Between 1979 to 1984 the government transferred 450,000 plainsmen settlers in the Chittagong Hill Tracts. The Jummas are losing their ethnic identity and their lands by a systematic process of integration and assimilation. This is the basis of their struggle. The bond between indigenous peoples and their ancestral lands is sacred. The preservation of this tie is essential to their physical and spiritual well-being.
Land is the source of their economic subsistence.
To achieve this overriding goal, government considers the ancestral lands of the Jummas empty on the basis of the principle of Terra Nullius. Also, government is reluctant to recognize indigenous land title and seeks to impose its own land tenure methods. The traditional Jumma land tenure system, similar to other indigenous systems, is based on communal land ownership. The concept of individual title is unfamiliar in the agricultural areas, but is imposed in the towns by the civil administration. In order to enforce and protect the land rights of the Jummas to their ancestral land, it is essential that a systematic analysis of the land tenure system of the indigenous Jummas of the Chittagong Hill Tracts be commenced.