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A quirk of history

It is strange that the sufferings of Rohingya, an ethnic Muslim group of Rakhine province in Myanmar, which is separated…

A quirk of history

It is strange that the sufferings of Rohingya, an ethnic Muslim group of Rakhine province in Myanmar, which is separated from Mizoram by a small segment of the Chin Hills, have largely gone unreported in the North-east media even after Jammu and Kashmir chief minister’s announcement in January that the state had provided shelters to 5,700 of them. They possibly might have crossed over to India through the porous borders of the North-east with Bangladesh along the Mizoram-Cachar-Tripura sector.

Rakhine, known for centuries as Arakan, with Akyab, now known as Sittwe  is a  major deep sea port. It evokes memories of past trade links of Assam with Rangoon, now Yangon, through Chittagong and Sittwe ports, which carried tea and brought back Burma rice. Until the 1930s, it was the main source of supply for sustenance of Assam’s vast tea garden labour community and other non-farming groups.

In fact, the disruption in supply of Burma rice later prompted then Assam government, early in the 1940s, to start the “grow more food campaign” by getting lands reclaimed for rice cultivation, which entailed bringing in land-hungry peasants, mostly Muslims from  eastern Bengal.

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Now, by a quirk of history, the Kaladan Multi Modal Transport Project, is designed to connect the North-east once again with  Sittwe through construction of a Kaladan Inland waterway, a road connecting Sittwe to Lawngtlai in Mizoram and improvement of the Sittwe deep sea port. Once these are  ready, possibly by 2019, the $480 million project will open the direct sea trade from Kolkata  to the  North-east and from there to the Association  of the South-east Asian Nation countries through Sittwe port.

The fact that India is financing the project, while Myanmar makes land available for the 129-km highway in that country and facilitates improvement of the  Sittwe port and navigability of the Kaladan river, indicate the strategic importance of the Kaladan project for both India and Myanmar to expand trade and technological cooperation.

Once trade picks up at Sittwe, it might even create an incentive for Bangladesh to grant surface transit facility to Chittagong port from the North-east. Indeed the Kaladan project is the first Indo-Myanmar strategic initiative to restore the pre-1947 vibrant regional economy that encompassed east and North-east India, Myanmar, Malaysia and Thailand. And, therefore, its early completion and  smooth functioning thereafter are vital for revival of the old trade links and progress of the sub-region.

From this perspective, the continuing civil strife in Rakhine and violence against Rohingyas are matters of concern for the North-east, as it may  impact the Kaladan project. The Army’s crackdown in Rakhine following the  “9th October”Rohingya militants attack on the border posts  near  Muangdaw, a town of northern Rakhine, killing nine Myanmarese border guards, led to mass arrests, torture and killing of at least 86 Rohingyas , also burning and destruction of their villages. Thousands of Rohingya were  forced to move north to seek shelter in Bangladesh where they are not really welcome.

In Rakhine, a full-scale Rohingya insurgency has begun, supported by foreign radical Islamic groups, which as reported in the Western media, have been training Rohingyas in guerrilla warfare and also supplying them with modern weapons .This is bound to have repercussions in the east and the North-east. Analysts see the hand of Pakistan behind this and also little chance of an early resolution of the conflict, on the following grounds.

Firstly, the  roots of the Rohingya problem lie deep in history and the refusal of post-colonial Burma to accept the demographic reality did not help matters. No doubt, there was migration but entirely caused by the “extractive” colonial mode of production based on cheap migrant labour.

The Arakan vegetation varies from tropical and sub- tropical to temperate, Alpine and valley lands. For centuries it was a powerful independent kingdom that periodically dominated southern part and even received tributes from Dacca and Murshidabad and often hosted Portuguese pirates.

During the Mughal period, trade and cultural contacts of Arakan with Bengal thrived and Islam spread to Arakan from Bengal. Shah Shuja, son of Shahjahan, sought shelter in Arakan after his defeat in the battle of succession to Aurangzeb only to be massacred later with his family; and a dargah is possibly still in Rakhine and visited by many Muslims.

