The Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT) is usually treated as a political problem between Bangladesh and its Indigenous peoples. But that may be too narrow. The CHT sits directly beside India’s Northeast, where ethnic identity, religion, territorial disputes and unresolved political grievances already intersect.
If the CHT Accord remains unresolved while those fault lines deepen, the consequences could eventually extend beyond Bangladesh. The question is not whether India will break apart tomorrow, but what could happen if several unresolved political problems begin interacting at the same time.
Two Different Fault Lines Inside India
India already has one of the world’s largest Muslim populations. Pew Research Center estimated that about 213 million Muslims lived in India in 2020, representing roughly 15 percent of the population. There is still no new nationwide official religion count for 2026.
The more important issue is political rather than demographic. Human Rights Watch reported in its World Report 2026 that Muslims faced discriminatory policies, hate speech and abuses during 2025, although broader claims of systematic persecution remain politically contested.
Population growth does not itself produce separatism, and there is no evidence today of a nationwide Muslim movement demanding another Muslim state. But history makes the hypothetical worth considering.
Pakistan emerged from British India in 1947 after Muslim political nationalism and the demand for a separate homeland became powerful enough to redraw South Asia’s map. What if, decades from now, prolonged communal alienation again produced a territorial political demand somewhere in India?
That may appear remote today, but geopolitical analysis also asks what could happen if political tensions survive for another generation.
Northeast India Is a Different Kind of Fault Line
Northeast India presents a very different political question. It is ethnically, culturally and historically distinct from much of the Indian heartland, and its peoples have never formed one political or religious bloc.
Religion nevertheless matters. Mizoram, Nagaland and Meghalaya are Christian-majority states according to India’s 2011 Census. Manipur is different: it is sharply divided among communities including the mostly Hindu Meitei population and predominantly Christian Kuki-Zo groups.
The violence in Manipur shows how quickly ethnic, territorial and religious identities can overlap. Human Rights Watch reported in September 2026 that violence since 2023 had killed more than 260 people and displaced more than 60,000.
Tripura shows why Northeast politics cannot be understood through Christianity alone. It is not Christian-majority, but its Indigenous population includes Tripuri, Reang, Chakma, Halam, Jamatia and other communities whose histories and cultures connect them to the broader Indigenous landscape of the Northeast.
People from Northeast India have also faced documented racial stereotyping and discrimination elsewhere in the country. India’s Bezbaruah Committee examined those concerns, showing how physical appearance, ethnicity and regional identity can affect relations between northeastern citizens and other parts of India.
None of this means Tripura would automatically follow another northeastern state into a future separatist movement. It does mean political solidarity could develop through ethnicity, culture, geography and shared grievances as much as through Christianity.
Now Put the CHT in the Middle
This is where the CHT becomes strategically important. It directly borders Mizoram and Tripura, and its Indigenous peoples belong to a cultural geography that existed long before the modern Bangladesh–India boundary.
The CHT itself is not uniform. Chakmas and Marmas, its two largest Indigenous communities, are predominantly Buddhist; Tripuras are predominantly Hindu, while Christianity is important among several other Indigenous peoples. Minority Rights Group documents this religious and ethnic diversity.
From my own experience with the region, I would not assume that most Buddhist Chakmas and Marmas would willingly join a hypothetical new state whose political identity was explicitly Christian. For many people in these communities, Buddhism is closely tied to ethnic and cultural identity.
This becomes especially important if the 1997 CHT Accord remains unresolved. One might assume that Indigenous peoples denied meaningful autonomy inside Muslim-majority Bangladesh would automatically choose any alternative political home across the border. I do not think the calculation would be so simple.
Asian history includes cases in which Buddhist and other non-Muslim societies gradually became Muslim through political change, migration, trade, social networks and changing state power. There was no single path to such transformations.
That history does not mean Chakmas or Marma are destined to convert to Islam. But it affects how I assess the political choices that could emerge in an extreme future scenario.
