Racism to Rohingya in Burma by Dr. Abid Bahar
in response to Aye Chan's Enclave With Influx Viruses
RACISM TO ROHINGYA IN BURMA
AYE CHAN’S “ENCLAVE” WITH “INFLUX VIRUSES” REVISITED (CHAPTER 3)
by
Dr. Abid Bahar
“The Burmese military has clearly embarked on a policy of ridding the country of ethnic Rohingyas by any possible means. Official claims that the refugees are "illegal immigrants" –
Asia Watch
An
enclave is part of a country geographically separated from the main part by the
surrounding foreign territory. A great deal of works has been done by the
military’s civilian collaborators on the province of Arakan (Rakhine province)
claiming that there is the existence of an enclave in Burma. Most prominent of
the authors is Aye Chan. Aye Chan, a native of Burma’s
Arakan (Rakhine) province, says there is an enclave in Arakan.
(1)
His work even outlines the common issues of dispute surrounding the Rohingyas
with the Rakhines. This doesn’t seem to be an ordinary enclave. This enclave is
Aye Chan’s portrayal of Burma's
Rohingya people in the Mayu frontier of the Arakan state. Aye Chan identifies
the Rohingyas as the non-natives of Burma who, he claims, illegally settled in
this region of Burma’s North-Western
province. This paper is a detailed review of the claims. It is important to
understand the issues raised by Aye Chan, for; Aye Chan’s article creates
trepidation and suggests to the xenophobic Burmese the issues to consider
dealing with the Rohingyas, along with a means to address them. Aye Chan’s
article is popular among xenophobic Burmese people as an intellectual work of
excellence. It was also published in several other Burmese journals and is
popular among anti-Rohingya ultranationalists. A review of the work shows, it
is a typical reflection of the contemporary state of Burmese scholarship on
ethnic minorities. In addition to its Rakhine version of the Rohingya history,
genocide readers will find it bearing the warning signs of the Rohingya
people’s on-going torment in Arakan. Aye Chan’s present work is important to
consider for its unique version of inter-racial relations of some significance
that defy academic understanding of Rohingya history and culture. As we will
see below he has given a scholastic face to his xenophobic work. As part of a
growing contemporary Arakanse popular literature, his goal here seems less
erudite and more to demonize the Rohingyas to create fear among the Burmese
people.
Who
are the Rohingyas? Rohingyas are an ethnic minority of Burma. Due to their
racial differences with the Burmans, they were being officially declared by the
military junta as the non-citizens of Burma, making them a stateless people. A
closer look shows Rohingyas are a racially different non-Momgoloid Burmese
people of multi-ethnic Arakan and Aye Chan's work is part of a literature
intended to validate Burmese military’s official claims that Rohingyas are
“foreigners” in Burma. In his article Aye Chan asks “Who are the Rohingyas?”
and continues, “Burma gained independence from Great Britain in 1948 and this
issue is a problem that Burma has had to grapple with since that time.” (p. 15)
Contrary
to his assertion, it is not just the Rohingya issue that has been a subject of
debate in Burma since 1948; it is about Burma’s ethnic minorities in general and about Burma's official definition of who is the native
of Burma and who is not has been the issue of debate. To resolve this and the
other similar issues, U Nu, the then elected Prime Minister of Burma recognized
Rohingyas as one of the Burmese nationalities. U Nu also named the Rohingya
majority area in Burma’s North-West
as the Mayu Frontier. It is the military junta of Ne Win that usurped power
later that began persecuting them and questioning the status of the Rohingyas.
The author says, “The people who call themselves Rohingyas 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 the country across
Naaf River as boundary from Bangladesh. (p. 15)
It
is true that Rohingyas are concentrated in the Mayu Frontier. However, they
also live in other parts of Arakan.
(2)
There is even a Rohingya para (village) in Akyab. It seems that at the outset
of his article, Aye Chan with a void premise is beginning to isolate Rohingyas
into an enclave. The author states, “Arakan had been an independent kingdom
before it was conquered by the Burmese in 1784. Rohingya historians have
written many treatises in which they claim for themselves an indigenous status
that is traceable within Arakan State for more than a thousand years. Although
it is not accepted as a fact in academia, a few volumes purporting to be
history but mainly composed of fictitious stories, myths and legends have been
published formerly in Burma and later in the United States, Japan and
Bangladesh. These, in turn, have filtered into the international media through
international organizations, including reports to the United Nations High
Commissioner for Refugees (Ba Tha 1960: 33-36; Razzaq and Haque 1995: 15).” (p.
15)
Aye
Chan identifies the above mentioned sources as "treatises,"
"fictitious books" without detailing the content of the sources
either in this article or elsewhere. It appears that his personal opinion is
being passed on as simply an expert opinion. He says, “The present paper was
written for distribution and discussion at a seminar in Japan. During the
seminar, there was a debate between the author and professor Kei Nemoto
concerning the existence of the Rohingya people in Rakhine (Arakan). Nemoto, in
a paper written in Japanese, agreed with the Rohingya historians that the
Rohingyas have lived in Rakhine since the eigth century A. D. The author
contests the validity of these claims.” (p. 15)
In
the above, Aye Chan’s stand on contesting the validity of Rohingya’s origin in
Arakan is clear. But the disconcerting thing is if his paper was written mainly
to refute Kei Memoto's arguments, as he claims, it becomes an academic
responsibility for the latter to provide the bibliographical details of Kei
Nemoto's paper. Here we are left with Aye Chan as a feisty boxer without the
details of the match! Disparaging Rohingya history The author says, “In light
of this, it is important to reexamine the ethnicity of the ‘Rohingyas’ and to
trace their history back to the earliest presence of their ancestors in
Arakan.” (p. 15)
In
the above, it is not clear “in the light of” what Aye Chan is trying to find
the validity of the Rohingya's Burmese ethnicity? In other words, when he is
questioning Rohingya’s origin, the benchmark of his measurement is not clear.
But he continues, “And history tells us that we do not have to go back very
far. In the early 1950s that a few Bengali Muslim intellectuals of the
northwestern part of Arakan began to use the term “Rohingya” to call
themselves.” (p. 15)
Aye Chan hesitates to go beyond 1950. One can
legitimately question: why? Contrary to Aye Chan’s claims, history tells us
that the term Rohingya was there before 1950. From the time of Noromikhla (from
1430 when the latter was helped to regain his kingdom from the Burmese) there
had been a great degree of contact between Arakan's Mrohaung city and Bengal.
Francis Buchanan, a British historian, in 1799 even met people in Burma who
identified themselves as Rohingyas.
(3)
Michael Charney says, "...Rohingya was an invention of the colonial
period, is contradicted by the evidence.”
(4)
Obviously, when Aye Chan says "...we don't have to go very far" and
claims himself as a historian, denying historical evidence as the above, it is
a tendency in history-writing called reductionism. It seems that his
understanding of the Rohingya situation is clearly taken in its "face
value." It is important to note that Rohingyas developed from several
origins of people mainly from Indo-semitic background. In Aye Chan’s
opinionated understanding he even neglected the Rohingya origin in the ancient
Chandra rule of the "Indian Kulas." Chandra rule demonstrated in the
Brahmni-derived Gupta-and Debanagri script in Arakan's early history. It was
during this time that Arab sailors came in contact with the local Dravadian
dark skinned people forming the first nucleus of the Rohingya people.
(5)
In other words, this was the first wave of the typical Rohingya population
formation in southern Arakan. The other great wave of Rohingya formation was
the Bengali and Persian settlements in Arakan through the reigns of
Narameikhla's time beginning from 1430. We also see during the 16th and 17th
century even a "massive deportations of Bengalis” from lower Bengal to
Arakan caused in the increase in the “Kula” people. In this context Jacques
Leider notes, “Muslim mercenaries, poets, traders, and officials were few in
number when compared to the thousands of slaves established along the Kalander
and Lambro Rivers."
(6)
Evidently, even if poets and officials were few; their influence in the Arakani
administration was significant. It is no wonder that these were the times of
Alaol and the other Rohingya poets, originating from Arakanese slaves, who were
the pioneers of the present Rohingyalish language and its medieval literature.
