1

The 'Rohingya' Identity - British experience in Arakan 1826-1948

9 April 2014
Derek Tonkin

I only recently discovered the Digital Library of India. Like a child let loose in a sweetshop, I
have been gorging myself on unrestricted historical candy. With the Census in Myanmar on
its way to completion, I looked to see how the British in their time had handled the issue of
the 'Rohingya' identity which is currently a matter of deep concern: there sadly appears to
have been a last minute change of heart by the Myanmar Government not to allow self-
identification by Muslims as 'Rohingya', under the threat by Buddhists in Rakhine State to
boycott the census if that was permitted.

There is a very simple answer to the matter of British practice. There was no such identity as
Rohingya known to the British Governments of either India until 1937 or of Burma after the
separation from India on 1 April of that year. In the 122 years between their conquest of
Arakan in 1826 and Burmese independence in 1948, not a single reference to 'Rohingya' is
to be found in any British official report, regional gazetteer, census, legislation, private
correspondence or personal reminiscence. Even if such a self-identification had been made,
the census enumerator would have written 'Chittagonian' as they were under instructions to
do in both the 1921 and 1931 censuses if alternative identities were offered, such as
'Kawtaw', 'Barna', 'Babuji' or 'Magh'.








The presence of persons of Islamic faith in Arakan, and indeed in the whole or Burma, has
been recorded by the British in considerable detail and has in any case been attested by
writers and historians of all nationalities. It is not a matter of dispute.

One group which particularly attracted my attention in British records was what the 1901
Census described as the 'Arakan Muhammadans'. By the 1931 Census, now described as
'Arakan Mohamedans', their numbers totalled 51,615 compared to 252,152 'Chittagonians'
and 65,211 'Bengalis', in addition to 'Arakan Kamans' and 'Myedus' also resident in Arakan.

The 'Arakan Mohamedans' comprised 26,153 males and 25,462 females, an even balance
between the sexes as you would expect in a long-standing permanent community, while
'Chittagonian' males outnumbered females by two to one and 'Bengali' by three to one - a
ratio, I would have thought, which might favour polyandry rather than polygamy.
'Chittagonian' is hardly a racial, rather a linguistic and geographical designation. "It might be
argued that the figures for Chittagonians should be included in those for Bengalis", noted the
1931 Census Report, "but there is no harm done in giving separate figures for them." The
language spoken though by both groups was listed simply as 'Bengali'. In the 2014 Census,
the language spoken at home was not a question asked.

By means of that mysterious sympathy - the despair of the average European - which enables
Asiatics of all kinds to communicate with one another with apparent freedom on the veriest minimum
of a common vocabulary, the Burmese enumerator has, doubtless, despite his ignorance of the aliens
tongue, generally succeeded in making his native of India understand that what he wished to ascertain
was his Zat or caste. Paragraph 157 - 1901 Burma Census Report edited by C C Lowis,
Census Superintendent

2

The 'Arakan Muslims', as I shall call them, mostly resided in Akyab (Sittwe) District, but they
were also found further south in Kyaukphyu (1,597) and Sandoway [Thandwe] (1,658). In
his report on Indian Immigration released in 1940, Financial Secretary James Baxter said
that there was indeed "an Arakanese Muslim community settled so long in Akyab District
that it has for all intents and purposes to be regarded as an indigenous race." Baxter noted
that these Muslims commonly spoke the language of their ancestors among
themselves, although they used Burmese in writing.







The 1901 Census report referred to a group of Arakan Muhammadans who had been
"fetched from Arakan" as prisoners when the Kingdom of Arakan fell to Burman forces in
1785. They were eventually granted lands and allowed to settle around Mandalay. Their
descendants were to be found in the village of Bono (situated west of Meiktila) and also in
Taungmyin (in Rakhine State, to which they had presumably returned). These would
undoubtedly be the people whom the polymath Dr Francis Buchanan - medical practitioner,
botanist, linguist, geographer, gazetteer and traveller - had interviewed when he
accompanied a mission in 1785 to the Court of Ava, reporting in an article in 1799 on the
languages of the Burma Empire in a learned journal 'Asiatick Researches' that these were
Muslims who "have been long settled in Arakan, and who call themselves 'Rooinga', or
natives of Arakan".

