Sharmila Sangma, a middle-aged Garo woman. A three-year-old girl hanging onto her back on a winter morning. The child, in a specially-tied cloth harness, is looking down. She has a runny nose due to the cold. The child’s mother has left the village in search of a livelihood, leaving her daughter with her grandmother Sharmila Sangma at the age of three months. Her parents work in a garment factory, living from hand to mouth, leaving their young child to be raised by her grandmother. The mark of malnutrition is evident on the child’s face, having not been breastfed nor receiving sufficiently nutritious food.
Many tribal women, like Sharmila Sangma’s daughter, have migrated to cities to survive the struggle to earn a livelihood. Even if they leave the infant in the care of family members, the child’s nutrition often suffers. This scene is now a daily occurrence in the hilly tribal Garo community in the northeastern part of Bangladesh. The situation is worse for tribes who have nowhere to go, with the hills as their only shelter. There is not enough food in the house, no water in the hill springs. Due to legal complications, the ownership of the hill has changed, and they cannot even cultivate the hill.
The community is in turmoil. They are being displaced as government organisations and powerful people work to deforest the entire hill. Once, the entire Garo Hills area was owned by these tribal communities. Their lives were centered on the hills; everything was self-sufficient, even though there was not much to produce.
This matriarchal tribe lives in the Tangail, Jamalpur, Sherpur, Mymensingh, Netrakona, Sunamganj, and Sylhet districts of northeastern Bangladesh. However, their main habitat is centered around Garo hills, in Mymensingh, Jamalpur, Sherpur, and Netrakona. Most of the Garo Hills are within the Indian state of Meghalaya. It is where most of the Garo people live; the hill is named after them.
The height of the Garo Hills in the Indian region is about 4,500 feet above sea level. Its length is about 8000 square kilometres, and the forest area is about 200 square kilometres. The maximum height of the hill in the Bangladesh region is about 200 to 500 feet. However, due to climate change and man-made environmental destruction in Bangladesh, the Garo Hills are under threat. Once upon a time, there were tigers, bears, deer, monkeys, pigs, and wild cocks in the forests of the hills, but now, they can no longer be found. They have disappeared due to the evolution of time and the tyranny of invaders.
The height of this hill on the Bangladesh side is decreasing day by day. The soil is eroding at a rate of about three inches per year. Further, agriculturalists and environmentalists have reported that soil erosion has increased due to the extraction of rock, soil, and sand from the hills during deforestation.
According to Sherpur District Forest Department sources, there is upwards of 28,251 acres of forest land in Jhenaigati, Srivarardi, and Nalitabari Upazilas of Sherpur alone. Out of this, 3,391.17 acres of land have been occupied until 2021. However, the locals are demanding more. Meanwhile, conflicts over forest land between tribal communities, Bengalis, and the forest department are becoming increasingly hostile. There have been many complaints against government officials and employees for compromising with land occupants in exchange for bribes.
As reported in the 2022 census, there are 1.65 million ethnic minority people in Bangladesh. Among them, the population of the Garo community has a population size of 76,846. However, most of the tribal communities in Bangladesh live in Chittagong, Chittagong Hill Tracts, Rangamati, and Khagrachari, and all the attention is on these districts. That is where most of the development work has been taking place. As a result, the lifestyles and struggles of the tribal communities in the northeastern region remain invisible.
And the local political leaders exploit this. Day after day, they have taken possession of the hills by deceiving the natives. The government has evicted the Garo community and leased the hills to the Bengalis. The government has cut down large trees and planted fast-growing Eucalyptus and Akashmani trees, which absorb excess water and are harmful to the environment.
After visiting these places myself, it is clear to me that the Garo tribal communities and the hills in Bakshiganj of Jamalpur district are in critical condition. Most of the hill forests here have been deforested. The forest department has taken the initiative to stop cutting trees in some places due to the objections of environmentalists, but this has not put an end to the felling. To evade the forest department, many smugglers cut down trees, burn them to make charcoal, and take them out of the forest. Each bag of coal is sold for only BDT 500 (EUR 4.20). While travelling in the Garo Hills, I came across several such tree-cutters and coal traders. They spoke to me in a threatening tone while I was taking pictures. It is easy to understand how helpless the tribal communities are in the face of such threats.
The helplessness of the tribal communities does not end there. Further inside the Garo Hills, I saw a tribal family forced to prematurely harvest raw paddy. They said there are still at least 20 days left for the rice to ripen and be ready for harvest. Unfortunately, a local coal trader is cutting trees on the paddy field. So, they have no choice but to harvest the paddy before it spoils. They used to get about 20 kilograms of paddy per 0.012-acre field, if the paddy is ripe. But because the paddy is cut early, they would be lucky to get 5 kilograms of paddy.
The tribal communities spoke of how the entire hill has been taken over by leasing a few acres of land at the foot of the hill to Bengali timber traders. There, trees are regularly cut and sold. The felling of large trees has greatly affected the lives of the tribal communities. Although the Garo Hills were once known for rain, the average rainfall has now declined. Hill springs were once the main source of water for agriculture and drinking water, but now these oases dry up during the winter season. There are less food sources in the hills than before. As a result, tribal families are forced to move to the city, leaving behind the hills in which generations of their families have lived for several hundred years.
Moreover, such migrant families fail to attain good jobs in the city due to lack of education. The impact of climate change is evident in these individuals.
The Garo tribal communities celebrate the Wangala (Nabanna) festival every year. Wangala is the festival of bringing home the new harvest; it is a festival of thanksgiving, to demonstrate appreciation to God for the harvest. But their crops are not as good as before. Still, the sincerity of the people is palpable. The whole society participates in this festival to thank God for their crop. Pigs are slaughtered, the poor are invited to eat their fill, and all participants take part in exuberant feasting themselves. So, why does God not listen to their calls to increase crop yields and eliminate scarcity?
Why does God allow climate change? Why allow the once-full springs to dry up and turn into sand? Why have the rights of tribal communities been taken away from them? The answers to these questions remain uncertain. The only certainty is hunger. To escape from the pain of hunger and to survive, the people of Garo Hills are forced to leave their suckling children in search of livelihood in the city. Because of climate change and man-made destruction, peace has been lost in the hills.