It is true, “Michael W. Charney, Sanjay Subrahmanyam, Stephan van Galen, Ana
Marques Guedes who have all made important contributions during the last
fifteen years. Their studies have thrown much light on the economic life of the
Mrauk U kingdom, the importance of the slave and rice trade, and the importance
of Muslim and Portuguese mercenaries in Arakan. They have shown in particular
that when we talk about the presence of Muslims in Arakan and the existence of
an early Muslim community, we should not only recall a few poets and ministers
at the court of Rakhine, but as well the massive deportations and settlements
of Bengalis in Arakan before 1785.”
(7)
The number of these “Kalah” people settling in the valley of the greatest river
of Arakan was so huge that the river ”Kaladan", was named after the Kalah
or the socalled foreigners. It seems from the 16th century this region became
the land of the Rohingyas who originated from Bengali slaves.
(8)
Surprisingly, the author, claiming himself a native historian contradicts with
the above observations and says, ”They [Rohingyas] were indeed the direct
descendants of immigrants from the Chittagong District of East Bengal
(present-day Bangladesh), who had migrated into Arakan after the province was
ceded to British India under the terms of the Treaty of Yandabo, an event that
concluded the First Anglo-Burmese War (18241826).” (p. 15)
In
the above we see Chan’s yardstick is that Rohingyas, as “foreigners” in Arakan,
created for themselves an enclave within Burma. As foreigners, they are also
the “Influx Viuses” needing to be exterminated. In detail, his hypothesis is
that Rohingyas settled in Burma after 1824. Not surprisingly, this is also Burma's military government’s
stand on the Rohingyas. In trying to justify his point he used the qualifier,
“indeed” ("They were indeed..."). Here the source of his information
is missing when he
used the word "indeed" to emphasize. Again, it appears that it is
simply his opinion. As expected Aye Chan says, “Most of these migrants settled
down in the Mayu Frontier Area, near what is now Burma’s border with modern Bangladesh.” (p.15)
In
the above when he says "most of these migrants settled down in the Mayu
Frontier Area," he supposedly means that not all of Rohingyas are illegal
immigrants. If we tentatively accept Aye Chan’s argument, we can now argue, are
there records of the families of "most of these migrants" to justify
this claim? The answer is, of course not. It is a statement based on flimsy
premise. A Rohingya from Kyawktaw says “I was born in the village: Ombadi Rwa,
under Kyawktaw Township in Arakan State of Burma. My father's name is Rwasugri
Hafizur Rahman. My paternal grand father's name is Zebar Mullock who was killed
during the pogrom of 1942 in communal violence. My maternal grand father's name
is Amiruzzaman. All their graves along with my other forefathers are lying in
that village. They also know very well that it is quite impossible for any
Bengali settler to settle in a remote and interior area like Kyawktaw and as
such it is quite impossible to find out any Bengali settler among the
40-generation predecessors of the people of Kyawktaw which is at a distance of
4 days journey from Bangladesh.”
(9)
When Aye Chan asserts that Rohingyas are illegal immigrants, I believe Aye Chan
here refers to their ancestors having supposedly settled after 1826. In making
this type of statement the confusion Aye Chan created here is in his expression
that Rohingyas are illegal settlers in Arakan. Contrary to Aye Chan’s claim
however, Rohingyas are Burmese-born citizens. We now know that based on this
same principle of racial categorization, in 1982 the Burmese military
government declared the Rohingyas as the non-citizens of Burma. In this
allegation, Aye Chan’s stand goes in favor of the military's 1982
Constitutional Act which denied Rohingyas's citizenship. It is now clear that
the motivation behind Aye Chan’s writing this article and the book "Influx
Viruses" is to reinforce the military’s position that Rohingyas are the
noncitizens of Burma. Again, to further prove his point Aye Chan calls the
Rohingyas as “Chittagonians” because he says he finds it in the British
colonial records. (p. 15)
In
this description, we see Aye Chan's double standard. He preferred to call his
own community -- Rakhines, identified in the colonial record as “Mugh” meaning
the “pirates in the Bay.” On the contrary, for the Rohingyas, he found them as
"Chittagonians" to justify them as “foreigners.” In the colonial
record, the term “Chittagonian” for Rohingyas had some colonial ambiguity for
identifying them which will be discussed later. Aye Chan’s choice for
identification of the Rohingyas as being "Chittagonians" -- who are a
racially different group from his own -- clearly reflects his ultra-nationalist
Rakhine prejudices. The term Rohingya was in common use centuries ago. But Chan
says, “The creators of that term [Rohingya] might have been from the second or
third generations of the Bengali immigrants from the Chittagong District in
modern Bangladesh.” (p. 16)
As
opposed to Aye Chan’s beliefs, we see Francis Buchanan records
"Rohingya" as an ethnonym in 1799, as a dialect that "...is …
spoken by the Mohammadens, who have long settled in Arakan, and who call
themselves Roainga, or natives of Arakan."
(10)
Michael W. Charney says, "The derivation of Rohingya from Roainga is very
clear."
(11)
Buchanan's explanation that some Brahmin informants from Arakan called themselves
as "Rosawan" and that the Rakhines called the Muslims and the Hindus
as "Kulaw, Yakin, or stranger Yakin" prove the existence of the
ethnonym predating British occupation of Arakan. (12) Chan continues,
“....however, this does not mean that there was no Muslim community in Arakan
before the state was absorbed into British India. When King Min Saw Mon, the
founder of Mrauk-U Dynasty (1430-1784) regained the throne with the military
assistance of the Sultan of Bengal, after twenty-four years of exile in Bengal,
his Bengali retinues were allowed to settle down in the outskirts of Mrauk-U,
where they built the well-known Santikan mosque. These were the earliest Muslim
settlers and their community in Arakan did not seem to be large in
number." (p. 16)
We
are puzzled with Chan’s statement above! When Bengal army was sent twice; once
through Wali Khan and later Sindkhan to help the Arakanese forces to liberate
Arakan from Burmese occupation, Chan’s wishful thinking took away the 30
thousand soldiers of Wali Khan and the 20 thousand of Sandikhan's army and
their local wives and children who settled by the Kalander River Valley.
(13)
Aye Chan’s assertion is clearly tendentious, intended to intellectually
belittling the Rohingyas history. It is no accident of history that based on a
similar type of intolerant attitude, during the 1960s the more active Rakhine
extremists to get rid of Rohingya history destroyed the historic Sandikhan
mosque of Arakan! Interestingly, the author acknowledges that, “In the middle of
the seventeenth century the Muslim community grew because of the assignment of
Bengali slaves in variety of the workforces in the country. The Portuguese and
Arakanese raids of Benga (Bengal) for captives and loot became a conventional
practice of the kingdom since the early sixteenth century. The Moghal historian
Shiahabuddin Talish noted that only the Portuguese pirates sold their captives
and that the Arakanese employed all of their prisoners in agriculture and other
kinds of services (Talish 1907:422)." (p. 16)
Aye Chan, however, tries to belittle Muslim
influence by saying, “Furthermore, there seem to have been a small group of
Muslim gentry at the court. Some of them might have served the king as Bengali,
Persian and Arabic scribes. Because the Mrauk-U kings, though of being
Buddhist, adopted some Islamic fashions
such as the maintaining of silver coins that bore their Muslim titles in
Persian and occasionally appearing in Muslim costumes in the style of the Sultan
of Bengal.These were the earliest Muslim settlers and their community in Arakan
did not seem to be large in number.” (p. 16)
It
is mind-boggling to accept Aye Chan’s assertion of the Rohingyas considering
the fact that after the second arrival of the Bengal army when Arakan became a
province of Bengal, it even began using Muslim coins, the kings used used
Muslim names and the king paid taxes to the Bengali king. Historically
speaking, due to such a Bengali/ Persian and Arabic influence, from this point
onward in Arakan we see the rise of two distinct people with two languages;
Rakhine and the Rohingya. The Muslim gentry's use of Persian and Arabic in the
court was the fore bearer of today’s Rohingyalish language, and literature.
