15/03/2026
Imagine being sent to the UN to fight for your country, only to find your mother standing on the opposing side.
This isn’t a movie script. It is the tragic, real life story of Raja Tridev Roy, the 50th King of the Buddhist Chakma Circle.
The story actually begins in 1947. During Partition, the British assigned the Chittagong Hill Tracts to Pakistan, even though the region was 97% non-Muslim. Decades later, when the 1971 war broke out, the Raja made a fateful choice. He feared that a new Bengali majority nation would swallow his tribe’s identity, so he chose to side with the Pakistani military.
By 1972, the drama peaked in New York. Pakistan sent the Raja at the head of a 21 member delegation to lobby against the recognition of Bangladesh. In a brilliant and brutal move of diplomatic chess, Bangladesh sent his own mother, Rajmata Benita Roy, to stop him.
The mother won that day, and Bangladesh joined the UN. But the Raja paid the ultimate price. He was barred from his homeland forever. He spent the rest of his life in a house in Islamabad, just miles away from a Presidency he could never hold because he refused to renounce his Buddhist faith.
