Kalindi Rani, who ruled from 1832 to 1873, was the 45th ruler of the Chakmas. Her kingdom was outside the southeastern edge of what was then British Bengal. It had for a century been a target of appropriation by the British, who had been in control of Chittagong since 1760. In 1860, Kalindi's kingdom was colonised, the British subsequently expropriating land and dividing the territory into parts. However, Kalindi's kingdom was not only dismembered, but also 're-membered' by the new cartography of the British by naming part of the old kingdom the Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT).
Kalindi herself can be similarly 're-membered' through an exploration of the struggles for indigenous rights in Southasia, particularly with regards to land. Land and resources in the CHT have constituted a major flashpoint since British colonisation. In 1947, while the population of the CHT was only three percent Muslim, the British awarded it to East Pakistan. In 1971, East Pakistan came to be known as Bangladesh. Today, the CHT is the borderland between Bangladesh, India and Burma. It is the traditional home of 11 indigenous hill peoples, of whom the Chakma constitute the largest group. These groups differ markedly from the Bengali majority in physical features, language, culture, religion, dressing, food habit, farming method and architecture.
There was British interest in the land of the Chakma-raj immediately after the former's colonisation of Chittagong. Initially, the British intended to create a land passage to East Asia. Harry Verelst, assuming the position of the first chief of Chittagong in 1760, reported the following year that he had reason to believe that a passage could be found through the eastern hills adjacent to Chittagong, in order to reach Tibet and the northern parts of Cochinchina. The cessionary treaty of 1760, which placed Chittagong under the British East India Company, did not define a boundary of Chittagong. In 1763, however, Verelst proclaimed the local jurisdiction of Shermust Khan, the Chakma raja, to be 'All the hills from the Pheni river to the Sangu and from the Nizampur Road [the present Dhaka-Chittagong road] to the hills of the Kuki Raja'. But this demarcation was quickly violated by the British, who continued to extract forest products from the area without permission.
The British also adopted a policy of settling Bengali peasants and landlords from Chittagong to the western part of the Chakma territory. This land appropriation and unauthorised extraction eventually led to armed resistance against the British by Kalindi's predecessors, who fought from 1772 until 1798. As the resistance was led by two successive Chakma rajas, historians have referred it to as the Chakma bidroha, or resistance. There were, however, other indigenous groups in the area who joined the resistance, most notably a famous Marma warrior named Kheju Roaza, and other hill peoples referred to by the British as Kukis.