Raja Devasish Roy during an interaction in Kohima.
Vishü Rita Krocha
Kohima | June 3
While acknowledging that his knowledge of Naga customary law is scanty, Raja Devasish Roy observes that in Nagaland state, the respect given to the elders is striking. He goes on to say that “the spirit of community fellowship is worth emulating.” He was recently in Nagaland as part of the ‘Learning Sharing Exposure Visit to Northeast India’ wherein the team met with different civil organisations among others. The primary objective of the visit was to exchange views and learn about good practices on ‘Customary Laws and Traditional Justice Administration Systems in Meghalaya, Nagaland and Chittagong Hill Tracts.’
A politician and Barrister-at-law, Roy is the titular Raja of the Chakma Circle, Bangladesh’s largest indigenous community and was also a member of the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues.
On the community fellowship, he further remarks that “we still have it in the remote rural areas, where community self-help and labour-sharing traditions – called Maleya, Laksa/Lakcha and Bala – are still practiced.” “But they are eroding, particularly in the urban and peri-urban areas unlike, perhaps, in Kohima Village, an urban or peri-urban settlement,” he adds to this.
In the context of indigenous practices, among the similarities between Nagaland and Hill Tracts, he says that “the most conspicuous ones include the prevalence of oral traditions, the dominant role of elders, strong patrilineal and patriarchal traditions that pose as a challenge in reducing gender-based discrimination in socio-political leadership roles, and generally.”
Dwelling further on his observations on Naga Customary Law, he expresses keen interest to learn about other areas where Naga and Chakma/Jumma Customary Law may well have similarities. Some of these similarities, he observes are: “Families with big rice harvests sharing their produce with less fortunate families (now rapidly eroding); The community coming forward with cash, material and labour contributions during births, marriages and deaths; Giving priority to the collective over the individual (generally beneficial or benign, but occasionally disrespectful of individual rights).”
In his report titled ‘Traditional Customary Laws and Indigenous Peoples in Asia,’ he has also noted that among the distinctive features of indigenous people are their unique ‘cultural patterns, social institutions and legal systems.’ Like indigenous peoples in other parts of the world, indigenous peoples in Asia, he says, “have been subject to social, political and economic marginalisation, especially through conquest and colonisation.”
The report also states that “most indigenous peoples’ systems and practices have been eroded to an extent” while highlighting that information about indigenous peoples’ lifestyles and social systems is generally scarce due to their social, political and economic marginalisation, and their relatively ‘remote’ locations.
In the meantime, Raja Devasish Roy feels that customary law should not be codified. The reasons for it, he says is that “the nuanced solutions offered by customary law may be lost in a rigidly documented code.” He also underscores that “the codification process may well be regulated by an external non-indigenous entity that is not sufficiently sensitive to indigenous rights and issues.”
If codified, he states that “and there is a need to amend the law, the amendment may not come about, unless agreed to by the non-indigenous authorities.” In other words, he articulates, “with a non-codified customary law, we indigenous peoples are at the helm of affairs. Why surrender the self-determination right of our peoples to others?”
Raja Devasish Roy was highly instrumental in appointing Women karbaries (indigenous village heads) in the Chakma Circle in the 1980s. In addition to the mainly hereditary male karbaries, the number has since grown from about 2-3 in the 1980s, to more than 350 in the Chakma circle. “Now there are a total of more than 500 women karbaries in the Chittagong Hill Tracts,” he highlights.
It may be mentioned here that there were no village chiefs/elders, that they call karbaries, who were women, until the 1980s, excepting one, who inherited her late husband’s position. They have had two Paramount Chiefs or Ranis in history who were women, from the Chakma Circle (1830-70s) and Mong Circle (1940-50s). “We had and have a few territorial/paramount chiefs that were/are women, primarily inheriting the positions from their fathers,” he points out in this regard.
The Chittagong Hill Tracts have chiefs at three levels namely: village level, mauza (territorial) level –between 5-20 villages in each mauza, and circle level respectively. At the circle level, there are three Circle Chiefs or Paramount Chiefs, wherein Raja Devasish Roy is one of them.
“There are an estimated 1,713 villages in our Chakma Circle territory, of which I am the Circle Chief. The heads or chiefs of these villages are called Karbari. 344 of them are women and 1,369 are men,” Raja Devasish Roy said while adding, “In the entire region, including the territories (‘Circles’) of three of us Circle Chiefs, the number of villages are village heads is about 4,000.”
