Democracy has generally been understood the best remedy to prevent societal violence, as it gives different groups a channel to voice their interests and grievances. However, in this article, that focuses on the Chittagong Hills, which for many decades has formed one of the most violent spaces in Bangladesh, we argue that, in reality, democracy and violence can be two sides of the same coin. This is not to say that in Bangladesh, where full liberal democracy is not in place, ordinary citizens have no values and idea(l)s of democracy and citizenship. On the contrary, in order to make sense of the intricate connection between democratic idea(l)s, and violent imaginations and practices, we focus in particular on the process of what we call the vernacularisation of democratic politics. We connect this process to the appropriation of citizenship and nationalism, by ordinary but radically differently-positioned people, in their daily realities. We demonstrate that widely shared imaginations of Bangladeshi-ness, as Bengali-ness or Muslim-ness, and of Bengalis/Muslims as the true nation and citizens of Bangladesh, are intimately connected with popular understandings and practices of democracy, which are based on the exclusion of the not-genuine-Bengalis, with the legitimisation and continuation of violence, and the exclusion of ethnic minorities in the Chittagong Hills.

中文翻译：

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“我们是这个国家真正的公民”

人们普遍认为民主是防止社会暴力的最佳补救措施，因为它为不同的群体提供了表达他们的利益和不满的渠道。然而，在这篇文章中，几十年来一直是孟加拉国最暴力的地区之一的吉大港山，我们认为，在现实中，民主和暴力可以是同一枚硬币的两个方面。这并不是说在没有完全自由民主的孟加拉国，普通公民没有民主和公民的价值观和观念。相反，为了理解民主思想（l）与暴力想象和实践之间的错综复杂的联系，我们特别关注我们所谓的民主政治白话化的过程。我们将这个过程与普通但立场截然不同的人在日常现实中对公民身份和民族主义的挪用联系起来。我们证明了广泛共享的对孟加拉人的想象，如孟加拉人或穆斯林，以及孟加拉人/穆斯林作为孟加拉国真正的国家和公民，与大众对民主的理解和实践密切相关，这些理解和实践都基于排除非真正的孟加拉人，暴力合法化和持续，并排除吉大港山区的少数民族。