Can be Customary Law Is the Appropriate Solution to Ethnic Tension in Bangladesh?

Authors: Parimal Roy, Haris Wahab, Mashitah Hamidi, Jahid Siraz (University Malaya, Malaysia)
Speakers: Parimal Roy
Strand: Language, Community, Ethnicity
Session Type: General Session

Abstract

This paper is a part of my PhD research; speciaclly it is a result of whatever I have collected from my field while doing the Ethnography in a remote Santal village in Bangladesh. This study aims to explore the customary facts regarding the marginal community of Santal, the largest ethnic community in the northern part of Bangladesh. Still, now the customary political institutions of this community are overlooked by the academicians to study in the Bangladesh context. They are citizens of Bangladesh but under pressure to keep their own identity. We frequently see many clashes between state forces and the santal community due to a lack of enforcing customary law from the East India company to Independence Bangladesh. How they can get rid of this type of hurdle situation , this study using ethnographic method, analyzing the collected data is helpful to formulate a legal framework to sustain the community development among the Santal people.

Keywords: Customary law, Santal, Ethnicity, Bangladesh.