistan star-and-crescent flag in its place. The short-lived “independence” of the hill tribes – those six days of being part of India in their minds – was snuffed out under the boots of the Pakistan Army.

In the southern sub-division of Bandarban, a curious parallel drama unfolded: a faction of tribes (predominantly of the Marma community, who had ethnic ties to Myanmar’s Arakan) had raised the Burmese flag on August 15, as they felt culturally closer to Burma (Myanmar) than to either India or Pakistan. This attempt too was swiftly crushed; the Pakistani troops tore down the Burmese flag as readily as they did the Indian one, making it clear that CHT was now their territory.

With Pakistan’s authority established, resistance within CHT had little chance. The Chakma “rebellion” of August 1947 was essentially over almost before it began, both outgunned and diplomatically orphaned. Most local officials and leaders who had supported the Indian alignment were removed; some, like the Chakma Chief (Raja Nalinaksha Roy), chose to accommodate the new reality and cooperated with Pakistan to protect their people’s immediate safety. Others, especially those who had openly led the pro-India movement, went into exile. The majority of hill residents, stunned and grieving, had no option but to carry on under the new administration, however unwelcome.

Thus, by late 1947, the Chittagong Hill Tracts were firmly incorporated into Pakistan. For the Chakmas and other indigenous groups, it felt like the loss of a homeland – a homeland they believed had been rightfully theirs as Indians, now suddenly redesignated as part of a foreign country with a very different majority culture. “From that fateful day of 17th August 1947, the Chakmas have never accepted the Radcliffe Award,” notes one account; to them it wasn’t just a matter of a boundary line, but a betrayal of their identity and survival.

Under Pakistan: Marginalization and Exodus

In the following decades under Pakistani rule (1947–1971), the people of the CHT experienced increasing marginalization and hardships. The Pakistan government treated the hill region as a strategic frontier and often with suspicion toward its non-Muslim populace. The area was militarized and kept under tight control. Over time, policies were introduced that undermined the indigenous peoples’ land rights and autonomy. Two developments in particular had devastating impacts:

• Designation as “Tribal Area” and opening up of CHT: In the 1950s, Pakistan initially maintained CHT’s special status (it was termed an “Excluded Area” then a “Tribal Area” with limited self-rule). However, in 1964 the Pakistani government unilaterally abolished CHT’s autonomous status via a constitutional amendment, removing the legal restrictions that had prevented outsiders from freely settling there. This paved the way for migration of Bengali Muslim settlers into the Hill Tracts, beginning the demographic engineering that would accelerate in later decades.

• Kaptai Dam project (1957–1962): The Pakistani government undertook a large hydroelectric dam on the Karnaphuli River in CHT, known as the Kaptai Dam, completed in 1962. This project flooded approximately 1,036 sq km of fertile valley land – about 20% of the CHT area – drowning villages, farmlands, and sacred sites. An estimated 100,000 indigenous people (mostly Chakmas) were displaced by the dam’s reservoir. The displacement was done with little consultation or adequate rehabilitation; thousands of Chakma families lost their homes and means of livelihood overnight. Many fled to India or Myanmar as refugees in the early 1960s, because they received negligible compensation and faced neglect from the Pakistani authorities. In 1964, India accepted a substantial number of these displaced Chakmas, resettling about 35,000 of them in the state of Arunachal Pradesh (then NEFA) over subsequent years. This marked the first large-scale exodus of Chakmas from their ancestral land due to government policies.

The period of Pakistani rule also saw attempts to erode the distinct identity of the hill people. Many reports allege that the Pakistan Army and authorities tacitly encouraged or turned a blind eye to religious persecution – there were cases of forcible conversions of Buddhist Chakmas to Islam, violence against villages, and other forms of coercion. By the late 1960s, discontent was brewing among the younger generation of Chakmas, setting the stage for organized resistance in the future.

A New Nation, Old Struggles: CHT in Bangladesh (1971 Onwards)

In 1971, East Pakistan broke away to become the independent nation of Bangladesh. Initially, the Chakmas and other CHT people cautiously welcomed this change, hoping that a secular Bangladesh might address their grievances. Some Chakma fighters even supported Bangladesh’s liberation war against Pakistan. However, those hopes dimmed quickly. The Bangladesh government in 1972 adopted a constitution that effectively ignored the distinct status of the hill tribes, declaring all citizens of Bangladesh to be part of the “Bangalee” nation (later amended to "Bangladeshi"). This denial of the indigenous identity – described by one scholar as the “throttling of tribal identity” under Sheikh Mujibur Rahman’s government – infuriated the CHT communities.

Feeling betrayed yet again, the Chakmas organized politically. In 1972 they formed the Parbatya Chattagram Jana Sanghati Samiti (PCJSS) – essentially a political union of CHT tribes – under the leadership of Manabendra Narayan Larma. When peaceful pleas for autonomy and recognition went unheard, the PCJSS established an armed wing, the Shanti Bahini (“Peace Army”), which launched an insurgency by the mid-1970s. For roughly two decades, the Shanti Bahini guerrillas fought Bangladesh’s military forces in the jungle hills, seeking regional autonomy or special status for the Chittagong Hill Tracts. During this insurgency (which lasted from circa 1975 to 1997), thousands of lives were lost on both sides and tens of thousands of Chakma villagers fled to India to escape the conflict and repression. By the mid-1980s, over 50,000 Chakma refugees were living in camps in the Indian states of Tripura and Mizoram. (Many of these refugees were later relocated by India to Arunachal Pradesh, a move that created its own long-term challenges.)