Poet Alaol and others introduced this new trend in Rohingya literature.
Arakan’s Rohingyalish received both Rakhine and Bengali influences which
ultimately made it different from Chittagonian dialect. Aye Chan seems
oversimplified the complexities of Arakan history and says, “Rohingyas are
Chittagonian” “illegal immigrants” and “influx viruses.” Ignoring Important
Facts about Burmese Invasion of Arakan The present author in his work also
ignores other important issues. He says “During the four decades of Burmese
rule (1784-1824), because of ruthless oppression, many Arakanese fled to
British Bengal. According to a record of British East India Company, there were
about thirty-five thousand Arakanese who had fled to Chittagong district in
British India to seek protection in 1799 (Asiatic Annual Register 1799: 61;
Charney 1999: 265).” (p. 16)
While
Aye Chan reports about the Rakhine exodus to Bengal due to the Burmese invasion
of Arakan, he remained silent on the Rohingya exodus during the same event. He
has excluded the Rohingyas as if Rohingyas were Budapaya's favorites and
nothing happened to them. Whereas Puran, probably a Rohingya (as quoted by
Buchanan), says, "... in one day soon after the conquest of Arakan the
Burmans put 40,000 men to Death: that wherever they found a pretty Woman, they
took her after killing the husband; and the young girls they took without any
consideration of their parents, and thus deprived these poor people of the
property, by which in Eastern India the aged most commonly support their
infirmities."
(14)
Other Bengali sources report that refugees poured into Chittagong as far as up
to the Sanga River in Chittagong.
(15)
Chan, quoting Charney, says, “A considerable portion of Arakanese population
was deported by Burmese conquerors to Central Burma. When the British occupied
Arakan, the country was a scarcely populated area. Formerly high-yield paddy
fields of the fertile Kaladan and Lemro River Valleys germinated nothing but
wild plants for many years (Charney 1999: 279)." In Aye Chan’s co-authored
book, Influx Viruses, says, “Many Rakhines, who took refuge in India, began to
return to their homeland immediately after the annexation. Most of them began
to settle in Sittwe, Kyaukpyu and Thandwe and some people managed to settle in
their original native places.”
(16)
It is true the invasion created such a fear that a great number of people left
Arakan. “The population at the time of British occupation in 1826 did not
exceed 100,000. In 1831 it amounted to 173,000; in 1839 to 248,000, and in 1901
to 762,102.”
(17)
It appears that only a fraction of its population returned back to Arakan. What
was the population of Arakan at the time of Burmese invasion? From the close
contact that Arakan maintained with Bengal for over 3 centuries, it is
reasonable to assume that at the time of invasion there could be equal number
of Rohingyas and Rakhines in Arakan. This makes sense when we notice that
Rohingyas are descended from the aboriginal Dravadian Kula stock, the Arab
settlers from the 8th century, the Persian soldiers during the Narameikhla’s
time and afterwards, and the massive Bengali slaves exported to Arakan that had
culminated to a large “Kula” population in the Kaladan valley of Arakan. It
seems clear that with the Rakhines, a large number of Rohingyas also migrated
to Chittagong and mingled with the racially similar Chittagonian people. It is
unfortunate that neither the British colonial historians nor any modern Western
scholars of Arakan raised this important issue, causing the Aye Chan’s type
Rakhine speculation that the rise in the Rohingya population in Arakan was
caused by Bengali settlements in Arakan. Bengali sources however, shows that
during the genocidal Burmese campaign, a majority of the Arakanese population
-- both Rakhine and Rohingya -- escaped from Arakan to Chittagong causing this
'depopulation' of Arakan. Therefore, this massive depopulation cannot be
attributed solely to the Rakhine migration to Chittagong; it is also due to the
Rohingyas leaving Arakan for a safer place in Chittagong.
(18)
Referring to the Chittagong region, just prior to the Burmese invasion, Jacques
Leider notes, “Arakan's territorial expansion in the late 16th century came at
the price of a large buffer zone that was waste land: the region north of
Chittagong up to the Feni River in the Noakhali River; that land was
depopulated."
(19)
Prior to the Burmese invasion, this depopulation in Chittagong was caused by
the “Mogh-Portuguese piracy” and Bengali slave trade making Chittagong a
wasteland. During the period of Burmese invasion, the terrified Rakhine and
Rohingyas simply crossed the river Naaf and settled in the Chittagong region
depopulated due to the Mogh piracy. In order to justify his notion that
Rohingyas are foreigners, who had entered Arakan after 1826 as illegal
immigrants, Aye Chan says, “… the British policy was to encourage the Bengali
inhabitants from the adjacent areas to migrate into fertile valleys in Arakan
as agriculturalists. “ (p. 17)
Not
surprisingly, Aye Chan notes Rakhine returnees after the British conquest of
Arakan but ignores the Rohingyas, and blames the British for allowing return of
the non-Mongoloid Rohingyas. Aye Chan names the Rohingya returnees as the
“Chittagonians.” This, in spite the fact that, as a result of such a genocidal
massacre by the Burmese king, just over four decades earlier, many Rakhines and
Rohingyas had settled in the relatively peaceful and fertile southern
Chittagong, which is topographically similar to Arakan. Seeing the law and
order situation restored within a generation, under the British rule, some
Rohingyas, like the Rakhines, out of nostalgia must have returned to their
ancestral lands. Aye Chan finds it a problem! Aye Chan says about these
migrants: “The migrations were mostly motivated by the search of professional
opportunity. During the Burmese occupation there was a breakdown of the
indigenous labor force both in size and structure.” (p. 17).
This
'breakdown' of the labor force can be explained by the fact that Rohingya
(generally agculturists) had left Arakan to settle in Chittagong. Aye Chan
identified these returnees as “Chittagonians.” Aye Chan states “At first most
of them came to Arakan as seasonal agricultural laborers and went home after
the harvest was done.” (p. 17) understandably, the oppression by the Burmese
rule was so fearsome that some Rohingyas must have returned only as seasonal
workers considering the fact that Arakan was still in anarchy and Rohingyas had
termed it as a (Mogher Mulluk) lawless society.
(20)
There is no doubt that as news of the restoration of law and order spread, many
Rohingyas must have gone back to reclaim their ancestral homes. Ignoring this
vital information, Aye Chan finds the Rohingyas as “Chittagonians” and bulged
the Rohingyas with Indian migrants who migrated to Rangoon in Burma during the
British period. Aye Chan says,” ... hunger for land was the prime motive for
the migration of most of the Chittagonians. The British judicial records tell
us of an increase in the first decade of the twentieth century in lawsuits of
litigation for the possession of land.” (p. 17)
In
his attempt to prove Rohingyas as being niggling people, Chan cites the number
of litigation as an example. However, seen from another angle, it explains the
huge volume of the Rohingya population that left Arakan during the invasion and
now as the returnees to Arakan had to go to court to reclaim their property
that were already occupied by the Rakhines and other aliens from Burma. In
accounting the returnees, the impact of the Burmese invasion and its result in
the rise of Arakanese Rohingya population in Chittagong, Aye Chan has neglected
the Bengali sources that recorded the accounts of migration to southern
Chittagong, When dealing with this key issue, his neglect of the contextual
approach created a void in his work and retarded his entire line of arguments.
Aye Chan fails to use cross-cultural references and cross checking of data to
verify the records in its totality. These make his research incomplete. It
appears that the contradictions in his claims are clouded by his willful
omission of the Rohingya side of the story. Aye Chan’s most striking omission
is that while he remains critical of the Rohingyas, he remains silent about the
Burman colonial settlement in Arakan during the same period, which shows his
racial favoritism to the Burmese settlers but remains xenophobic in accounting
the Rohingyas issues. Aye Chan also ignored few other details. His main concern
was the increase in the Rohingya population during the British period. Other
than Rakhine and the Rohingya returnees, the increase in Muslim population
could be attributed to the fact that Rohingyas living in agricultural societies
had practiced polygamous marriages that must have led to an increase in the
child birth which was not the case with the Rakhines. In proving his hypothesis,
Aye Chan often displayed other contradictions. He himself mentioned that the
British census included Arakanese Muslims in some accounts as
"Indians" and in some other accounts as "Chittagonians.” It is
an irony that Aye Chan used such faulty categorizations of the 18th century to
identify Arakanese people of our modern times by race and religion to determine
their native status and their citizenship rights. In all this, Aye Chan’s
misadventure seems to be that, he is as trying to find a pin (the illegal Rohingya)
in a haystack.
