After recent public statements denying the existence of Indigenous Peoples in Bangladesh, Raja Devasish Roy has responded with a case built on international law, UN standards, Bangladesh’s treaty commitments, domestic legislation and the state’s own historical record.
On 12 August 2026, Raja Devasish Roy published a short but significant article titled “Existence of Indigenous Peoples in Bangladesh.”
He began by saying that his attention had been drawn to recent statements by “a senior government leader and a senior lawyer of the Supreme Court of Bangladesh” concerning the non-existence of Indigenous Peoples in the country.
Roy did not name either individual.
He then stated his position clearly: he disagreed with those statements “unhesitatingly and categorically.”
That distinction is important. Any attempt to identify the individuals Roy had in mind would be an inference, not something stated by Roy himself.
What happened immediately before Roy’s article?
The timing provides relevant context.
On 11 August, one day before Roy published his response, the Chittagong Hill Tracts Research Foundation organised a roundtable in Dhaka on the question of Indigenous recognition.
Home Minister Salahuddin Ahmed told the event that citizens should be identified as Bangladeshis rather than Indigenous Peoples. He also argued that the 2007 United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, or UNDRIP, did not apply to Bangladesh. Information Minister Zahir Uddin Swapon also questioned the relevance of Indigenous terminology in the Bangladeshi context.
Former International Crimes Tribunal chief prosecutor Mohammad Tajul Islam, a Supreme Court lawyer, also spoke at the same roundtable. Contemporary reports confirm both his participation and his status as a Supreme Court lawyer.
The International Chittagong Hill Tracts Commission and the International Work Group for Indigenous Affairs later specifically criticised comments made by Tajul Islam at the event, alongside statements by government ministers.
These circumstances provide important background to Roy’s article. They do not, however, prove whom he meant by the unnamed “senior government leader” and “senior lawyer.”
For that reason, this article does not attribute those identities to Roy. It treats the August 11 roundtable as independently reported context.
Who is Raja Devasish Roy?
Raja Devasish Roy is the Chief of the Chakma Administrative Circle and the traditional Raja of the Chakma people in Bangladesh. He is a lawyer by training and has also served as a member of the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues.
The Chakma Circle is one of the traditional administrative institutions of the Chittagong Hill Tracts, commonly known as the CHT.
Roy’s intervention therefore carries significance beyond that of an ordinary political response. He is both a traditional Indigenous leader and a lawyer with long experience in Indigenous-rights issues at the national and international levels.
What are the Chittagong Hill Tracts?
For readers outside Bangladesh, some geographical and historical context is essential.
The Chittagong Hill Tracts are located in southeastern Bangladesh and comprise the three districts of Rangamati, Khagrachari and Bandarban. The region is mountainous and culturally distinct from most of Bangladesh’s predominantly flat Bengali-majority areas.
UNDP documents describe the CHT as home to 11 different ethnic groups as well as Bengali residents. The region experienced more than two decades of armed conflict before the signing of the Chittagong Hill Tracts Accord in 1997.
The Accord sought to address political and administrative questions specific to the region. Its implementation, including issues involving land and governance, has remained a subject of discussion for decades, including within United Nations mechanisms.
This history helps explain why the debate over the word “Indigenous” is not simply a debate about vocabulary.
It touches questions of identity, land, culture, traditional institutions, political participation and historical relationships with the state.
Bangladesh uses different official terminology
Bangladesh recognises the cultural distinctiveness of minority ethnic communities, but the state generally uses terminology different from “Indigenous Peoples.”
Article 23A of the Constitution says the state shall protect and develop the unique local culture and traditions of “tribes, minor races, ethnic sects and communities.”
Bangladesh also enacted the Small Ethnic Groups Cultural Institutions Act, 2010, which reflects the contemporary official use of the term “small ethnic groups.”
Many members and organisations of the communities concerned, however, identify themselves as Adivasi or Indigenous Peoples.
Adivasi is a South Asian term widely used for peoples who identify as Indigenous.
This creates the central disagreement: Does the terminology preferred by the state determine the identity of the peoples concerned?
Roy argues that international standards make the issue considerably more complicated.
No single universal definition of Indigenous Peoples
One argument sometimes raised in debates over Indigenous recognition is that international law provides no single universally binding definition of an Indigenous People.
That is true. The United Nations has deliberately not adopted one rigid global definition.