Meanwhile, successive Bangladeshi governments pursued a deliberate policy of settling Bengali Muslims into CHT to alter the region’s demographics. This state-sponsored transmigration program, especially aggressive in the late 1970s and 1980s, changed the face of the Hill Tracts. In 1947, the CHT population was nearly 98% indigenous; by the early 1990s, after decades of in-migration, roughly half the residents were Bengali settlers. (One statistical comparison shows Bengali Muslims comprising only 11.6% of CHT’s population in 1974, but surging to 48.5% by 1991.) These settlers often occupied lands traditionally held by Chakmas and other tribes – frequently backed by the Bangladeshi army presence – leading to land dispossession and ethnic tensions.

A partial peace came in 1997, when the Bangladesh government (under Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina) signed the Chittagong Hill Tracts Peace Accord with the PCJSS, formally ending the insurgency. The accord promised a level of regional autonomy through elected councils and the withdrawal of many military camps. While the armed conflict ceased, not all terms of the accord have been fully implemented. Significant issues remain, such as land disputes, slow repatriation of refugees, and continued presence of the military in many areas. Many Chakmas feel that the “peace” has been an uneasy one, as Bengali settlers continue to encroach on ancestral lands and the community’s political rights are still insecure.

Today, an estimated 700,000 Chakmas still live in the Chittagong Hill Tracts under Bangladesh’s sovereignty. They, along with other Jumma tribes (the collective term for the hill ethnic groups), strive to preserve their language, culture, and lands in the face of ongoing pressures. Large diaspora populations of Chakmas also reside in India – notably in Arunachal Pradesh, Tripura, Mizoram, and Assam – as a legacy of the displacements. However, life in exile has its own difficulties. For instance, in Arunachal Pradesh, where about 60,000 Chakma and Hajong refugees (from the 1960s exodus) reside, many still lack citizenship or voting rights even after decades, and they periodically face local agitations demanding their ouster as “foreigners”. In Mizoram and Tripura too, Chakma communities, despite being Indian citizens in many cases, sometimes confront suspicion and bureaucratic hurdles over their status.

Commemorating Black Day and the Legacy of 1947

Through all these trials, the memory of August 17, 1947 – Chakma Black Day – endures as a defining historical trauma for the Chakma people. For decades, the observance of Black Day was a relatively quiet affair: elders would recount the story to the youth, candles or lamps might be lit in homage to the lost homeland, and the community would reflect on how different their fate might have been had history taken another course. Unlike some political anniversaries, Black Day is generally marked by somber remembrance rather than loud protest. It is a day to mourn the partition’s “historic injustice” and to honor the struggles of those who tried to secure a better future for the CHT people.

In recent years, however, Chakma activists and organizations have worked to bring greater public attention to their story. Since around 2016, formal commemorations and statements on August 17 have been organized in India’s Northeast. For example, the Chakma National Council of India (CNCI) and other groups have held Black Day events in Tripura, Mizoram, and Arunachal, where participants hold placards, rallies, and seminars to educate people about the CHT issue. They highlight that the Chakmas were among the worst victims of Partition, yet their plight remains largely invisible in mainstream history books. Some have even appealed for international recognition of the injustice – the CNCI in 2020 demanded that the case of CHT’s annexation be taken to the International Court of Justice.

For the Chakma diaspora, Black Day is also an expression of their enduring hope that the wrongs of 1947 might one day be addressed. There are voices within the community that still dream of a rectification – whether through greater autonomy within Bangladesh or even reunification with India. “We are loyal to India… All Chakmas and the rest of Jummo people are still ready to merge with India,” one Chakma leader in exile proclaimed, blaming continued oppression in CHT on their thwarted wish to be part of India. While such outcomes appear politically distant, the sentiment underlines how deeply the sense of betrayal runs even generations later.

Beyond the Chakma community, the story of Chakma Black Day carries broader significance. It serves as a reminder that the legacy of Partition was not just a Hindu-Muslim or India-Pakistan story; smaller communities at the margins were profoundly affected and often had little say in the outcome. The case of the Chittagong Hill Tracts raises lingering questions about historical justice, self-determination, and minority rights. How could a 98% non-Muslim region be handed to a Muslim-majority state against its people’s wishes? Why were the voices of an indigenous community ignored during a crucial boundary decision? These questions remain difficult to answer, except to note that geopolitics and haste trumped principles in 1947. The Chakmas’ loss thus prompts reflection on the human cost of political partitions and the importance of including marginal communities in nation-building narratives.

As India and the region mark independence anniversaries each year, the Chakma experience stands as a poignant counter-narrative – a tale of a people for whom freedom did not arrive in August 1947. “For the Chakmas of the Chittagong Hill Tracts, 15th August 1947 was a day of hope — and 17th August, a day of loss,” writes one observer, encapsulating the emotional whiplash of those days. Today, the tricolour that once flew in Rangamati on Independence Day flies only in memory, but the Chakmas have not forgotten. Their annual Black Day observance is both an act of remembrance and a quiet cry that the world acknowledge their story – the forgotten tragedy of partition and betrayal that befell their homeland in 1947.

Sources:

• Ahimsak Chakma, The Sentinel (Assam) – “Chakma Black Day: A Forgotten Tragedy of Partition and Betrayal”
• Pawan Pandey, HinduPost – “Chakmas: The worst victims of the partition of Bharat are invisible from our history books”
• Dipak Kumar Sarkar (Assistant Prof., History), IJMER – “India’s Partition and the Catastrophe of Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT): A Retrospection”
• Press Trust of India, Economic Times – “Chakmas of Chittagong Hills: ‘Indians’ on Aug 15, Pakistanis two days later and ‘rebels’ by Aug 19” (Aug. 19, 2022)
• Debraj Deb, Indian Express – “Chakma National Council observes ‘Black Day’ against inclusion of CHT in East Pakistan” (Aug. 17, 2020)