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Rohingya: The Identity Crisis
By Najeeb Washaly — PHD Researcher – SRTM University, Maharashtra, India, Academia.edu (USA).
Though Rohingya identity crisis has received an international concern, it is still unsettled. This article deals with Rohingya identity crisis from different perspectives. The author addresses the political, ideological, and cultural factors that have contributed to Rohingya identity crisis. Further, the author points out that colonialism has contributed to the statelessness of the Rohingya.
The people who call themselves Rohingya are the Muslims of Mayu Frontier area, present-day Buthidaung and Maungdaw Townships of Arakan (Rakhine) State, an isolated province in the western part of Myanmar across Naaf River as boundary from Bangladesh (Chan, 2005). For the past three decades, the Rohingya have been seeking to restore their unrecognised ethnic identity, for any ethnic group has the right to identify itself or decide what name it should be called. Rohingya identity crisis began when they were divested from their cultural, national and ethnic identity in 1982, while Cheesman (2017) argues that 1982 citizenship law did not affect the Rohingya though he mentioned in the abstract that ‘people who reside in Myanmar but are collectively denied citizenship – like anyone identifying or identified as Rohingya – pursue claims to be taingyintha so as to rejoin the community.’
Recently, almost all news channels and agencies, social and human right activists, journalists etc. have addressed and tackled the Rohingya crisis. Much of the focus was on the ongoing violence and systematic ethnic cleansing committed by some fanatic Buddhists and military forces. Thus, this 21st century most outrageous tragedy has nearly prevailed all social media, depicting the worst discrimination and bloodiest atrocities ever. The violence and ethnic cleansing of the Rohingya broke out in 1978, 1991–2, 2012, and two separate incidents in 2016–17. Since then, Myanmar government has been justifying such persecution as the right to protect the country from terrorist attacks and foreign intruders.
It addressed Muslim ethnic groups as terrorists especially after some police posts along the border with Bangladesh had been attacked by some militants allegedly said to belong to Rohingya. During and after the violent episodes, many Myanmar Buddhists raised issues of ‘naing-ngan-tha’ (citizenship) and ‘taing-yin-tha’ (indigenous or national identity) and questioned whether Muslims truly belong in Myanmar culture (Kyaw, 2015). Thus, the long-lasting crisis continued, and the violence against the Rohingya had increased.
While most of the media dealt with Rohingya crisis as the most persecuted minority in the world, there is still a major challenge, it is that of the unrecognised identity. Their statelessness is the pretext that most of the Rohingya were brought to Arakan (now Myanmar) during the British colonial period, in spite the fact that the Rohingya had settled in Arakan long ago before the arrival of the British.
