GUWAHATI The Chakma National Council of India (CNCI) has asked the National Commission for Religious and Linguistic Minorities to stop referring to the Chakma language as Bengali.
The Mizoram State Committee of the CNCI, which held a two-day conference at Kamalanagar in the State’s Lawngtlai district, demanded official recognition of the Chakma language in the State.
The Buddhist Chakmas comprise one-tenth of Mizoram’s population. They are a sizeable number in Tripura, the adjoining Chittagong Hill Tracts of Bangladesh, and Arunachal Pradesh.
“The CNCI has resolved to actively pursue the official recognition of the Chakma language by the Mizoram government and will take definitive steps toward realising this goal,” the council stated after the conference on Sunday (March 23, 2025).
It condemned the “persistent misidentification” of the Chakma community as Bengalis in the annual reports submitted by the Commissioner for Linguistic Minorities to the President of India.
“Unlike most tribes in the Northeast, we have our own script and written texts that are at least 500 years old. Still, our language continues to be marked as Bengali,” Rasik Mohan Chakma, an MLA of the Mizo National Front (MNF) told The Hindu on Monday (March 24, 2025).
“It is sad that the annual report of the linguistic minorities’ body continues to indicate Chakma speakers are Bengalis. We gave a representation to the President of India in this regard almost 20 years ago apart from the need to recognise Chakma as an official language in Mizoram, where it is taught in elementary schools,” he said.
The CNCI said the continued exclusion of the Chakma language from Mizoram’s list of recognised languages was painful.
The council also addressed the ongoing nationwide protests demanding the repeal of the Bodh Gaya Temple Act of 1949. It urged the Centre to address the Buddhist community’s grievances regarding the management of the Mahabodhi Temple in Bihar’s Bodh Gaya and extended support to the national movement for Buddhist control over the temple’s administration.
The MNF legislator attended the conference with fellow party MLA Prova Chakma, Molin Kumar Chakma, the chief executive member of the Chakma Autonomous District Council (CADC), and former minister Buddha Dhan Chakma.
In March, the Bharatiya Janata Party swept the elections to the village councils under the CADC, securing a majority in 64 of the 88 councils.
The Zoram People’s Movement, Mizoram’s ruling party, stood second by winning 12 village councils while the MNF bagged eight. Congress drew a blank.