Aye
Chan’s Religious Xenophobia To create a victim’s complex among the Rakhines,
Aye Chan now eulogizes the alleged discriminatory policy by the British. He
says, “…British administration to a certain extent gave the Muslim village
communities religious and cultural autonomy. How the new comers from the
Chittagong District set up their village communities in the frontier area. They
occupied the villages deserted by the Arakanese during the Burmese rule and
established purely Muslim village communities.” (p. 19 )
What
is surprising is that Aye Chan didn't want to understand that there could be
the displaced Muslim villagers who had returned back and obviously on their
return they were not going to build pagodas in their villages. It is a simple
truth that Christians would build church, Buddhists pagodas, and Muslims
mosques in their localities. Aye Chan didn’t clarify how making mosques can
make the Muslims “purely Muslim communities.” 1942 Japanese Occupation of
Arakan and the Birth of Rohingya Tragedy If the Burmese invasion of Arakan in
1784 and the subsequent British colonial occupation from 1826 were not enough
to create misunderstanding among Arakanese people, the 1942 Japanese occupation
and the race riot was the last straw to break the camel's back. It led to the
birth of Rohingya tragedy. Aye Chan relates, “The Japanese air force attacked
Akyab on 23 March 1942 and the British moved their administrative headquarter
to India on March 30. The administration by martial law began in Akyab District
on 13 April 1942 and with this racial tension burst to the surface, giving way
to the public disorder (Owen 1946: 26).” (p. 22)
He
continues, “Regarding the beginning of the ethnic violence in Arakan, Moshe
Yegar wrote that when the British administration was withdrawn to India in 1942
the Arakanese hoodlums began to attack the Muslim villages in southern Arakan
and the Muslims fled to the north where they took vengeance on the Arakanese in
Buthidaung and Maungdaw townships (Yegar 1972:67).
However,
an Arakanese record says: When the British administration collapsed by the
Japanese occupation, the village headman of Rak-chaung village in Myebon
Township and his two younger brothers were killed by the kula (Muslim)
villagers. Although the headman was an Arakanese, some of the villagers were
kulas. The two Arakanese young men, Thein Gyaw Aung and Kyaw Ya, organized a
group and attacked the kula villages and some inhabitants were killed (Rakhine
State People’s Council 1986:36).” (p. 21)
In
the above Aye Chan quotes the notorious Rakhine State People’s Council as a
biased source that identifies the Rohingyas as the Kulas. Aye Chan continues,
“It is certain that hundreds of Muslim inhabitants of Southern Arakan fled
northward, and that there were some cases of robbing the Indian refugees on the
Padaung-Taungup pass over the Arakan Yoma mountain ranges after the retreat of
the British from the Pegu Division and southern Arakan." (p. 22)
If
the above version is true, Aye Chan’s original hypothesis that Rohingyas are
Chittagonian Bengalis has been contradicted by his own description. The
displaced Rohingyas in the north seem to be not from Chittagong, but from
southern Arakan. Reporting the impact of the 1942 events, Aye Chan relates,
“But the news of killing, robbery and rape was exaggerated when it reached
Burma India border (Ba Maw 1968: 78). The British left all these areas to the
mercy of both Burmese and Arakanese dacoits.” (p. 22)
Surprisingly,
when Rakhines commit genocide, to Aye Chan, they are only decoits, not the
Fascists. The fact of the matter is that genocide was committed by the
ultra-nationalist Arakanese army with its local followers who were “the leaders
of ANC (Arakan National Congress), formed in 1939 … that … formed a de-facto government,
before the Japanese troops and Burma Independence Army (BIA) reached there.”
(p.21)
Throughout
his essay, Aye Chan shows that Rakhines were the main victims. The question to
Aye Chan is: how is this possible when the British withdrew from Arakan and the
Rakhine leaders were in charge of Arakan under the Japanese Fascist army?
Contrary to this, we see, the Fascist Rakhine leaders were busy inciting their
followers. Yes, as evident in Germany and in former Yogoslavia, the 1942 is a
single event that displaced Rohingyas from the South to the northern Arakan, in
the Mayu Frontier, which Aye Chan erroneously calls the “illegal enclave.” Aye
Chan says, “The events during the war contributed the Chittagonians’ fervent
sense of alienation from the heterogeneous community of the Arakan. Anthony
Irwin called the whole area a ‘No Man’s Land’ during the three years of
Japanese occupation (Irwin 1946:27). Irwin elucidates how the ethnic violence
divided the Arakan State between Arakanese and Chittagonians: “As the area then
occupied by us was almost entirely Mussulman Country… (from) that we drew most
of our “Scouts” and Agents. The Arakan before the war had been occupied over
its entire lenghth by both Mussulman and Maugh (Arakanese). Then in 1941 the
two sects set to and fought.The result of this war was roughly that the Maugh
took over the southern half of the country and the Mussulman the North. (Irwin
1946: 86).” (P.23)
Xenophobia Burmese traditional culture
enshrined by the military and its collaborators are characterized by
xenophobia. Typically, Aye Chan relates the Muslim community of Arakan. “The
village committee authorized by the Village Amendment Act of 1924 paved the way
for the Imam (moulovi) and the trusteeship committee members of the village
mosque to be elected to the village council. They were also allowed to act as
the village magistrates and shariah was somewhat in effect in the Muslim
villages (Charter 1938:34-38). At least the Islamic court of village had the
jurisdiction over familial problems such as marriage, inheritance and divorce.
There was no internal sense of unrighteousness and presence of nonbelievers in
their community, and accordingly they believe no internecine struggle was for
the time being necessary. However, the ethnic violence between Arakanese
Buddhists and those Muslim Chittagonians brought a great deal of bloodshed to
Arakan during the World War II and after 1948, in the opening decade of
independent Burma. Some people of the Mayu Frontier in their early seventies
and eighties have still not forgotten the atrocities they suffered in 1942 and
1943 during the short period of anarchy between the British evacuation and the
Japanese occupation of the area.” (p.20)
While
Aye Chan recognizes the 1942 massacre, he doesn’t recognize its victims being
the Rohingyas. Contrary to Aye Chan’s, some conservative estimates put the
figure of Rohingya death over 40 thousand.
(21)
Aye Chan’s argument shows him as an antiRohingya collaborator of the military
government policy and its xenophobic interpretation of history. In Aye Chan’s
demonstration of events, casual readers of 1942 event might confuse scholarship
with propaganda.
