Nabila Tabassum Chowdhury > Recent Status Updates

The Mru not only have nothing in common with the Bangalis, but they also do not wish to have anything in common with them; for, unlike the Mru, Bangalis are a people who do not tolerate customs different from their own.

He who does not live up to the rules does not challenge a claim to power, but instead only proves hirnself to be a dishonorable person. If he suffers some misfortune, no one will be surprised; and no one will come sympathetically to his aid.

They are, however,at a certain disadvantage regarding the wedding arrangements & the marriage itself; furthermore, a woman is clearly at a disadvantage with respect to her relationship to her own children,who do not belong to her clan.In some ways women have no formal rights.Yet, as we shall see, that does not benefit the men at all: being less accountable,women have more freedom than men to make their own decisions.

Among the Mru, however, the man's perspective predominates: a Mru man can marry any cousin on his mother's side provided that her father is a tutma man.

Since the tutma, as wife-givers ("ancestors"), are superordinate to the pen, who are wife-takers ("descendants"), men marry "upwards" and women "downwards." This ranking is evident in the ritualized kinship relationships between the men of the two clans- for example, in the ritual exchange of gifts. It does not mean, however, that wives are ranked above their husbands.

বাক্যগুলো যখন জে কে রাউলিংয়ের নয়, তখন কিছুই আর সে জায়গায় পৌঁছাবে না, তাতে আর হতাশ হবার কী আছে! -_-

What grown-ups do, children are not forbidden.

During the evenings of the dry season, when the field work no Ionger demands all of one's daily energy, the girls come together in one house to spin. Young men come by to visit, chat, sing Iove songs and play upon the eight-pipe mouth organ which is used as a solo instrument.

....There can be no doubt that the women themselves also once wove this material and decorated it on the ends with red or black embroidery- among the Mrung this is still the case today. Women's cloaks also come from the market. Modern cloaks are generally green or blue; older ones have red and yellow designs, but were likewise imported. Whether cloaks were formerly made by the Mru themselves remains an open question.

These bracelets are made expressly for Mru customers by Bengali silversmiths, who also fashion the special type of hourglass-shaped ear plugs worn exclusively by Mru warnen.

The women eat kneeling, the men squatting....

...More extravagant ways of food preparation are known; but as soon as oil and spices are called for- things which must be bought- they become financially unviable for everyday cooking.

According to the Mru,women eat more than men.As we've seen in relation to the farm work,men take over the most demanding short-term tasks;women, however, must carry water daily (usually two times)&daily they must pound the rice.Additionally, almost every day during the cold season women must carry a Ioad of firewood.Men are not obliged to do such hard work day in and day out,which may well explain why women.....

These undertakings are possible only as long as there is a relatively large amount of uncultivated land, which is no longer the case today and even such resources can not be tapped too extensively every year.

...

Mru farmers, however, know what the inevitable consequences of landownership would be, and most of them insist that every person should have access to land.

In such a case, a grassy slope grows up which is lost to cultivation for at least ten years, due above all to the fact that the grass uses those soil nutrients needed by the rice....the yields from well-fallowed soils may reach up to eighty times the amount planted, whereas those from exhausted soils- under unfavorable rain conditions and an infestation of insects - can drop to less than five times the sowing.

Once again, this is only possible when lower quality soils are utilized and when fallowing periods are further shortened.

The natural qualities of soils can vary considerably. In the Hill Tracts, the only soils which permit cultivation two years in a row are those which, prior to cultivation, rested at least 12 years; nowadays such soils are found only in the forest reserves where, however, swidden farming is forbidden by law.

...neither the Mru nor any other ethnic group
of the Hill Tracts knows how to make potter...

Children learn to carry baskets at an early age; however, when young g irl s must begin helping their mothers carry water, their necks hurt until their muscles become strong. As grown warnen, though, they, like the men, are able to carry very heavy loads up the steep slopes.

A very poor Mru may weave mats and baskets to sell to Bengali peddlers, but Mru do not buy and sell basketware among themselves. Similarly, no trading takes place between the ethnic groups.

No use is made at all of nails, screws, or wire. Props and thong bindings offer ample support for a Mru house.

every married Mru male values greatly being the h ead of his own household.

Generally, the designated corner serves only as a urinal. (The women do their business standing, the men squatting- just the opposite, therefore, from our practice).

A floor made of boards is hard, whereas one of woven bamboo strips is flexible (With a simple blanket, one sleeps on a bamboo floor as on a mattress.) Similarly, a board wall means a dark room, whereas a bamboo wall may be penetrated by hundreds of narrow beams of light. Bamboo also allows fresh air to enter; so even an inside room of a bamboo house having small windows is never dark or stuffy.

Whenever one approaches a Mru village, particularly when climbing up the slope, one is confronted with the solid backs of houses.

Why should they construct paths which would offer easier access to the foreigners who want to snatch their land from them?

If an obstacle, such as a fallen tree or a landslide, blocks a public path, however, no one takes the trouble to remove it if he or she can go around it in less time or with less trouble.

The Mru walk each day to and from their fields; and often two or three families will join together, working the field of one family one day and the field of another family the next. Among the Marma such forms of cooperation are rare

It is true that in the European embassies in Dhaka the rumor went around that Christian Chakma were being persecuted; yet if D. E. Sopher, an American geographer interested in the transition from slash-and-burn to plow agriculture, had not almost accidentally been eyewitness to the I96o flooding, we would not know even today what really happened there.

Living in an area already strongly influenced by the economic system of the plains, the concerned Chakma and Marma were surely not people with whom other hill people would have felt any particular solidarity. Similarly, the valley dwellers, with their rafa, had always considered the less civilized hill people to be quite different from themselves and not in the least tied to them by a common origin.

The Pakistani military government, however, under whose protection this whole process had taken place, knew very well how to blame all mismanagement on subordinate Bangali officers; the blame placed on these officers only contributed to the traditional Chakma mistrust of Bangalis, a mistrust which was subsequently transformed into bitter
hostility.