This word 'Rooinga' would appear to mean no more than 'Arakaner' - a geographic locator
rather than an ethnic designation. It would seem to be derived from one of the many Bengali
names used to describe Arakan. As Buchanan put it in his 1798 "Account of a Journey in
South East Bengal": "Various parts of the hills are inhabited by Mugs [Rakhine] from
Rossawn, Rohhawn, Roang, Reng or Rung, for by all these name is Arakan called by the
Bengalese". Buchanan went on to say: "These people left their country on its conquest by
the Burmas [i.e. Burmans], and subsist by fishing, Boat building, a little cultivation, and by
the Cloth made by their Women. They also build houses for the Mohammedan refugees, of
whom many came from Arakan on the same occasion, and settling among men of their own
Sect, are now much better off than their former Masters [the 'Mugs']."

In his voluminous writings for scholarly journals and independently, both before and after his
visit to the Court of Ava in 1785, not once did Buchanan refer a second time to Arakan
Muslims as 'Rooingas' which he would assuredly have done if the designation had any
currency in the region at the time, or found any favour with him personally.

In the absence of any British archival documentation over the 122 years of their stewardship
of Arakan, I can only conclude that 'Rohingya' is a designation which came into existence
and usage after the Second World War, although it cannot be totally excluded that it might
be connected to folkloric tradition unknown to the British. It is however most important to
note that it was a designation which the Myanmar Government itself quietly acknowledged
and even on occasions used, though only infrequently, in the late 1950s and early 1960s.
"That the Arakanese are being pushed out of Arakan before the steady wave of Chittagonian
immigration from the west is only too well known.....the Arakanese not having been
accustomed to hard manual labour for generations cannot and will not do it now; it has to be
brought home to him that if he will not do more for himself he must give way to the thrifty and
hard-working Chittagonian and his only reply is to move on. " Page 89 - Akyab Gazetteer 1917
edited by Deputy Commissioner R B Smart.

3

These occasions, which included permission for radio broadcasts in the local dialect, are not
in dispute and have been well documented.

We might ask whether the Arakan Muslims of yesteryear in Akyab were indeed the
descendants of the original Muslim residents of Arakan. This seems very likely. But where
are they today, after the vicious sectarian fighting which followed the Japanese invasion in
1942, the disruptions of the Second World War, the Jihadist Uprising which lasted from
1948 to 1961 and the massive exodus to Bangladesh first in 1978 and then in 1991, and
eventual repatriation? Are there any Muslim residents who can today provide historical
documentation and assert, in the style of President Kennedy: "Ich bin ein Arakaner"?








The international campaign to support the 'Rohingyas', as many but by no means all
Muslims in Rakhine State now style themselves, has been so successful that it has become
confrontational and thus counterproductive to any solution. Not for one moment do I
begrudge the Muslims of Arakan their right to choose their own self-identity and to register
this in any Census. This would in any case seem to be their right under generally accepted
international practice. But it becomes counterproductive when supporters claim that these
indigenous Muslims of Arakan have always called themselves 'Rohingya', for which there is
simply no credible historical evidence.

It is uncontested, and should in any case be self-evident to us all, that some Muslim
residents of Arakan could, if only they had the documentation, trace their ancestry back
several centuries, while most others, even if 'Chittagonian', have been in Myanmar for four or
more generations and so qualify in principle for citizenship, even under the much criticised
1982 Act. Unfortunately the debate, under external pressures, has descended into a sterile
confrontation in which 'Rohingya' insist that their designation is proof that they are an
indigenous race, while the Government for its part insists that this not the case. This debate
over the origins and relevance of the designation 'Rohingya' conceals the much more
important reality of the long historical presence of Muslim residents in Arakan.