Stretching
Imagination “One of the underlying causes of the communal violence was the
Zamindary System brought by the British from Bengal. By this system the British
administrators granted the Bengali landowners thousands of acres of arable land
on ninety-year-leases. The Arakanese peasants who fled the Burmese rule and
came home after British annexation were deprived of the land that they formerly
owned through inheritance.” Aye Chan says (p. 20) To put Aye Chan’s argument in
context, generally speaking, British Zamindary system had not been known as a
pro-people system. Zamindars were the agents of the British masters. Since
there were Zamindars from both Rakhines and fewer from the Rohingyas, the
negative impact of this system by Rohingyas themselves could not have been more
than their Rakhine counterparts on the Arakanese society. Aye Chan continues
his anti-Rohingya grievance: “Most of the Bengali immigrants were influenced by
the Farai-di movement in Bengal that propagated the ideology of the Wahhabis of
Arabia, which advocated settling ikhwan or brethren in agricultural communities
near to the places of water resources. The peasants, according to the teaching,
besides cultivating the land should be ready for waging a holy war upon the
call by their lords (Rahman 1979: 200-204).“ What is the purpose in the use of
this paragraph from Fazlur Rahman to explain the religious trends in Arakan? My
research on Aye Chan’s work reveals his lack intellectual honesty. In the above
quote, Aye Chan misuses the source to prove his point. Firstly, Fazlur Rahman
didn't say anything about Arakanese Muslims or about their Faraidi movement or
their Ikwan connection because there was no such thing. The fact of the matter
is that unlike the Wahabi movement in India, Faraidi movement was largely a homegrown
movement against the oppressive Zamindari system in Bengal. Then, it appears
that Aye Chan’s motivation has two dimensions, using a Muslim writer as a
source to show Aye Chan’s cross cultural expertise on the subject and secondly
to portray Islam as being dangerous. As we have come this far, based on the
above, we are beginning to question Aye Chan’s credibility as a historian. More
Stretching of Imagination Aye Chan continues his stretching of imagination:
“For the convenience of Chittagonians seasonal laborers the Arakan Flotilla
Company constructed a railway between Buthidaung and Maungdaw in 1914. Their
plan was to connect Chittagong by railway with Buthidaung, from where the
Arakan Flotilla steamers were ferrying to Akyab and other towns in central and
southern Arakan.” Here no citation of reference was provided. Since such plan
was not mentioned anywhere, whether there was an actual plan, couldn't be
ascertained. Under the circumstances, it appears to be a Rakhine xenophobic
gossip, recorded by Aye Chan as fact. In addition, such a plan couldn’t be true
for other reasons that the distance between Arkan and Chittagong city is over
300 miles. Chittagong, due to its mountainous terrain, and numerous rivers and
their tributaries, until today, the railway didn't expand over more than 18
miles from the city of Chittagong to the south. Clearly, there is a difference
between ghost writing and history writing!
Aye
Chan says, “In the period of the independence movement in Burma in 1920s and
1930s the Muslims from the Mayu Frontier were more concerned with the progress
of Muslim League in India.” Again no source of Aye Chan’s information is
provided to prove the trend. But what is evident in a similar situation in
India was that the Ulama in India sided not with the Muslim League but with the
Congress. In the absence of a source for Aye Chan’s information, his hypothesis
appears to be no more than what is based on his anti-Muslim built-up
prejudices. Aye Chan describes, “[A]lthough some prominent Burmese Muslims such
as M.A. Rashid and U Razak played an important role in the leadership of the
Burmese nationalist movement. In 1931, the Simon Commission was appointed by
the British Parliament to enquire the opinion of Burmese people for the
constitutional reforms and on the matter of whether Burma should be separated
from Indian Empire. The spokesman of the Muslim League advocated for fair share
of government jobs, ten percent representation in all public bodies, and
especially in Arakan the equal treatment for Muslims seeking agricultural and
business loans (Cady 1958: 294).” Contrary to Aye Chan’s perception, this must
be a good thing by the Rohingya minorities to ask for their rights which he
found absurd. Instead of that the more relevant question to be asked, did the
party want to separate Arakan from Burma? The answer is a clearly no. So, if it
was not to create fear and cause incitement among the Rakhines, why is it
necessary for Aye Chan to use this type of anti-Rohingya argument in the first
place? Aye Chan’s Rohingya as the Illiterate Brute Aye Chan says, “In
education, the Chittagonians were left behind the Arakanese throughout the
colonial period. According to the census of 1901 only 4.5 percent of the
Bengali Muslims were found to be literate while the percentage for the
Arakanese was 25.5.
Smart
reported that it was due to the ignorance of the advantages of the education
among the Chittagonian agriculturists. Especially Buthidaung and Maungdaw were
reported to be most backward townships because the large Muslim population in
that area mostly agriculturalists showed little interest in education.“ (p. 20)
Here,
Aye Chan is contradicting himself again. In the above, he first makes the
Rakines victims in the hand of Muslim Zamindars. Then again he is saying that
Muslims remained backward. The point is: if the British helped Muslims with
Zamindari system at the expense of the Rakines, how come Muslims remained so
backward compared to the Rakhines. In Bengal, where there was also the
Zamindari system and most zamindars were Hindus, the latter excelled over the
Muslim majority. Here in his description, if Muslims were favored by the
British as Chan has mentioned before, Muslims were supposed to excel but now he
is saying Muslims remained backward. It is not hard to understand what Aye Chan
has been trying to advocate to his Arakanese and the Burmese audience. It could
simply be his conclusion that Muslims were illiterates, and therefore brutes/
fundamentalists, and the trouble-makers to his peaceloving and respectable
Rakhine gentleman. Unfortunately, his use of this type of assertions in a
seemingly academic paper put together in spurious relationships can easily
deceive casual readers of Arakan history. Aye Chan the Linguist Aye Chan
relates, “In 1894 there were nine Urdur (sic) schools with 375 students in the
whole district. The British provincial administration appointed a deputy
inspector for Muslim schools and in 1902 the number of schools rose to
seventy-two and the students increased to 1,474 (Smart 1957: 207-209).
Consequently,
more Arakanese and Hindu Indians were involved in the ancillary services of the
colonial administration.” (p. 21) Aye Chan claims that he is a linguist. But
the language he is referring to is not "Urdur" but "Urdu."
Aye Chan says, “Towards the middle of twentieth century, a new educated and
politically conscious younger generation had superseded the older, inactive
ones. Before the beginning of the Second World War a political party,
Jami-a-tul Ulema-e Islam was founded under the guidance of the Islamic
scholars. Islam became the ideological basis of the party (Khin Gyi Pyaw 1960:
99). “ (p. 25)
What
does Aye Chan mean by "superseded the older, inactive ones”? If they were
inactive how could they be important? What were they doing when remained
inactive? Surprisingly, in identifying this, Aye Chan didn't mention the other
Rohingya political parties and their individual ideological trends among the
Rohingyas, except the one he found important useful for his explanation;
Jami-a-tul Ulema-e Islam to foment antiMuslim prejudices amongst his followers.
This shows his agenda against the Rohingyas. Aye Chan says, “During the early
post-war years, both Arakanese and Bengali Muslims in the Mayu Frontier looked
at each other with distrust. As the British Labor Government promised
independence for Burma, some Muslims were haunted by the specter of their
future living under the infidel rule in the place where the baneful Arakanese
are also living.” (p. 23)
The
constant anxiety of living in a land that is characterized by intolerance
against minority Muslims is understandable. But for Aye Chan to reinforce the
prejudices with a loaded word "infidel" as if it is an Arakanese
Muslim community's own version of the Rakhine is hypocritical. Rohingya Frustration
and Alienation Aye Chan in his analysis of the topic goes back to the events of
1942 in a zigzag fashion. He says, “An All Arakan Conference was held in Myebon
on 1 April 1947 and about ten thousand people from all parties in Arakan
attended. U Aung San was openly assailed to his face as an opportunist by some
people attending the conference, using rebellious slogans (British Library,
London, India Office Records M/4/PRO: WO 203/5262). U Seinda with the
communists behind him moved forward to the rebellion. Actually, Thakhin Soe’s
Red Flag Communists took advantage of the misunderstanding between U Seinda and
AFPFL. It was in fact an ideological struggle in the AFPFL, the national united
front of Burma that was under the leadership of the charismatic leader U Aung
San. On the other side some Arakanese intellectuals led by U Hla Tun Pru, a
Barrister-atLaw, held a meeting in Rangoon and demanded the formation of
“Arakanistan” for the Arakanese people (British Library, London, India Office
Records, M/4/2503).
All
these movements of the Arakanese might have alarmed Muslims from the Mayu
Frontier. In the wake of independence most of the educated Muslims felt an
overwhelming sense of collective identity based on Islam as their religion and
the cultural and ethnic difference of their community from the Burmese and
Arakanese Buddhists.“ (p. 24)
As a matter of fact, alienation and panic was
not only amongst Muslims from Myu frontier, it was all over Arakan. It was such
a panic and a general sense of suffering on the rank and file members of the
so-called "Kulas" (the Muslims of Arakan) that during the 1950’s it
led them to identify themselves with a common secular name "the Rohingyas
of Arakan." While the name "Rohingya" was already existent in
Arakan, it was now officially adopted for Muslims by their leaders to fight
xenophobia and to state clearly that they will not settle for a derogatory term
-- "Kolas” (Negros). Aye Chan says, “At the same time, the Arakanese
became more and more concerned with their racial security and ethnic survival
in view of the increasingly predominant Muslim population in their frontier.“
(p. 24)
Indeed,
among the Rakhines, during the AngloBurmese war (1824-1826) the
ultra-nationalist sentiment began to grow to the point that after the First
World War, the colonial given name Mugh was officially changed into the present
name "Rakines". Lately, with the help of the Burmese government, the
province was also renamed as the Rakhine state; as if Rohingyas do not exist.