But the absence of a universal definition does not mean that the concept has no meaning or that states alone may determine who is Indigenous.
UN materials identify several commonly relevant factors, including historical continuity, distinct social and cultural institutions, relationships with territories and self-identification. United Nations guidance treats self-identification as a fundamental criterion.
ILO Convention No. 169 takes a similar approach, expressly recognising self-identification as Indigenous or tribal as a fundamental criterion for determining the peoples to whom the Convention applies.
Bangladesh has not ratified Convention No. 169, so the Convention should not be presented as a treaty binding on Bangladesh. Its approach nevertheless helps explain the development of modern international standards concerning Indigenous Peoples.
Roy’s argument under international law
Roy names several peoples in Bangladesh—including the Garo, Santal, Bawm, Chakma, Marma and Oraon—and argues that peoples identifying as Indigenous in Bangladesh fall within the international understanding of Indigenous Peoples.
He stresses that he does not regard this as merely his personal opinion.
His article refers to the work of UN High Commissioners for Human Rights, Special Rapporteurs, UN working groups and other international human-rights mechanisms.
Roy places particular emphasis on two developments: the adoption of UNDRIP in 2007 and the World Conference on Indigenous Peoples in 2014.
The 2014 World Conference produced a UN General Assembly outcome document reaffirming international commitments concerning Indigenous Peoples and UNDRIP.
For Roy, these developments demonstrate that modern international Indigenous-rights standards are global rather than restricted to Indigenous Peoples in the Americas, Australia or New Zealand.
What exactly is UNDRIP?
The United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples was adopted by the UN General Assembly on 13 September 2007.
The vote was 143 in favour, four against and 11 abstentions. Bangladesh was among the countries that abstained.
The four countries voting against were Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the United States. Those governments later moved away from their original opposition and expressed support for the Declaration.
Roy uses this history to question whether Bangladesh’s position during the 2007 vote should be treated as permanently settling the issue.
There is an important legal distinction here.
UNDRIP is a declaration, not a treaty. Bangladesh did not ratify it, and it should not be described as if it creates treaty obligations in exactly the same manner as a convention ratified by a state.
At the same time, UNDRIP has become the principal international instrument setting out standards concerning the rights of Indigenous Peoples.
It addresses matters including identity, culture, language, participation, institutions, land, territories, resources and protection against forced assimilation.
Bangladesh’s abstention in 2007 is therefore relevant to the historical record. But abstention does not make the Declaration, or the wider international Indigenous-rights framework, nonexistent.
That is essentially the distinction at the heart of Roy’s argument.
Can a person be Indigenous and Bangladeshi?
The claim that all citizens are Bangladeshis raises another important question.
Does being Bangladeshi prevent someone from also being Indigenous?
International Indigenous-rights standards do not treat the two identities as mutually exclusive.
Bangladeshi is a national and citizenship identity. Chakma, Marma, Garo, Santal, Bawm and other identities concern ethnicity, culture, community and history. Indigenous identity adds another collective and historical dimension.
UNDRIP makes this particularly clear.
Article 33 recognises the right of Indigenous Peoples to determine their own identity or membership according to their customs and traditions, while expressly stating that this does not impair the right of Indigenous individuals to obtain citizenship of the states in which they live.
A Chakma person can therefore be Chakma, Indigenous and Bangladeshi at the same time.
A Marma person can be Marma, Indigenous and Bangladeshi. A Garo person can likewise be Garo, Indigenous and Bangladeshi.
There is no inherent contradiction.
Does Indigenous recognition threaten sovereignty?
Concerns about national sovereignty and territorial integrity frequently appear in Bangladesh’s debate over Indigenous recognition.
This issue also has a direct answer within UNDRIP.
Article 46 states that the Declaration cannot be interpreted as authorising actions that would dismember or impair the territorial integrity or political unity of sovereign and independent states.
This point matters because Indigenous recognition is sometimes presented as if it automatically implies a right to secession.
UNDRIP does not say that.
It recognises Indigenous self-determination and forms of autonomy or self-government concerning internal and local affairs while also containing an explicit safeguard for the territorial integrity and political unity of sovereign states.
The international framework therefore does not require a choice between Indigenous identity and Bangladeshi sovereignty.
Bangladesh ratified ILO Convention No. 107
One of the strongest treaty-related facts in this debate is often overlooked.