Can there be any compromise between these two apparently irreconcilable positions, as
clearly neither side is likely to give way? The 'Rohingya' surely cannot hope to convert a
post-Second World War political label into an ethnic designation acceptable to the
Government. But equally might not the Government be persuaded to recognise that they
have in the past referred to particular Muslim residents of Rakhine State as 'Rohingya',
notably in the military administration of the Mayu Frontier District in northern Arakan which
existed between 1961 and 1964? Might not the Government be willing in the right
circumstances to accept the limited use once more of this previously acknowledged geo-
political designation?

"Eight Arakanese witnesses, seven of whom were members of the Legislature, maintained
that Chittagonian penetration in Arakan is steadily continuing and is resented not only by the
Arakanese proper but also by the settled Chittagonians..The view was expressed that it
was inadvisable to let Chittagonian immigration go unchecked as it contained the seeds of
future communal troubles. All the witnesses agreed that immigration from Chittagong should
be restricted." Paragraph 69 - Report on Indian Immigration 1940 presented by Financial
Secretary James Baxter.

4

If 'Rohingya' were felt to be a step too far, why not seek to modernise the 'Arakan
Muhammadan' of 1901?

A way out of the impasse needs to be negotiated. Rakhine politicians should be brought to
accept the historical reality about the continuous presence of Muslims in Arakan for a very
long time. An end should be brought to the nonsensical assertions of their supporters that
the 'Rohingya' are all illegal immigrants from Bengal.

But supporters of Rakhine Muslims overseas should at the same time acknowledge that the
particular designation 'Rohingya' had no serious historical validity prior to independence in
1948.

(Derek Tonkin, former British Ambassador to Thailand, Vietnam and Laos, is an advisor to Bagan
Capital Limited and Editor of Network Myanmar)
The 'Rohingya' Identity - Further Thoughts
Derek Tonkin
19 April 2014

I have received one or two expressions of disbelief about the conclusion I reached in my essay on 9
April 2014 (The Rohingya Identity The British Experience in Arakan 1826-1948) that the
designation 'Rohingya' was totally unknown to the British administration of Burma.

I willingly acknowledge that it is for populations themselves to decide their own identity, and if
particular Muslim communities in Northern Rakhine State in Myanmar today wish to identify
themselves as 'Rohingya', it is not for outsiders to argue that they should not do so. How long, after
all, does it take for a person to feel that he or she is a New Yorker, or a Londoner, or a New
Zealander, or for that matter an Arakaner (Rohinger)? It is nonetheless important that the historical
truth about Muslim communities in Arakan should not simply be swept under the carpet, especially
in their hour of need.

I have conducted research on the censuses completed by the British in Burma in 1872, 1881, 1891,
1901, 1911, 1921, 1931 and 1941 (although most of the detail relating to the 1941 Census was lost
during the war). Most of these reports can be read online at the Digital Library of India and each
report runs to several hundred pages. I can confirm that the designation 'Rohingya' does not appear
anywhere in these reports.

The 1921 and 1931 British Censuses of Burma were the first to attempt, not all that successfully by
their own admission, an analysis and record of ethnicity, based primarily on language rather than on
anthropology. By 1931, the British had identified no fewer than 19 major Muslim communities in
Burma, including five in Arakan, but 'Rohingya' was not among them. If the designation had existed,
the British would have wanted to know. There was absolutely no reason to keep it secret from them
or from anyone else.

Apart from these eight Census reports, from time to time regional 'gazetteers' were published in
Burma. Taken together with the Census reports, these documents highlight the presence in Arakan
of a number of indigenous Muslim communities, including the Kamans, Myedus and 'Arakaner
Mohamedans' (see Note below) , as well as more recent arrivals recorded as Chittagonians and
Bengalis.

The 1917 Akyab Gazetteer compiled by Deputy Commissioner R B Smart has an especially revealing
passage on pages 89 and 90 about Muslim residents in the Akyab District, which is the name given
by the British to the town and district of Sittwe and which encompassed the northern part of Arakan.
We read:

"The Mahomedans, who in 1872 numbered 58,255, had by the year 1911 risen to 178,647.
Many are men who come down for the working season only from Chittagong and are
included in the census returns, but are not, properly speaking, inhabitants of the country. In
1879 it was recorded that those who were bona fide residents, though recruited by
immigrants from Bengal, were, for the most part, descendants of slaves captured by the
Arakanese and Burmese in their wars with their neighbours.

