SUNDAY, APRIL 20, 2014
ကုိလုိနီေခတ္မွာ ရုိဟင္ဂ်ာ ဆုိတ့ဲ ေ၀ါဟာရကုိ မသုံးခ့ဲဘူးလုိ႔ ၿဗိတိသွ် သံအမတ္ေဟာင္း ဒဲရစ္တုိကင္က
မၾကာေသးခင္က ေရးလုိက္ပါတယ္။ဧၿပီ ၉ ရက္ေန႔ ရက္စဲြနဲ႔ ေရးလုိက္တာပါ။ ေဆာင္းပါး ေခါင္းစဥ္က The 'Rohingya'
Identity - British experience in Arakan 1826-1948 ျဖစ္ပါတယ္။
(မၾကာေသးခင္က) သန္းေခါင္စာရင္းေကာက္ယူရာမွာ ရုိဟင္ဂ်ာ ဆုိတ့ဲ အသုံးအႏႈန္းကုိ လက္မခံေၾကာင္း အစုိး
ရကေၾကညာလုိက္တ့ဲအတြက္ စုိးရိမ္စရာအေျခအေနတခု ျဖစ္လာတယ္၊ ဒါေၾကာင့္ ၿဗိတိသွ်အုပ္ခ်ဳပ္ခ့ဲတ့ဲ ကာလမွာ ရခုိင္ေဒ
သ မူဆလင္ေတြကုိ ဘယ္လုိမ်ား သုံးႏႈန္းခ့ဲၾကပါလိမ့္ ဆုိတာကုိ စူးစမ္းေလ့လာမိခ့ဲတယ္လုိ႔ သူ႔ေဆာင္းပါးကုိ အစခ်ီ ေရးသား
ပါတယ္။ ရခုိင္ေဒသကုိ ၿဗိတိသွ်အုပ္ခ်ဳပ္ခ့ဲတ့ဲ ႏွစ္ေပါင္း တရာေက်ာ္ကာလ (၁၈၂၆-၁၉၄၈)အတြင္း ရုိဟင္ဂ်ာ ဆုိတာကုိ ၿဗိတိ
သွ်အစုိးရရဲ႕ တရား၀င္အစီရင္ခံစာ၊ ေဒသဆုိင္ရာ အုပ္ခ်ဳပ္ေရးအဖဲြ႔မ်ားဆီက သတင္းလႊာ၊သန္းေခါင္စာရင္း၊ ဥပေဒျပ႒ာန္းခ်က္၊
ပုဂၢိဳလ္ေရးေပးစာမ်ား စသျဖင့္ စသျဖင့္တုိ႔မွာေတာင္ ရည္ညြန္းသံုးစြဲခဲ့တာမရိွဘူးလုိ႔ သူက ဆုိပါတယ္။
ရုိဟင္ဂ်ာ ဆုိတ့ဲ အဆင့္ကုိ ေရာက္ဖုိ႔ အင္မတန္ ေ၀းေနေသးတယ္ ဆုိရင္ ၁၉ဝ၁ ခုႏွစ္က သုံးခ့ဲၾကတ့ဲ 'Arakan
Muhammadan' ဆုိတာကုိ မသုံးသင့္ဘူးလား လုိ႔လည္း သူက ေမးခြန္းထုတ္ပါတယ္။
ေဆာင္းပါး အဆုံးသတ္မွာေတာ့ ... ၁၉၄၈ ခုႏွစ္ လြတ္လပ္ေရးကာလမတုိင္ခင္အထိ ရုိဟင္ဂ်ာ ဆုိတာနဲ႔ ပတ္
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ေျမလုံၿခဳံေရးလုပ္ငန္းေတြ ေဆာင္ရြက္ေနၾကတ့ဲ လုံၿခဳံေရးတပ္ဖဲြ႔၀င္မ်ား ျဖစ္ပါတယ္။
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'.
*****
“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 alien’s 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
*****
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.
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.
*****
"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.
****
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.
*****
"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.
*****
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. 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 so 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?
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)
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