The city's Rohingya name Akyab was also changed into Sittwe and Rohingya
historic places were even demolished to confirm that Rohingyas are simply
“foreigners” in Burma. While this Rakhinization continued on one hand, on the
other hand, intellectuals like Aye Chan and their nonintellectual followers
even comically exclaim that they have never heard of the name Rohingya before
the 1950s; therefore, to them Rohingyas must be foreigners! In pulling down the
pillars of communal tolerance, Aye Chan in biting disposition states, “The
ethnic conflict in the rural areas of the Mayu frontier revived soon after
Burma celebrated independence on 4 January 1948. Rising in the guise of Jihad,
many Muslim clerics (Moulovis) playing a leading role, in the countryside and
remote areas gave way to banditary, arson and rapes.” (p. 25)
This
accusation is libelous, and not surprisingly, thus, that Aye Chan fails to
provide a reliable source for his information. He, however, quotes Moshe Yeagar
who “wrote that one of the major reasons of Mujahid rebellion was that the
Muslims who fled Japanese occupation were not allowed to resettle in their
villages (Yegar 1972:98).” (p. 25)
Can
we blame the Rohingyas under the prevalent circumstance? Their situation was
complicated by 1942 riot. The denial of their ancestral land-claims in the
south made Rohingyas desperate, leading up to the rebellion against the
institutional racism. In this, unlike Aye Chan, Yager as a historian records
Arakan as a source of one of the refugee producing areas in South-East Asia, In
contrast, Aye Chan identifies the Rohingyas simply as the “Chittagonians”
creating an “Illegal Muslim enclave” in Burma to justify the continued
genocide. Arakan's distant past shows Arakan is both at the same time an
extension of Burma and also Bengal and the Rakhines and the Rohingyas are the
expressions of its past. Now that the xenophobic Burmese military rules Arakan,
it denies one part of Arakan history; the Rohingya history. It shows that in
this crossroads of South Asia and South East Asia, whenever there is a
repressive xenophobic regime in Burma, Rohingyas continues to migrate to
Chittagong. Even today, there are 20, 000 registered Rohingya refugees in
Chittagong. In this tragic triangle, we see when a Rohingya from Arakan crosses
the Burmese border to Chittagong and becomes a refugee in southern Chittagong;
he is identified by the Burmese military and their collaborators (Aye Kyaw of
the ANC and Aye Chan likes) as simply the Chittagonians. In times of stability,
when such a Rohingya goes back to Arakan to reclaim his property, he is seen as
the “dangerous Chittagonian” and are normally either killed or put in jail or
pushed out of Arakan as a “foreigner.” So, xenophobia followed by repression on
the Rohingya prolongs the flow of the refugees to Chittagong. The author says,
“The Mujahid uprising began two years before the independence was declared. In
March 1946 the Muslim Liberation Organization (MLO) was formed with Zaffar
Kawal, a native of Chittagong District, as the leader. A conference was held in
May 1948 in Garabyin Village north to Maungdaw and the name of the organization
was changed to “Mujahid Party.” (Department of Defense Service Archives,
Rangoon, DR 491 (56)).” Aye Chan, to reinforce his stand, continues, “Jaffar
Kawal became the commander in chief and his lieutenant was Abdul Husein,
formerly a corporal from the Akyab District police force (Department of Defense
Service Archives, Rangoon, DR 1016).
The
Mujahid Party sent a letter written in Urdur (sic) and dated 9 June 1948 to the
government of Union of Burma through the sub-divisional officer of Maungdaw
Township. Their demands are as follows (Department of Defence Service Archives,
Rangoon: CD 1016/10/11):
(1)
The area between the West Bank of Kaladan River and the east bank of Naaf River
must be recognized as the National Home of the Muslims in Burma.
(2)
The Muslims in Arakan must be accepted as the nationalities of Burma.
(3)
The Mujahid Party must be granted a legal status as a political organization.
(4)
The Urdur (sic) Language must be acknowledged as the national language of the
Muslims in Arakan and be taught in the schools in the Muslim areas.
(5)
The refugees from the Kyauktaw and Myohaung (Mrauk-U) Townships must be
resettled in their villages at the expense of the state.
(6)
The Muslims under detention by the Emergency Security Act must be
unconditionally released.
(7)
A general amnesty must be granted for the members of the Mujahid Party.” As
mentioned earlier, there was a general discontent. However, the question that
Aye Chan didn’t answer is: why was there a general discontent? Why even the
local police felt alienated? It must be a result of gross injustices done to
the Rohingyas? While the demands seem legitimate, neither the Burmese military
nor the Arakanese dominant group, the Rakhines, felt it necessary to fulfill
their demands. During U Nu's time attempts were made to integrate the Rohingyas
and they were recognized as one of Burma's
nationalities. But after the 1962 military coup of Ne Win, Rohingya rights were
being violated and the rule by fear and force continued. As if the 1942 event
was not enough, the military’s oppression from 1962 culminated into the total
denial of the Rohingyas as the citizens of Burma, It is known that when ethnic
cleansing madness begins it affects innocent people more than criminals. But
the biggest culprits in such situations are not the ordinary people who also
participate in genocide, it is the inciters. Here in Arakan, it was some
Western-trained Arakanese xenophobes who remained the brain behind the
violence. Aye Chan relates, “In the two years following the decision to
nationalize the retail trade, some 100,000 Indians and some twelve thousand
Pakistanis left Burma for their homeland. The flow of Indians returning to India
as a result of these policies began in 1964 (Donison 1970: 199-200). But the
Muslim agriculturists from Northern Arakan, most of them, holding the national
registration cards issued by the Department of National Registration in the
post-war decade, were not concerned with the event and remained in the frontier
areas till the Citizenship Law of 1982 was enforced in 1987.” (p. 26)
To
Aye Chan "Muslim agriculturists from Northern Arakan, most of them,
holding the national registration cards issued by the Department of National
Registration" were not yet Burmese and as the "illegals" in the
“enclave” should have left Arakan! But the point is, when it takes less than a
decade by Burmese (like Aye Kyaw) living in the West to become citizens of western
countries, why should such people object at Rohingya’s Burmese citizenship in
their ancestral land? When the democratic government of U Nu issued the
National Registration Cards to the Rohingyas, if it is not racism, what makes
the NRC invalid and requires amending the citizenship law by the military
government? It seems that it is not the Rohingya’s origin in Arakan that is the
issue here but it is the military government’s genocidal strategy to get rid of
an undesirable group -- the Rohingyas. Aye Chan’s present work confirms the
situation and seems to weather a continuing existence of genocide in Arakan.
Aye Chan says the story Aye Chan says, “By this law those Muslims had been
treated as aliens in the land they have inhabited for more than a century.
According to the 1983 census report all Muslims in Arakan constituted 24.3
percent and they all were categorized as Bangladeshi, while the Arakanese
Buddhists formed 67.8 percent of the population of the Arakan (Rakhine) State
(Immigration and Manpower Department 1987: I-14).”(p. 27)
He
cites the census by the military government that considers Muslims as only
24.3% and they are all considered Bangladeshis; it doesn’t cover close to a
million Rohingya refugees scattered across the globe. Compared to the
military’s labeling of all the Arakanese Muslims as Bangladeshis, indeed, Aye
Chan’s portrayal of the hypothetical Rohingya “enclave” with “influx viruses”
in the Mayu frontier seems quite liberal in comparison! Aye Chan says, “In the
abortive 1988 Democracy Uprising, those Muslims again became active, hoisting
the Rohingya banner. Subsequently when the military junta allowed the
registration of the political parties they asked for their parties to be
recognized under the name “Rohingya.” Their demand was turned down and some of
them changed tactics and formed a party, the National Democratic Party for
Human rights (NDPHR) that won in four constituencies in 1990 elections as
eleven candidates of the Arakan League for Democracy (ALD) were elected to the
legislature.” (p. 27).