"The Arakan kings in former times had possessions all along the coast as far as Chittagong
and Dacca, and many Mahomedans were sent to Arakan as slaves. Large numbers are said to
have been brought in by Min Raja-gyi [King of Arakan 1593-1612] after his first expedition to
Sundeep [Sandiva] and the local histories relate that in the ninth century several ships were
wrecked on Ramree Island and the Mussalman crews sent to Arakan and placed in villages
there.

"They differ little from the Arakanese except in their religion and in the social customs which
their religion directs; in writing they use Burmese, but amongst themselves employ
colloquially the language of their ancestors.

"Long residence in this enervating climate and the example set by the people among whom
they have resided for generations have had the effect of rendering these people almost as
indolent and extravagant as the Arakanese themselves. They have so got out of the habit of
doing hard manual labour that they are now absolutely dependent on the Chittagonian
coolies to help them over the most arduous of their agricultural operations, ploughing,
reaping and earthwork.

"Since 1879 immigration has taken place on a much larger scale and the descendants of the
slaves are resident, for the most part, in the Kyauktaw and Myohaung [Mrauk U] townships.
Maungdaw township has been overrun by Chittagonian immigrants. Buthidaung is not far
behind and new arrivals will be found in almost every part of the district. The later settlers,
who have not been sapped of their vitality, not only do their own labour but it not
uncommon to find them hurrying on their own operations to enable such as can be spared
to proceed elsewhere to add to their earnings by working as agricultural labourers, boatmen
or mill coolies."

Although the story about Ramree Island is probably little more than popular legend, the Gazetteer
identifies the two townships of Kyauktaw and Myohaung/Mrohaung/Mrauk U as the principal
localities where Arakaner Mahomedans had settled, indeed mostly resettled after seeking refuge in
Bengal in British India following the Burman conquest of Arakan in 1785, but returning to Arakan
soon after the British took control in 1826. These residents would indeed seem to be the 'original'
Muslim residents of Arakan before the influx of large numbers of labourers from Chittagong and
further afield in Bengal which started in earnest in the latter part of the 19
th
Century.

It is not all that clear to me yet, though others may know, what happened to these particular
indigenous Muslims at the time of the Japanese invasion in late 1941. The Kamans and Myedus are
thought not to have been persecuted by the Rakhine in the communal violence of 1942 and to have
stayed in their well settled localities. There is however evidence that many Arakaner Mohamedans
perished during this violence in March and April 1942 in the wake of the British retreat into
India. The two townships are listed in most accounts of the violence, which affected both Buddhist
and Muslim communities, with the Buddhists seeking sanctuary in the south and the Muslims in the
north of Arakan. Those Muslim residents of the two townships able to escape would have fled to
Maungdaw or into Bengal, but a few pockets seem to have survived to this day around Kyauktaw
and Mrauk U.

After the convulsions of the Second World War and the struggle for independence in both India and
Burma, the Muslim community of Northern Arakan, which consisted primarily (but not exclusively)
of Bengali immigrants, would seem to have taken up the mantle of the Arakaner Mohamedans and
sought to regularise their presence on a more permanent basis. Many of them had crossed quite
legally into, and taken up residence in Burma half a century or more previously, but some were still
only recent arrivals and may well have had Pakistani nationality. Writing for 'The Scotsman' on 18
May 1949, their special correspondent Michael Davidson in Sittwe noted that: "The great majority of
Arakan Moslems are said to be really Pakistanis from Chittagong, even if they have been settled here
for a generation. Of the 130,000 Moslems here, 80,000 are still Pakistani citizens."

