The Khyang is one of the smaller ethnic communities within the Chittagong Hill Tracts where people from different ethnic groups such as Bawm, Chak, Chakma, Khyang, Khumi, Lushai, Marma, Mro, Pangkhua, Tanchangya, and Tripura live including the majority group of the country the Bangalee people. My research focuses on how Khyang identity is formed, how they talk and think about their own group as well as other groups, and find out transformations in identity expressions. I collected the field material for the paper from Bandarban and Rangamati of Chittagong Hill Tracts through participant observation. The findings indicate that among the Khyang emergence of situational identities is pre-dominant and it is a transformed consciousness based on the complex web of personal relations/ networks. Sometimes, among the older generation, the memory of their past existence still remains as a part of their identity. Further, a kind of collaboration or symbiosis is seen among the Khyang with the others living in the locality in regard to identity ascriptions. Therefore, on the basis of my ethnographic findings I argue that stereotypes and groupings are not fixed rather depend on perceived relationships among different ethnic groups; how they relate to those people at the moment categorization.

Keywords: Identity, Khyang, Chittagong hill tracts, Bangladesh.