Contrary
to Aye Chan’s portrayal of the Rohingyas in this and in his other articles as
being dangerous Muslim people, the Rohingya’s election participation and the
result shows that they are a democratic-minded people. They are for negotiated
settlement of their problems. It shows that after all Burmese Buddhist people
don't have to fear the Rohingyas because they are neither
"foreigners" nor dangerous. Aye Chan says, “However, the Elections
Commission abolished both the ALD and the NDPHR in 1991. Some of the party
members went underground and into exile. Recently, the main objectives of the
movement of some groups have been to gain the recognition of their ethnic
entity in the Union of Burma and to obtain the equal status enjoyed by other
ethnic groups. But some elements have adopted the radical idea of founding a
separate Muslim state. The following are the Rohingya organizations currently
active on the Burma-Bangladesh border (Mya Win 1992: 3):
1.
RSO (Rohingya Solidarity Organization)
2.
ARIF (Arakan Rohingya Islamic Front)
3.
RPF (Rohingya Patriotic Front)
4.
RLO (Rohingya Liberation Organization)
5.
IMA (Itihadul Mozahadin of Arakan)” Aye Chan again is using xenophobia as a
trick. He says, “Some elements have adopted the radical idea of founding a
separate Muslim state.“ When I checked the details, I found Aye Chan showing
the case as if this was a trend during the 1990s but in reality it was not.
Today most Rohingyas are in favor of their reconciliation and justice through
democratic reform in Arakan. Contrary to the current trend, Aye Chan in his
work gives us the notion that Rohingyas are some radical elements and their
presence is as if “viruses” in Arakan who are required to be destroyed or will
eventually destroy the Arakanese Burmese people. This type of dehumanizing
literature by so-called academics reminds us of the early signs of genocide in
Germany, in the former Yugoslavia, and recently in Rwanda and the literature
written by intellectuals in those countries to incite the general public, so as
to take up action against its targeted minority. Fear of Democratic Reform and
the End of Rakhine Supremacy Aye Chan says, “Their leaders began to complain
that the term “Chittagonian Bengali” had arbitrarily been applied to them. But
the majority of the ethnic group, being illiterate agriculturalists in the
rural areas, still prefers their identity as Bengali Muslims. (p. 27)
Aye
Chan’s source of this information is not from a reliable survey. He is wrong in
his observation, for he himself said that the Rohingya parties wanted
recognition under their name – Rohingya – which was denied to them by the
junta. My general observation of Aye Chan’s work is that no doubt he has a
hypothesis. But to prove it, he even strips the source, and suppresses core
evidence to make it look credible. Aye Chan says, “Although they have showed
the collective political interest for more than five decades since Burma gained
independence, their political and cultural rights have not so far been
recognized and guaranteed. On the contrary the demand for the recognition of
their rights sounds a direct challenge to the right of autonomy and the myth of
survival for the Arakanese majority in their homeland." (p. 28)
It is known that when the legitimate demand
for the recognition of the minority rights is seen as “a direct challenge,” it
triggers genocide. Here Aye Chan is right: Rohingya’s demand for their rights
is a direct challenge “to the right of autonomy and the myth of survival for
the Arakanese majority in their homeland." Whose homeland? Isn’t Arakan
supposed to be the homeland of its people? The ultranationalists like Aye Chan
dreams of the revival of an independent kingdom that was lost to the Burmese.
Rakhine’s autonomy from Burma is a minimum gain and guarantee for them; whereas
a democratic reform and the establishment of a modern sense of equality and
justice will take away such a privileged position from the Rakhines as the
absolute owners of Arakan. Aye Chan’s conclusion that if Rohingyas are tolerated,
Rakhines have to share the scarce resources with the Rohingyas is clear. Ashin
Nayaka, an Arakani monk in encouraging the ultra-nationalists wrote in the
forward section of the book Influx Viruses the same:"Rohingya movements
have been accompanied by certain dangers and challenges, particularly for the
Arakan State and beyond."
(22)
Undoutedly, most of the ethnic/ racial troubles originate from an unwillingness
to share resources and the myths of a glorious past allow them to demonize the
minorities with the myth of being “foreigners.” So Aye Chan’s "influx
viruses" in the “Enclave” are simply a myth of a Rakhine survival strategy
reinforced by the military government. Aye Chan says, “A symbiotic coexistence
has so far been inconceivable because of the political climate of mistrust and
fear between the two races and the policy of the military junta.” (p. 26)
There
is no doubt that there is a problem between the two races - Rakhine and the
Rohingya - in this meeting point of South Asia and South-East Asia. But when
Aye Chan understands this, ethically speaking, himself as an educationist, he
should not have taken up academic tools to fool people to preach the xenophobic
survival myth for his Rakhine race. While the military’s practice of “how to
lie convincingly for years helps” in the construction of falsehood through
xenophobia, Aye Chan’s use of intellectual tools to understand Rohingya history
as well doesn’t help in the construction of knowledge. Aye Chan denies the
birth right of the Rohingyas by concluding, “The Muslims from the other parts
of Arakan kept themselves aloof from the Rohingya cause as well. Thus the cause
of Rohingyas finds a little support outside their own community, and their
claims of an earlier historical tie to Burma are insupportable.” (p. 28)
Aye
Chan's article "Enclave" portrays a politically defined superior
Rakhine country gentleman living in peace and serenity in Arakan with its
glorious past. Here with a future democratic reform, he sees the racially
different Rohingya posing a dangerous threat -- a threat from an enclave just
near the international border, if not taken seriously, will destroy their lost
Arakan’s glory. Conclusion: Behind the Mask of the Devil As an educationist,
Aye Chan doesn’t like to appear as a street fighter, so he is fighting against
the Rohingyas with the mask of the devil, showing an attitude of internal
arrogance through his pen. Works like Aye Chan’s justify army’s brutal action
to restrict movement on the Rohingyas, ban marriage, impose extreme surveillance
and enforce Rohingya’s suffering through starvation in villages which are more
like the concentration camps as if they are dealing with “aliens,”
“foreigners”, or even “viruses.” Aye Chan seemed to be trapped in his imaginary
"enclave" he wanted to build to facilitate the military to act on the
Rohingyas like “…hyenas on Africa's Serengeti picking off old and sick gazelle
or wilder beast and making a meal,” in this case help the military continue its
genocide in Arakan. From the above review of Aye Chan’s description of Rohingya
history, the following themes are rather evident:
(1)
Muslims and Rakhines were divided on racial-religious lines;
(2)
Muslims fleeing from the south to the north of Arakan and to Bangladesh has
been a historical trend; therefore, Rohingyas can not be Chittagonians;
(3)
The increase in the population in the north of Arakan seems to be a result of
the internal Rohingya migration from the south, thus, disproving Aye Chan’s
original hypothesis that Rohingyas are the “Illegal Bengalis.” However, a
revisit to Aye Chan’s imaginary enclave with “Influx Viruses” shows that the
enclave is there only in Aye Chan's imagination. His dehumanizing work shows
his analytical failures in his mixing of ethnic politics with scholarship. Contrary
to Aye Chan’s findings, the present research found Rohingyas only as any other
human beings demanding protection from the Burmese democracy movement leaders
and from the international community to live their lives in the land of their
forefathers. As we came to the end of the wrangle, I am confronted with the old
question, what it is that turns “neighbors against neighbor?” It is an irony
that Aye Chan was a native of the Mayu frontier. The answer is not easy even
when you turn to the wise and ancient Greek philosopher Heraclitus. He had
warned “one ought not talk or act as if he was asleep." Surely Aye Chan
was not asleep when he made the xenophobic and inciteful arguments in his work,
so the warning doesn’t apply to him. It appears that he consciously made the
above arguments. However, what is perfidious is that Aye Chan’s cleverly
constructed work can raise the eye browse of casual readers on the question of
the indigenousness of Rohingya people, and can serve as a handy tool for
inciting Arakanese ultra-nationalists and xenophobic military to exterminate
more Burmese Rohingyas. But to a historian, his findings could at best be seen
as an exhilarating wild-goose chase, culminating in xenophobic dead end. Wiliam
James rightly said: “A great many people think they are thinking when they are
really rearranging their prejudices.”