I do not know the source of Davidson's information, but I have no reason to doubt that he believed
what he wrote. On the other hand, in his 'Burma Outpost' published in 1945 Anthony Irwin, who
fought with local Muslims in Northern Arakan against the Japanese in 1942 and 1943, expressed the
view that: "They are generally known as Bengalis or Chittagonians, quite incorrectly, and to look at
they are quite unlike any other product of India or Burma that I have seen. They resemble the Arab
in name, in dress and in habit..As a race they have been here for over two hundred years." British
administrators on the other hand with expertise of Burma had no doubt that in 1942 the populations
of Maungdaw and Buthidaung were overwhelmingly "Chittagonian", enigmatically abbreviated to
"CFs".

From 1946 a separatist, jihadist uprising had gripped Arakan and in support of their political
objectives, the 'Rohingya' myth was created. It gained some acceptance nonetheless with the
Burmese military and political leaderships in Rangoon, concerned to bring about a peaceful ending
of the jihadist revolt which lingered on until 1961, as well as to seek political alliances with the
Muslim community for the ruling political party, the Anti-Fascist People's Freedom League, which in
April 1958 split into 'clean' and 'stable' factions. The designation 'Rohingya' became established
among the Bengali speaking community.

The fact remains though that it was a fiction when created in the late 1940s, even if internationally it
is now widely accepted as fact, though not by the greater majority of the Burmese people, who
understand the reality on the ground rather better than most.

For all these reasons, we need to be so careful when speaking of the right of self-identification. On
the one hand, the retiring UN Special Rapporteur Toms Ojea Quintana has said in the context of the
recent Census that: "Self-identification should constitute a pillar of the collection of ethnically
disaggregated data. It is related to respect for the rights of individuals to assert their own identity.
To deny self-identification is therefore a violation of human rights." On the other hand, we might
well ask whether self-identification which is based on a fiction and which may have been foisted on
an impressionable community desperately seeking citizenship might not also be a violation of their
human rights, even if they were willing accomplices. No wonder this fiction has set Buddhist against
Muslim in Rakhine State.

I have assembled a range of materials on the 'Rohingya' issue which includes under the section
"British Reminiscences and Official Reports" relevant extracts from the British census and gazetteers
quoted above. In most cases the full reports are available online from the Digital Library of India .

The UN Security Council was briefed on the situation in Myanmar on 17 April 2014 by UN Special
Adviser Vijay Nambiar. The troubles in Rakhine State were high on the agenda. The US and the
UK took the lead in expressing their serious concern over recent events. They were absolutely right
to do so. Both countries, though, tend to shoot from the hip; they were so very prompt to condemn
the reported massacres at Du Chee Yar Tan on 9 and 13 January 2014. Myanmar has responded by
issuing a 110 page detailed rebuttal of the allegations - and they have pointedly declined to issue a
full English translation, only a summary. I do not need to tell you why.

Derek Tonkin

Editor - Network Myanmar
www.networkmyanmar.org
Heathfields, Berry Lane, Worplesdon, Guildford, Surrey GU3 3PU
Tel + 44 (0)1483 233576 - Mobile + 44 (0)7733 328832 - Email d.tonkin@btinternet.com

Note: From the 1921 Census of Burma: The Arakanese Buddhists in Aykab asked the Deputy Commissioner
there not to let the Arakanese-Mohamedans be included under Arakanese in the census. The instruction issued
to enumerators with reference to Arakanese-Mohamedans was that this race-name (in Burmese Yakaing-kala)
should be recorded for those Mohamedans who were domiciled in Burma and had adopted a certain mode of
dress which is neither Arakanese nor Indian and who call themselves and are generally called by others
Yakaing-kala ['Rakhine foreigner', to which Francis Buchanan first alluded in 1799].


