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Islam in Arakan: An interpretation from the Indian perspective: History and the Present was presented by Dr. Swapna Bhattacharya (Chakraborti) at ”Arakan History Conference”, Bangkok 23.11 – 25.11.2005, organised by the Institute of Asian Studies, Chulalongkorn University, Bangkok, Thailand. The history of Arakan or the Rakhine State of Myanmar is matchless due to various, partly, very complex, factors. The foremost among the factors which makes the history of Arakan so complex, at the same time, unique, is the region’s close contact with the Indian civilization. Unless the pulse of the interaction between the Buddhist world of Arakan and the Hindu-Buddhist civilization of India (especially Eastern India) with Islam of India in between is not felt, Arakan remains unintelligible. Further, to estimate the nature of Islam in Arakan in the medieval period, we have to place Arakan in the context of Bengal-Delhi (Bengal regionalism versus Mughal imperialism) tussle for power in the Bay of Bengal region.
With the Japanese occupation and entering of the British into Arakan, the Magh-Muslim hatred had taken a clear communal shape. Arakan was divided into Buddhist South and Muslim North.Moshe Yegar in his book Muslims of Burma has mentioned about his interview with a Rohingya leader whom he met while in Burma. This Rohingya leader stated that the British promised a ”National Area” to the Muslims of Arakan. The idea of national area is not altogether unknown among the AFPFL circle Union State, Autonomous State and National Area. The National Area should have its own territorial limit and also linguistic identity. Certainly, a tiny part of Arakan did not have that. These and many other developments made Arakan an extremely difficult state. The Prime Minister of Burma U Nu had lot of trouble with Arakan and had to postpone the demand for separate statehood. Like in India or any other country of South Asia, the ethnic and religious upsurge gets fragmented by its own weakness. So was the case with the Muslims of Arakan. The Mayu Frontier Administrative area had to be created so that the bona fide residents felt protected by the Rangoon Government. The Rohingya leaders pleaded for such an arrangement ( M. Yegar, 105). When the military Government took charge in 1962 the Mayu district was a part of the central administration. The statehood of Arakan was also delayed again. In one of the recent books on Southeast Asia, the author Beeson sees a formidable potential for a large-scale conflict in this region. We can only hope that the Muslims of Arakan will learn from their past and discard the path of confrontation and conflict.