(23)
In this review of Aye Chan’s essay it is clear that Aye Chan remained
thoroughly prejudiced and only tried to rearrange the Arakanese prejudices
against the Rohingyas. From Abid Bahar’s published book: Burma’s Missing Abid
Bahar. Montreal: Flapwing Publishers, 2009. P.23-42
Dots
If
you want to know more about Rohingyas please do not miss his book “Burma’s
Missing Dots” dedicated to Rohingya history of Arakan, Burma.
Endnotes
(1) Aye Chan, “The Development of a Muslim Enclave in Arakan (Rakhine) State of Burma (Myanmar)" in U Shw Zan and Aye Chan’s Influx Viruses, The Illegal Muslims in Arakan. New York: Arakanese in the United States, Planetarium Station 2005), 14-33. The book was published in the United States. It was also published on line website.http://www.rakhapura.com, 2005, accessed on November 20, 2005. “Aye Chan is a native of Arakan State in Burma. He studied Japanese language at Osaka University of Foreign Studies and oriental history at Kyoto University. His field of study is Pre-modern history of Burma.During his twenty years of teaching at Rangoon University (Burma), Bard College (NY, USA) and Kanda University of International Studies, Japan, he published articles in Southeast Asian Studies (Tonan-Ajia Kenkyu), SOAS Bulettin of Burma Research and Journal of Siam Society.” He claims himself as a Burmese democracy movement leader.
(2)
In July 2007, I have interviewed some Rohingya refugees in Japan and some
others who arrived from Rangoon to attend the “International Conference on
Problems of Democratic Development in Burma and the Rohingya People" in
Tokyo, held on July 16, 2007. In my trip to Bangladesh, in July 2007, I also
interviewed some other Rohingya refugees. I have interviewed them for this
research.
(3)
Francis Buchanan. “A Comparative Vocabulary of Some of the Languages Spoken in
the Burma Empire." in SOAS Bullitin of Burma Research 1.1 (Spring 2003),
40-57;
Also
in Willem van Schendel (Ed.)“Francis Buchanon” in South East Bengal (1798); his
journey to Chittagong, the Chittagong Hill Tracts, Noakhali and Comilla. Edited
by Willem van Schendel. Dhaka: University Press Ltd. 1992. Also in Michael
Charney, “Buddhism in Araka: Theories of Historiography of the Religious Basis
of Ethnonyms” (an unpublished paper) in the Forgotten Kingdom of Arakan From
Dhanyawadi to 1962: A conference Organized by the Institute of Asian Studies,
South Asian Studies Centre, Chulalongkorn University, 2005.
(4)
Michael Charney, “Buddhism in Araka: Theories of Historiography of the
Religious Basis of Ethnonyms,” 2005, p. 53.
(5)
R. B. Smart. Burma Gazettier: Akyab District Vol.1.A. Rangoon: Burma Governmen
Printing and Stay., 1957), p.19
(6)
Jacques P. Leider, “Arakan Studies: Challenges and Contested Issues, mapping a
field of historical and Cultural research, (an unpublished paper) “in Forgotten
Kingdom of Arakan From Dhanyawadi to 1962, 2005, p.15.
(7)Ibid
(8)
Abu Anin, A Study on the Issue of Ethnicity in Arakan, Myanmar,
Accessed
on November 10, 2007.
(9)
S.W.A. Rahman Farooq. "Pls speak first against any injustice
<sfarooq678@yahoo.com"The Council for Restoration of Democracy in Burma
(CRDB)" <rohingyascrdbinfo@gmail.com>Sat, 22 Dec 2007 06:30:50
-0800.
(10)
Francis Buchanan. “A Comparative Vocabulary of Some of the Languages Spoken in
the Burma Empire." Pp.40-57;
Also
Willem van Schendel (ed.)“Francis Buchanon in South East Bengal (1798) His
journey to Chittagong, the Chittagong Hill Tracts, Noakhali and Comilla.”
Also
in Michael Charney. “Buddhism in Araka: Theories of Historiography of the
Religious Basis of Ethnonyms” in the Forgotten Kingdom of Arakan from
Dhanyawadi to 1962.
(11)
Michael Charney. “Buddhism in Araka: Theories of Historiography of the
Religious Basis of Ethnonyms.”
(12)
Francis Buchanan. “A comparative Vocabular of Some of the languages Spoken in
the Burma Empire." P.55. Also see Willem van Schendel (ed.)“Francis
Buchanan in South East Bengal (1798): His journey to Chittagong, the Chittagong
Hill Tracts, Noakhali and Comilla,”p. 55.
(13)
Mohamed Ashraf Alam.” THE ROHANG (ARAKAN),” Arakan Rohingya National
Organization, on November 12, 2007.
(14)
Buchanan , “A comparative Vocabular of Some of the languages Spoken in the
Burma Empire," 1992. p.82.
(15)
Abdul Haque Chawdhury. Chattagramer Ittihas Prosongo (the old Society and
Culture of Chittagong), part 2, Chittagong: Chawdhury 1975 in Bengali, p.2.
(16)
U Shw Zan and Aye Chan’s Influx Viruses: The Illegal Muslims in Arakan. P. 4.
2006.
accessed
(17)
ARAKAN Online Encyclopedia Originally appearing in Volume V02, Page 315 of the
1911 Encyclopedia Britannica http://encyclopedia.jrank.org/APO_ARN/ARAKAN.html,
Accessed on November 12, 2007.
(18)
Abdul Haque Chawdhury. Chattagramer Ittihas Prosongo (the old Society and
Culture of Chittagong), part 2, 1975, 2. Also see M. Habibullah History of the
Rohingyas. Dhaka: Cooperative Book Society Limited), 1995; Abid Bahar,
"Burmese Invasion of Arakan and the Rise of Non Bengali Settlements in
Chittagong and Chittagong Hill Tracts."
Accessed on November 12, 2007. Abdul Karim.
The Rohingyas: A Short Account of the History and Culture. (Chittagong:
Chittagong: Arakan Historical Society, 2000; Also see Abid Bahar. Dynamics of
Ethnic Relations in Burmese Society: A case Study of Inter Ethnic Relations
between the Burmese and the Rohingyas; an unpublished M. A. thesis, (Windsor:
University of Windsor, Canada, 1981).
(19)
Jacques P. Leider’s work is interesting; he uses the key term “frontier
culture” for understanding Arakan. Jacques P. Leider, “Arakan Studies:
Challenges and Contested Issues, mapping a field of historical and Cultural
research,” 2005, p.22.
(20)
Abid Bahar. Dynamics of Ethnic Relations in Burmese Society: A case Study of
Inter Ethnic Relations between the Burmese and the Rohingyas. 1981.
(21)
M. Habibullah. History of the Rohingyas. 1995; Abid Bahar, "Burmese
Invasion of Arakan and the Rise of Non Bengali Settlements in Chittagong and
Chittagong Hill Tracts"; Abdul Karim. The Rohingyas: A Short Account of
the History and Culture. 2000; also see Abid Bahar, Dynamics of Ethnic
Relations in Burmese Society: A case Study of Inter Ethnic Relations between
the Burmese and the Rohingyas. 1981.
(22)
Ashin Nayaka in U Shw Zan and Aye Chan’s Influx Viruses, The Illegal Muslims in
Arakan. New York: Arakanese in United States, Planetarium Station 2005. Forward
p. vii. (23) William James quoted in Lewis Vaughn and Chris MacDonald. The
Power of Critical Thinking. Oxford University Press: (Canadian edition) 2008,
p. 45.
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