The 'Rohingya' Identity: Arithmetic of the Absurd
Derek Tonkin
9 May 2014
I had it coming to me. Rohingya Bloggers have sought to demolish my recent presentation of the
British experience in Arakan. It is not merely that I am a dolt and a moron, but so too it seems were
all those British administrators who sought to depict in gazetteers and censuses the bewildering
kaleidoscope of ethnic diversity which they found in the country which Britain had conquered.
U Kyaw Min, who was only released from prison in January 2012, has a brilliant pedigree as a fighter
for freedom and democracy, a former member of the Committee Representing the People's
Parliament during the dark days of the military regime and currently Chairman of the Democracy and
Human Rights Party. In a recent article, after a preliminary skirmish to knock me off balance with a
barrage of punches and a swipe at my "attempt to appease his Myanmar friends in his working
environment" (I live and work in rural Surrey with no Burmese for miles, apart from a moggy or two),
he delivered the coup de grace with these words:
"So called Bengali or Chittagonians in British census were mostly foreigners. Except business related
persons and official staffs most of them were seasonal labourers, who did not bring their spouses.
These foreigners were also included in British censuses. Professor Dr. Than Tun named them as
floating population. Once the working season is over, they returned to their native land. Rohingya
has nothing to do with them.So called Chittagonian immigrants never took permanent
settlement, only natives who formerly left Arakan came back and settled in their original places."
Well, that puts me in my place, I suppose. When Deputy Commissioner RB Smart for Akyab District
(which then covered the entire northern region of present-day Sittwe and Maungdaw Districts)
recorded in his 1917 Gazetteer for Akyab that: "Maungdaw township has been overrun by
Chittagonian immigrants. Buthidaung is not far behind and new arrivals will be found in almost every
part of the district", he must have been suffering from another bout of malaria which brought on
hallucinations. Census Superintendents SG Grantham (for the 1921 Census) and JJ Bennison (for the
1931 Census) must have been in similar physical or mental turmoil when they both failed to realise
that reports compiled by census enumerators of hundreds of thousands of Chittagonians and
Bengalis now permanently resident in Akyab District were all pure fantasy.
Financial Secretary J Baxter, no doubt likewise afflicted by some incurable Burmese malaise, noted in
his 1940 Report on Indian Immigration that in the 1931 Census no less than 82.43% of all 186,327
Chittagonians and 15,586 Bengalis in Akyab District gave Burma as their place of birth, which could
only mean, if U Kyaw Min is correct, that as soon as they could walk they must have moved to
Chittagong in order to qualify as seasonal labourers in future years in the land of their birth.
Somehow, I doubt that this was the case. It is neither rational not logical. Reason and logic though
have little relevance to this debate, which as the dantonesque Maung Zarni told the recent London
School of Economics conclave on the Rohingya question, is all about deeply passionate research, but
for the cause rather than the truth, not any arid dispassionate concern for accuracy based on
historical record.
I have searched in vain for census traces of the hundreds of thousands of 'Rohingyas' alleged to have
been invisibly resident in British Burma. To be fair, U Kyaw Min agrees with me that no one will find
any trace: "True", he says, "quite correct. But he goes on to say: Then what about some present
day Rakhine state ethnic peoples: Mramagyi and Dai-net who are also not found in British
censuses?" But, with respect, these two minority groups of a few thousand people only were so tiny
that they hardly compared with the hundreds of thousands of Muslims now claiming to be
'Rohingyas'. In any case, U Kyaw Min should know that the "Daingnet" (to give the British spelling)
are designated 'F4' under the Suk(Lui) Group in both the 1921 and 1931 Race Tables as resident in
Akyab District, and a whole paragraph is devoted to them in RB Smart's Gazetteer, while the
Mramagyi, mostly a Bengal-resident minority which migrated from Arakan to Bengal some years
before the Burmans arrived in 1785, are the subject of an article by Francis Hamilton in the
Edinburgh Journal of Science in 1824. In British Burma it seems likely that they were included in the
Census variation "Mranma" or "Myamma" which appear alongside the more normal "Mranma" and
"Myanma", with the suffix -gyi added to denote family origin.
I will not take you sentence by sentence through the article by U Kyaw Min, but I have sent him two
