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The Rohingya from Burmese Perspective
Akkanut Wantanasombut — MA candidate, Southeast Asian Studies Chulalongkorn University, Bangkok, Thailand.
The conflict between Muslims and Buddhists in Rakhine State of Myanmar has been going on for decades. The level of violence seems to increase day by day. Myanmar has accepted a total of 135 ethnic minority groups in its territory, but denied this status to the Rohingya Muslim minority in Rakhine State. The Myanmar government considers these people as Bengalese migrants, while the Rohingya themselves claim that they have been living in this area for centuries.
The alleged human rights violations in Rakhine State are a cause of concern to the international community. Media reports about arbitrary arrests, torture, and killings have been repeated again and again. Many Rohingya people try to flee from their homeland, seeking a new and better life, but most of them die at sea. These tragic stories have made the world sympathize with the Rohingya and question the humanity of the Myanmar government.
Since it was granted full independence by the British in 1948, Myanmar has been consumed by the chaos of civil wars involving various ethnic minority groups. Even among the majority Burmese themselves, the struggle with the military government for democracy continues until today. The only thing that the majority Burmese and the military regime seem to agree on is their attitude toward the Rohingya. This paper aims to examine the perception and the mindset of the Burmese toward the Rohingya, in order to understand the causes of the conflict from a different angle.
Rakhine State is situated on the western coast of today’s Myanmar, it is bordered by Chin State in the north, Magway Region, Bago Region and Ayeyarwady Region in the east, the Bay of Bengal to the west, and the Chittagong Division of Bangladesh to the northwest. The Arakan Yoma, with the highest peak of 3,063 meters at Victoria Peak, separate Rakhine State from central Myanmar. Off the coast of Rakhine State there are some fairly large islands such as Cheduba and Myingun Island. Rakhine State has an area of 36,762 square kilometers and its capital is Sittwe. There are various explanations about the origins of the Rohingya. From the Rohingya itself, they believe that their ancestors were in the region of Rakhine State, formerly known as Arakan, since the eighth century; they trace their ancestry to Arabs, Moors, Pathans, Moghuls, Bengalese and some Indo-Mongoloid people. Dr. Khalilur Rahman explain that the word Rohingya derives from the Arabic word Rahma meaning mercy.
But from the Burmese perspective, the term Rohingya has been developed only recently. Khin Maung Saw writes in his article2 that the term Rohingya never appeared in history before 1950. Dr. Maung Maung, the former Burma president, notes that the word Rohingya was not used in the 1824 census survey that was conducted by the British3. Dr. Aye Chan, Professor of History at the Department of International Cultures, Kanda University of International Studies, Japan, believes that the term Rohingya was created by the Bengalese who migrated from Bengal into this area during the British rule.
The Arakan history experts Dr. Michael W. Charney from SOAS and Dr. Jacques P. Leider from EFFO explain in the same direction that the earliest document mentioning the word Rohingya is the work of a British medical doctor, Francis Buchanan, who published in Asiatic Researches (in 1799) ”A Comparative Vocabulary of Some of the Languages Spoken in Burma Empire”. In his account, Buchanan states that the Mahommedans who have long settled in settled in Arakan and who called themselves Rooinga or native of Arakan and called the country Rovingaw.
Arakan was an independent state until the reign of king Bodawpaya of Burma, in 1785, during which he successfully conquered Arakan. Many Burmese kings had attempted to attack Arakan, even the great warrior kings of Pegu such as Tabinshweti and Bayinnaung, but all failed. At the end of the year 1784, Bodawpaya sent his troops by land and sea to invade Arakan. The Arakanese king Thamada and all the royal family, together with no less than 20,000 of his people, were deported to Burma. The Burmese army also moved the Mahamuni Buddha image from Mrauk-U to its capital Amarapura, which became a part of today’s Mandalay. Arakan became a provincial administration under a viceroy, supported by a Burmese garrison. Many Arakanese fled to Chittagong, which belonged to the British. These Arakanese tried to reconquer their country by fighting with the Burmese: they fled behind the British frontier and provoked a series of disputes, which in the long run became the main cause of the 1st. Anglo-Burmese War.