Even without meaningful autonomy, many Chakmas and Marmas might still prefer remaining inside Bangladesh rather than joining a new state whose national identity they perceived as explicitly Christian. Over generations, some could become more assimilated into the surrounding Muslim-majority society rather than change their political allegiance toward such a state.
Other CHT communities could make a different calculation. Communities with stronger Christian identities or cross-border kinship might feel greater affinity with a new northeastern political entity.
The whole CHT therefore might not move in one direction. Different communities, and perhaps different geographical areas, could develop different political preferences.
Some might remain with Bangladesh despite unresolved grievances. Others might look toward a new northeastern Indigenous entity, while still others might favour closer ties with India.
That could transform the CHT from a domestic Bangladeshi dispute into a wider regional geopolitical fault line.
1947 Should Be a Warning
The CHT has already experienced one major South Asian political transformation. Pakistan was created largely around Muslim-majority territories in 1947, yet the CHT was placed inside East Pakistan despite having almost no Muslim population at the time.
Minority Rights Group notes that the decision generated considerable opposition among the peoples of the CHT and that Indigenous communities overwhelmingly dominated the region’s population around Partition.
Then Pakistan itself broke apart in 1971. East and West Pakistan were both Muslim-majority, but shared religion could not overcome political, linguistic, economic and national differences.
The lesson is not that borders must change again. It is that borders do not permanently settle questions of identity, representation and political rights.
The Accord Was Supposed to Prevent This
The 1997 CHT Accord was intended to settle the conflict within Bangladesh. Yet almost three decades later, even the extent of implementation remains sharply disputed.
In September 2026, Bangladesh’s CHT Affairs Minister said 65 of the Accord’s 72 provisions had been implemented, according to The Business Standard.
IWGIA presents a different picture, saying major issues involving the Land Commission, devolution, demilitarisation, rehabilitation and preservation of the CHT’s special character remain unsettled.
I examined another part of this problem in an earlier Eurasia Review article, which looked at concerns over three new CHT committees and the prominent role given to military and intelligence institutions.
The disagreement over implementation matters more than counting clauses. If Indigenous communities believe the central political questions remain unresolved nearly three decades after the Accord, developments outside Bangladesh could eventually interact with grievances inside the hills.
Now imagine an extreme future scenario in which serious Muslim political alienation somewhere in India became territorial, while Northeast India simultaneously experienced a powerful Indigenous political movement in which Christian-majority states played an important role.
The CHT would then sit directly beside one of those fault lines while remaining politically unsettled itself. Different parts of the CHT might not respond in the same way.
India and Bangladesh Still Have Time
The argument here is not that India will fragment, that Tripura will certainly leave or that a Christian state will inevitably emerge in Northeast India. None of those outcomes can responsibly be predicted.
The point is simpler: unresolved political questions become more dangerous when they begin interacting with other unresolved political questions.
India needs to address ethnic conflict, discrimination and political alienation within its own Northeast. It also has a strategic interest in ensuring that a permanently unresolved CHT across the border does not become another source of instability.
Bangladesh has the more immediate responsibility. Almost three decades after the Accord, the government and Indigenous organisations still describe its implementation very differently.
Resolving the CHT question is therefore not only about fulfilling an agreement signed in 1997. It is about ensuring that the future of the hills is determined through a durable political settlement before a larger regional crisis begins narrowing the choices available to its peoples.
If India can address grievances in Manipur, Nagaland and the wider Northeast, and if Bangladesh can reach a CHT settlement that Indigenous communities themselves regard as durable, the scenario described here may never arise.
But if both sets of grievances survive for another generation, the CHT could find itself caught between political forces much larger than the hills themselves.
The CHT cannot by itself split India. Yet because of its location, its Indigenous connections across the border, its internal religious diversity and its unresolved political status, it could one day become part of a much larger reshaping of South Asia’s eastern frontier.
That is why the CHT question should be resolved before history once again begins determining the choices available to the people who live there.
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