kindly letters hoping to establish a correspondence. He has yet to respond.
In Article 19 of the Indo-Burma Agreement of 1941, the British Government of Burma recognised
that "Indians who are born and bred in Burma, have made their permanent home and regard the
future of their families as bound up with its interests are entitled to be regarded as having
established a claim, if they wish to make it, to a Burma domicile, and therefore to the benefit of the
Section 144 of the Burma Act 1935", which guaranteed full rights and privileges to any person
domiciled in Burma. The Chittagonians and Bengalis of Arakan, who were born in Burma, thus
became assured like other qualified Indians of their right to permanent domicile. But the war
intervened and what happened after 1942 is another story.
In British eyes, domiciled Chittagonians and Bengalis merited full citizenship in an independent
Burma. But it seems to me that the 'Rohingya' of today have only damaged their cause by denying
that they have any connection at all with those Chittagonians and Bengalis who became permanent
residents of Burma from the early part of the last century, at a time when seasonal labour was, as
the 1911 Census recorded, already in serious decline and by 1934 was in the region of only 20,000
annually, according to the Commissioner for Arakan Division.
In any case, if the 'Rohingya' of today are not the 'Chittagonians' of yesterday, what has happened to
the more than 200,000 or more Chittagonian/Bengali souls who were permanently resident in
Burma in the 1930s? Have they simply disappeared into thin air, as it were, while coincidentally a
broadly equal number of persons has emerged from obscurity, indeed total invisibility during British
Burma, to take their places as Rohingyas, occupying the same townships and village tracts, but
claiming to be in no way related to them? Are we, in psychoanalytical terms, face to face with a case
of mass hallucinatory reincarnation contrived by the alter ego or doppelgnger concept?
In support of his remarkable claim, U Kyaw Min quotes from a book by Anthony Irwin who fought for
several months alongside "these Mussulman Arakaners" who, Irwin wrote, "were "generally known
as Bengalis or Chittagonians, quite incorrectly..As a race they have been here for over two hundred
years". Captain Irwin was the son of General Noel Irwin, Commander for a time of the 'Eastern Army'
in India. He arrived in India having no experience of Burma whatsoever. Irwin's account has been
described by the late British Ambassador and Burma specialist Peter Murray as "grossly overwritten
and factually unreliable; many of the adventures he claims to have had happened to other people."
No one in British Burma would dispute that there was a group of "Arakan Muslims" who could
indeed trace their roots back to the 17
th
Century and even earlier and who were quite distinct from
the Chittagonians and Bengali immigrants to Arakan. It might be that Irwin had seen some of their
villages. But there is nothing to confirm Irwin's broad assertion from any recognised British expert on
Burma, contemporary or modern-day, all of whom would profoundly disagree with his analysis.
I read that the Myanmar authorities are to make another attempt to include Rakhine Muslims in the
current census. I would not expect either side to give way on the issue of principle. It is however
suggested that a way out of the dilemma might be found by simply leaving the question on
'Ethnicity' blank. If the Muslims could agree to make this concession, which is in effect giving up the
right others have enjoyed to declare their ethnicity, that might resolve the problem for the present
and enable the vital statistics of this important group to be available for national planning services.
More especially, it would be a significant step towards recognition, notably in the issue of National
Registration Cards.
As British Ambassador Andrew Patrick admirably put it in a recent interview with Mizzima Business
Weekly: "Generally in the UK, and in Europe, ethnic groups are allowed to call themselves by the
name they want to use, whether or not that name has any historic validity. Of course when we use it,
thats not to say were expecting some sort of special status or a recognition of the Rohingya as an
ethnic group. That is for the Burmese parliament to decide. What I would say, is that its obviously
very important for that community to have the rights they are entitled to. And the Government has
made a commitment to ensure that everyone who is entitled to citizenship under the 1982 law gets
that."
I agree entirely. What more need I say?
Derek Tonkin
Editor - Network Myanmar
www.networkmyanmar.org
Heathfields, Berry Lane, Worplesdon, Guildford, Surrey GU3 3PU
Tel + 44 (0)1483 233576 - Mobile + 44 (0)7733 328832 - Email d.tonkin@btinternet.com