Bangladesh ratified ILO Convention No. 107 on Indigenous and Tribal Populations on 22 June 1972. The Convention remains listed by the ILO as in force for Bangladesh.
The ILO itself has published material specifically discussing Convention No. 107 and its relationship with laws concerning Indigenous and tribal populations in Bangladesh.
This is significant because the Convention explicitly uses the concepts of Indigenous and tribal populations.
It therefore becomes difficult to argue that such terminology has no connection whatsoever with Bangladesh’s international legal history.
Roy also discusses ILO Convention No. 169, adopted in 1989 as the revised and more modern ILO instrument on Indigenous and Tribal Peoples.
Bangladesh has not ratified Convention No. 169. The ILO has, however, previously discussed the possibility of Bangladesh ratifying it while continuing to supervise Bangladesh’s obligations under Convention No. 107.
The distinction is important: Convention No. 107 is binding on Bangladesh through ratification; Convention No. 169 is not.
Bangladesh’s own laws complicate the argument
Roy also points to Bangladesh’s domestic legal history.
Terms connected with Indigenous or aboriginal identity are not entirely absent from Bangladeshi law.
The State Acquisition and Tenancy Act, 1950, for example, contains the expression “aboriginal raiyat.” The wording remains in Bangladesh’s official legal database.
Another currently published Bangladeshi statute concerning the Chittagong Hill Tracts contains the expression “indigenous hill-men.”
At the same time, contemporary legislation such as the Small Ethnic Groups Cultural Institutions Act uses the state’s preferred terminology of “small ethnic groups.”
This mixed legal history does not automatically resolve the present constitutional or political dispute over recognition.
But it establishes something important: Indigenous and equivalent terminology is not completely foreign to Bangladesh’s legal record.
That makes an absolute denial much harder to sustain.
Former Bangladeshi leaders and the word “Adivasi”
Roy raises another point from Bangladesh’s political history.
In his August 12 article, he states that former Prime Ministers Khaleda Zia and Sheikh Hasina, as well as former Caretaker Government Chief Adviser Fakhruddin Ahmed, had sent goodwill messages to Indigenous Peoples on the occasion of the International Day of the World’s Indigenous Peoples and addressed them as “Adivasi.”
This is a claim made by Roy in his article and should be presented as such unless each historical message is independently documented.
Nevertheless, the point raises a legitimate question about the consistency of state terminology.
If previous heads of government publicly used the word Adivasi, how did official discourse later move toward the categorical claim that Indigenous Peoples do not exist in Bangladesh?
Governments can change terminology and policy.
But changing official terminology does not automatically alter the ancestry, language, culture or history of the peoples concerned.
What Bangladesh itself reportedly told a UN study
Perhaps the most striking historical point in Roy’s article concerns the influential UN study on discrimination against Indigenous populations led by Special Rapporteur José R. Martínez Cobo.
Roy cites a 1982 section of the study and says that information supplied by the Government of Bangladesh referred to peoples who had lived in the Chittagong Hills south of the Karnaphuli “since ancient times.”
The Martínez Cobo study played an important role in the development of the modern UN framework on Indigenous Peoples. UN legal records identify it as part of the historical process that eventually contributed to the development of UN Indigenous-rights standards and UNDRIP.
Roy’s use of Bangladesh’s own historical submission is therefore particularly significant.
If the state itself previously supplied information to a UN process concerning the ancient presence of distinct peoples in the Chittagong Hill Tracts, the modern controversy cannot easily be reduced to a simple argument over whether they arrived before or after some arbitrary historical date.
The documentary history is more complicated than that.
Why does the word “Indigenous” matter?
To an outsider, this entire controversy may appear to be an argument about one English word.
It is much more than that.
Within the international human-rights framework, Indigenous identity is connected to questions of culture, language, traditional institutions, participation, land, territories, natural resources, historical continuity and the ability of distinct peoples to maintain their collective identities.
That does not mean Indigenous recognition creates a superior form of citizenship.
Nor does it mean that every claim made in the name of Indigenous rights automatically overrides national law.
It means that Indigenous Peoples are recognised internationally as distinct peoples whose historical and collective circumstances may require protections that cannot be reduced to ordinary individual citizenship alone.
That is why terminology matters.
A name can determine how a problem is understood. And the way a people are classified can influence how their history, land, institutions and rights are discussed.
