The Garo of Bangladesh: A forest people's struggle to survive

This article examines the plight of the Garo tribal people in Bangladesh as they struggle to retain the integrity of their homeland in the Madhupur Forest. Drawing from a number of sources ‐ jurisprudential, ethnographic, and sociological ‐ the author describes the history of this people, and the slow erosion of their customs and cultural homogeneity that has taken place over the past hundred years, as they have battled to survive in the centre of an area of the Indian subcontinent that has been prey to a bewildering series of political, demographic and climatic upheavals. Focusing on the specific issue of the Bangladesh government's desire to develop rubber plantations in the midst of this territory, the author analyses the legal and moral debates that this current dispute has unleashed, and suggests that the international community should engage in the debate as a matter of urgency, harnessing the events to a wider concern for the twin issues of environmental protection, and the preservation of the rights of indigenous people.