Violence at a 4 September 2026 electoral-roll hearing in Bordumsa (Changlang, Arunachal) is framed as a 60-year question, not a one-day riot. After Partition put the CHT in Pakistan, the Kaptai Dam and insecurity drove Chakmas (and Hajongs from Mymensingh) into India. New Delhi then settled 2,748 families (14,888 people) in NEFA in 1964–69—part rehabilitation, part filling a frontier after the 1962 China war. A 2015–16 survey put the combined population at about 65,875.

The author says citizenship cannot be decided by ethnicity. India’s Citizenship Act is person-by-person (birth dates and parents’ status differ). The Supreme Court in 1996 and 2015 told Arunachal to protect life and liberty, stop forced expulsion, and process applications by law—without making every Chakma or Hajong a citizen by default. Later illegal entry should be probed individually.

Indigenous Arunachali fears over land, culture, and numbers are treated as real; New Delhi, not the settlers, chose the site without today’s state politics. Bordumsa should test names one by one, not whole communities. After six decades under the Indian flag, can lawful descendants still be called outsiders in the frontier India picked for them?

On Sept. 4, 2026, violence during an electoral-roll hearing in Bordumsa, in Arunachal Pradesh’s Changlang district, again brought the Chakma and Hajong communities in Arunachal Pradesh to the center of state politics. But this dispute did not begin with one hearing. Its roots go back to Partition, displacement in East Pakistan, the Kaptai Dam, the 1962 India-China war and a Government of India decision to rehabilitate displaced families in the then North-East Frontier Agency, or NEFA.

That history creates a difficult contradiction. India once brought these families to a vulnerable frontier at a time when developing and securing that frontier served its own strategic interests. More than 60 years later, many of their descendants are still being asked whether they belong in the very place India chose for them.

The story begins in 1947

At Partition, the Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT) was overwhelmingly non-Muslim and Indigenous-majority. Yet the Radcliffe Award placed the region inside Pakistan despite strong objections from Indian leaders. Many Chakmas expected the CHT to become part of India, and the Indian tricolor was raised in Rangamati on Aug. 15, 1947, before the final boundary award became publicly known.

Documents from India’s National Archives show that Jawaharlal Nehru strongly objected to the decision. This matters because India was not simply a convenient destination Chakmas discovered years later. For many, the hope of joining India had existed since Partition. The CHT nevertheless became part of Pakistan, and the consequences for its Indigenous population became increasingly painful.

East Pakistan brought displacement

The most devastating blow came in the early 1960s with the Kaptai hydroelectric dam on the Karnaphuli River. The reservoir submerged large........

© Eurasia Review