Roy’s ostrich analogy
Roy ends his challenge with a memorable analogy.
He compares attempts to deny the existence of Indigenous Peoples to an ostrich burying its head in the sand and imagining that reality has disappeared simply because it can no longer see it.
The message is straightforward: refusing to use the word “Indigenous” does not make Indigenous Peoples disappear.
Their languages remain. Their cultures remain. Their communities remain. Their traditional institutions remain, as do their histories and relationships with ancestral lands.
Changing official terminology cannot erase those realities.
The question Bangladesh still needs to answer
Raja Devasish Roy’s August 12 article does not settle every legal or political dispute concerning Indigenous recognition in Bangladesh.
But it demonstrates why the issue cannot be dismissed with a simple sentence: “There are no Indigenous Peoples in Bangladesh.”
Bangladesh ratified an ILO convention explicitly dealing with Indigenous and tribal populations. Its domestic legal record contains expressions such as “aboriginal” and “indigenous.” UN standards recognise self-identification as a fundamental consideration. And international mechanisms have dealt with Indigenous Peoples and the Chittagong Hill Tracts for decades.
At the same time, many of the peoples concerned continue to identify themselves as Indigenous.
Bangladesh has every right to protect its sovereignty and territorial integrity. But international Indigenous-rights standards themselves recognise territorial integrity while also recognising distinct Indigenous identities and rights.
The two principles do not have to be enemies.
The deeper question is therefore not simply whether the government prefers the words tribe, small ethnic group, Adivasi or Indigenous Peoples.
If a people have their own history, language, culture, ancestral connections and collective identity—and they identify themselves as Indigenous—should changing the state’s vocabulary be enough to declare that identity nonexistent?
Closing one’s eyes does not erase history. Changing a name does not erase a people.
This article is based primarily on Raja Devasish Roy’s “Existence of Indigenous Peoples in Bangladesh,” published on 12 August 2026. Roy did not identify by name the “senior government leader” or “senior lawyer of the Supreme Court of Bangladesh” whose recent statements prompted his response. References to the 11 August Dhaka roundtable and its participants are included as independently reported context, not as an identification made by Roy.
Sources and Further Reading
Primary Source
1. Raja Devasish Roy — “Existence of Indigenous Peoples in Bangladesh,” 12 August 2026
https://www.facebook.com/devasish.roywangza/posts/pfbid02f1MHUXHfzX7LHAKDDASJkGF4WqWzpuuMdoK6njsojAvfXXfiuEdAfqfuxN7Yu7FMl
United Nations and International Law
2. United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) — UN official page
https://social.desa.un.org/issues/indigenous-peoples/united-nations-declaration-on-the-rights-of-indigenous-peoples
3. United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples — Official Text
https://www.un.org/esa/socdev/unpfii/documents/DRIPS_en.pdf
4. ILO Convention No. 107 — Ratifications
International Labour Organization
https://normlex.ilo.org/dyn/nrmlx_en/f?p=1000:11300:0::NO:11300:P11300_INSTRUMENT_ID:312252
5. ILO Convention No. 169 — Countries That Have Not Ratified the Convention
International Labour Organization
https://normlex.ilo.org/dyn/normlex/en/f?p=1000:11210:0::NO:11210:P11210_COUNTRY_ID:103500
Bangladesh Law
6. Constitution of Bangladesh — Article 23A: Culture of Tribes, Minor Races, Ethnic Sects and Communities
https://bdlaws.minlaw.gov.bd/act-367/section-41506.html
7. State Acquisition and Tenancy Act, 1950 — Section 97: Restriction on Alienation of Land by Aboriginals
https://bdlaws.minlaw.gov.bd/act-241/section-7077.html
UN Historical Documents
8. UN General Assembly Resolution 69/2 — Outcome Document of the World Conference on Indigenous Peoples, 2014
https://docs.un.org/en/a/res/69/2
9. José R. Martínez Cobo — Study of the Problem of Discrimination Against Indigenous Populations
United Nations
https://www.un.org/development/desa/indigenouspeoples/publications/2014/09/martinez-cobo-study/
Background to the August 2026 Controversy
10. The Daily Star — “‘We Are All Bangladeshis’” — 12 August 2026
https://www.thedailystar.net/news/bangladesh/news/we-are-all-bangladeshis-4245681
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