Thus the Muslim presence in Arakan is old. Much later in 1783 Arakan was conquered by King Bodawpaya and made a part of the Third Burmese empire, which brought the Burmese border to Bengal Presidency, the engine powering the British East India company in India. However,  the control of Mandalay over Arakan was short-lived as the latter  was incorporated into the British domain following the Burmese defeat in the first Anglo-Burmese war (1824) and it was placed under the Bengal Presidency.

The colonial phase of Arakan history bears remarkable similarity with the North-east  experience, whi-ch saw  the same movement of mig-rant labour for extraction of natural resources and to run administration essential for extractive activities, which caused demographic change s in Assam. However, the state policy to the Rohingyas right from 1948 and, especially after the 1962 Army take over, was the refusal to accept the reality of historic presence of Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar. 

 Instead,  the entire community has been branded  “illegal Bengali migrants”  from Bangladesh and that has led to the conflict. The Rohingya are a stateless people in their own home where they lived for centuries and the stand of the Myanmar government is untenable from a human rights perspective. The plight of the Rohingya therefore has attracted global attention and sympathy.

While there could be some migration after 1935, when Burma was separated from India,  but even such people and their descendants, who were born in Myanmar, are entitled to citizenship in a modern state. Interestingly,  the state recognises some Muslim groups as citizens but not over a million Rohingya who are not even included in 135 sub- categories of eight major  “national ethnic races” and, therefore, they do not exist in official records.

Their presence is seen only when they face atrocities or resist oppression. The Rohingya problem is part of a bigger issue of the political identity of other ethnic groups of Arakan who consider themselves different from the majority Burman. Its  armed wing, the Arakan Independence Army,  is part of Northern Alliance, a group of several such ethno-centric militias fighting for substantial political space within Myanmar, even when their stated goal is independence. The Rohingya are thus caught in this internal power game involving 20 ethnic insurgencies, which  only shows the complexities of formation of a modern nation state in Myanmar, which is emerging from a multi-religious and ethnic colonial state.
The Rohingyas suffer from an added disadvantage as their proximity to Islamic Bangladesh gives credence to the apprehension that once granted political space, they might demand partition of Rakhine — a repeat of the Partition, which is totally unacceptable to the Buddhist majority.

While the Rohingyas are in a bind, the government at Naypyidaw has not been able to take a bold initiative to resolve the Rohingya problem. It is basically a part of the unfinished task of nation-building that  General Aung San began at the Pangong conference with all ethnic groups in 1948 for reconciliation within the newly-independent  Burma.

Over half a century of military rule saw destruction of governance on the basis of rule of law and separation of executive from judiciary and an orderly form of district administration designed to address local issues of governance that Burma, like India, inherited.

And, while India could retain it because of democracy,  albeit with some aberrations, the military junta, which still occupies seats in the legislature reserved for the military and a has a decisive say in administration of provinces under the 2008 constitution, destroyed it to an extent that presently allows little scope for decentralised governance capable of meeting the aspirations of its diverse “ geo-political minorities”.  That is, ethnic groups which are “minorities” in the country but majority in their provinces and hence draw their political strength from their hold over the land.

There is thus hope for the Rohingya only if the international community could prevail upon Myanmar to adopt a sensible approach to their problem. But  even to earn this they have to severe their links with Islamist extremism to establish their case. 

A major lesson of the post World War II development experience is that economic progress of a nation is a product measurable in terms of development indicators  as well as a process that must be inclusive and doesn’t exclude any group. Nothing impairs  development more than insurgency. It is time Myanmar, under the leadership of Aung San Suu Kyi, dismantled the dysfunctional military-dominated state and established an inclusive state with space for all, including the Rohingyas for sustainable peace and progress.

The writer is a Retired IAS Officer of the Assam-Meghalaya Cadre and has served as a Scientific Consultant in the Office of the Principal Scientific Advisor to the Government of India.

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