The 'Rohingya' in Myanmar

The discrimination against mostly stateless Muslims in Rakhine State in Myanmar has caught world attention following serious communal unrest in June. Since Burmese independence in 1948, the name "Rohingya" has increasingly been used to designate these unfortunate people. This Note has the sole purpose of looking at the historical origins of the designation. Derek Tonkin Chairman Network Myanmar 17 September 2012 ***** A Note on the Origins of the "Rohingya" There are some 800,000 or more persons living in Rakhine Province (Arakan) of Islamic faith, about one quarter of the total Muslim population of Myanmar. Their origins are varied. One Muslim writer Mohamed Ashraf Alam has noted that: Tides of people like the Arabs, Moors, Turks, Pathans, Moghuls, Central Asians, Bengalees came [to Arakan] mostly as traders, warriors, preachers and captives or through the sea route. The great majority of Muslims in Rakhine State today speak a language akin to Bengali and have arrived from Bengal, now Bangladesh, during the last 150 years or so. Another 300,000 live in neighbouring Bangladesh, mostly refugees from Myanmar. At the time of the British invasion of Burma in the First Anglo-Burmese War 1824-5, from all accounts some 35,000 Muslims had settled in Arakan living peacefully in scattered locations. The language they then spoke was described in one account not as Bengali, but a mixture of Hindi, Rakhine Burmese and Arabic (Index Alphabeticus Berlin 1815). This same reference, curiously, describes locally resident Hindus, then as numerous as the Muslims but now long departed, as speaking a language which was a mixture of Bengali, Sanskrit and Rakhine Burmese. The document also describes Muslims as Rooinga or Runga, one of only a very few references to Rooinga prior to 1824 and seemingly based on an isolated, possibly sole account dating from 1799 and published in 1801 by Dr Francis Buchanan, geographer, botanist and explorer who visited the Court of Ava in 1795 where he made his observations. Rooinga may well be no more than a variation of the name Mrohaung or Rohang, the old Arakanese Kingdom which fell to the Burmese in 1784, an interpretation accepted by at least one Muslim scholar. But other Muslim scholars, historians and activists have suggested a range of alternative and widely differing explanations for the origins of the term. During the period of British rule of Arakan from 1 April 1825 (when Mrauk U, the capital of Arakan, was captured by the British) until 4 January 1948 when Burma acquired independence, the British reported on and listed those of Islamic faith as Mohammedans, later as Muslims. In the wake of a

massive influx of labourers from Bengal they became known popularly by local British officials as Chittagongian by race speaking a type of Bengali. There is not a single reference to "Rohingyas" to be found in British documents during the period 1825-1948 when speaking of the Muslim inhabitants of Arakan. Independent Burmese scholars are generally agreed that the name was only invented after the Second World War when Arakan became a scene of operations for Mujahideen, known in Arakan during their uprising in 1949 as Mujahids. Persuasive papers by Dr Aye Chan and U Khin Maung Saw are attached at link. British historian Professor Hugh Tinker (to whom the designation Rohingya likewise seems to have been unknown) described in The Union of Burma [Oxford University Press 1957] how from 1950 onwards, the Mujahids maintained their reign of terror..causing an almost complete exodus of all non-Muslims and many Muslims from Northern Arakan. Indeed, the period 1942 to 1954 was a time of serious instability in Arakan, during which the militant Red Flags faction of the Burma Communist Party led by Thakin Soe were in tactical alliance after 1948 with the Mujahids against the newly independent State. The reprehensible discrimination since the 1960s against Rohingyas has been well documented, most recently by Human Rights Watch. On 11 September 2012 the House of Commons debated the issue substantively and made clear the depth of their concern. Enquiries by several organisations in the wake of the communal violence of June 2012 have now been instituted, with the support of the Myanmar Government. The latter however deny that the Rohingyas are one of Myanmars native ethnic groups, describe them generally as Bengalis and note that the large majority only arrived in Arakan after the British took control in 1825. This was at the behest initially of the East India Company which then governed India and helped to develop Arakan as an important and prosperous rice-growing area through the use of Bengali labour. The readiness of Western Governments to refer to the Rohingya in formal statements would on the face of it appear to reflect a success for pressure group lobbying, since the description was never previously in use at all. It is of course necessary to identify these inhabitants with some description, but the adoption of Rohingya is an unfortunate label, giving credence to activist pretensions. The evidence also suggests that there are some local Muslims who do not consider themselves as Rohingya at all and reject the label. The views of French historian Dr Jacques P Leider in this context are very relevant. Dr Leider is one of the very few impartial historians of the Arakan region whose opinions on the Rohingya issue merit respect. He has written: When I was in Bangladesh, people pointed out Muslims to me who originally lived in Rakhine. They have now moved to Bangladesh and when you ask them, are you Rohingya coming from Rakhine? they say, no, we are Muslims who live in Rakhine, we do not take for us the label Rohingya. Western politicians are not well briefed on the issue. In particular they show no awareness of the serious instability which affected Arakan from 1942 (following the Japanese invasion of Burma as they pressed towards Arakan) through the 1949 Mujahid rebellion until 1954 when the insurgency was finally quashed. This helps to explain the current attitude of the Myanmar Government. Quite recently, the Myanmar Immigration Minister U Khin Ye told Radio Free Asia that foreigners like the Bengalis have the right to apply for citizenship if they want to. The requirements are that their

grandparents and parents must have lived here and died here, that the applicant was born here and can speak the Burmese [or another national] language, and that he or she wants to live here, among other things. This principle of Third Generation was mentioned to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees Antonio Guterres by President Thein Sein when they met in July 2012. Bengali is however not accepted as a qualifying national language. For impoverished and poorly educated Bengalis, learning Burmese to the required standard is a serious obstacle. It would in all the circumstances seem more appropriate to refer to Muslims permanently resident in Rakhine State, whatever their national status, as Burmese Muslims rather than using the description Rohingya whose origins are recent, politically inspired and possibly contrived. There is little evidence that Burmese statesmen at any time up to the military coup in 1962 ever used the word Rohingya, though General Aung San, President Sao Shwe Theik and Prime Minister U Nu are reliably reported on occasions after the Second World War as saying that they regarded Muslims resident in Burma as belonging to indigenous races. These races were however never defined in such documents as the 1947 Constitution and there is no evidence from original sources that Burmese leaders ever used the designation Rohingya. The tribulations of Muslims in Rakhine State are beyond all doubt, but the resolution of the problem would seem to lie primarily if not exclusively with the Governments of Myanmar and Bangladesh.