South Asia: Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, and Islands of the Indian Ocean - Dragons and Tigers: A Geography of South, East and Southeast Asia - page 250

Figure 9-1
Bangladesh and city populations,
2001. From H. J. de Blij and P . O.
Muller, Geography: Realms, Regions
and Concepts, 14th edition, 2010,
p. 446. Originally rendered in color.
© H. J. de Blij and P . O. Muller.
Reprinted with permission of John
Wiley & Sons, Inc.

BHUTAN

88 °

BANGLADESH

Siliguri

NEPAL

POPULATION

50,000-250,000
250,000-1,000,000
1,000,000-5,000,000
Over 5,000,000

INDIA

26 °

Rangpur

National capital is underlined

Dinajpur

Railroad
Road

Internal division
Forested

Farakka
Dam

Jamalpur Sylhet

Bogra

Mymensingh

Nawabganj

Sirajganj

Rajshahi

INDIA

INDIA Pabna

T ongi

Brahmanbaria

Dhaka

Comilla

Narayanganj

Jessore

Lunglei

Khulna

Kolkata

Barisal

(Calcutta)

Chittagong

Chittagong
Hill
Tracts

d

22 °

22 °

POPULATION DENSITY
per sq km
2,000
1,000
800
600
300

per sq mi
5,200
2,600
2,100
1,600
800

Cox's Bazar

MYANMAR
(BURMA)

0 50 0 0 1 s r e t e m o l i K 0 5 1

0 50 100 Miles

88 ° Longitude East of Greenwich 92 °

and Assam, with Dacca (Dhaka) as the capital. At the
same time, majority Hindu districts of West Bengal, Bihar,
and parts of Orissa were designated as Bengal.
In 1912, following years of mass resistance, East
Bengal was divided into three provinces and West Bengal
was reunited with Calcutta. Muslims insisted on having
their own region and so boundaries were again redrawn
with the creation of East Pakistan in 1947. Consequently ,
Bangladesh' s borders are politically , not naturally , de-
fined. Surrounded by India on three sides, Bangladesh
also shares a 120-mile (193 km) frontier with Myanmar.
Bangladesh has signed agreements with both countries,
but territorial control remains controversial among some

tribal groups. Marine boundaries are still undefined and
problematic because of undersea oil discoveries in the
Bay of Bengal.
This history of jurisdictional change has created re-
gional dissension and political factionalism. For example,
dissension continues to be problematic in the Chittagong
Hill T Tracts (CHT) situated in the southeastern corner of
Bangladesh, bordering on both India and Myanmar. The
indigenous Jumma, incorporating more than a dozen eth-
nic groups, are being overwhelmed by the Bangladeshis
who have continued to move into this territory .
Requests for a degree of sovereignty were denied, and
the nationalistic Jana Sanghati Samiti (JSS) was formed.