Martin Smith, a well-known author, writer and Burmese specialist, writes in his book “Arakan (Rakhine): a Land in Conflict on Myanmar’s Western Frontier” that, “In the countdown to Myanmar’s independence in January 1948, the crisis in Arakan was fatefully ignored. This has always been the territory’s misfortune during times of national change. British officials admitted that they were more pre-occupied with the transition to independence in neighboring India and Pakistan.38 But the same neglect was shown by Aung San and leaders of the Anti-Fascist People’s Freedom League (AFPFL) who would soon take over the reins of government. Such disregard proved to be a historic error. Although overlooked in official discourse, patterns were emerging that indicated how ethnic and political movements would develop in Arakan after independence. In many respects, the same distinctions exist in Rakhine State politics today”. {1]
As in other times of transition, it is difficult to ascribe a single narrative to the complex events that followed. Rakhine nationalists were quick off the mark. On 1 January 1945 the Arakan Defence Army (ADA )began a revolt that helped clear the territory of Japanese forces even before the main AFPFL uprising that followed in March. As a result, there was later great resentment at the action of British forces in disarming Arakan resistance fighters. Among those arrested were the ADA chief Bo Kra Hla Aung and nationalist monk U Seinda. In Rakhine histories, the British return is marked as the fourth “colonization” of their land. From this point, the Arakan movement developed along three lines among Rakhine-majority parties.[2]
The Rakhine nationalist movement had developed along diverging lines: pro-British parliamentary wing led by the former Prime Minister Sir Paw Tun and U Kyaw Min. Pre-war Arakan National Congress (ANC) led by Aung Zan Wai, who became an AFPFL Executive Council member close to Aung San; and on the left, there was a militant force, led by U Seinda, who broke away from the ANC in November1945 to establish the Arakan People’s Liberation Party (APLP). With an estimated 3,000 supporters under arms, APLP guerrillas immediately started attacking government targets. Armed struggle had, in effect, begun. “In the countryside law and order exists exactly as far as a shot from a police station can reach,” the British Commissioner in Sittwe warned the anthropologist Edmund Leach in March 1946. [3]
AFPFL leaders, however, chose not to engage with the three movements together. Instead, they focused on only one, the ANC, convincing its members to disband and join them in a joint struggle for independence. It proved a major mistake, deepening the divisions in Arakan politics and excluding dissenting voices. The AFPFL was itself hardly united, and the crisis worsened in late 1946 when the CPB was expelled from the AFPFL. Some Rakhine nationalists stayed with the AFPFL, some went over to the Communist Party of Burma (CPB), some joined U Seinda’s APLP, and some took up with the People’s Volunteer Organization (PVO), a paramilitary force for wartime veterans established by Aung San.
There was a similar lack of political attention paid by British and AFPFL officials to Muslim politics. In the war’s aftermath, the communal situation remained highly tense. There was concern among Muslim leaders about the imminent independence of what would become three countries on their doorstep: Burma, India and Pakistan (subsequently Bangladesh).[4]
It was a time of high political consciousness. As Jacques Leider has written, the events of the Second World War marked the “political coming of age of the Muslims”. [5]
Initially, many Muslim leaders in the different communities in Arakan made the same political decision as the ANC. In organizational terms, this meant cooperation with the AFPFL and Bamar majority parties at the political center in Rangoon (Yangon). Following the inter-communal breakdown in 1942, communities of both Muslim and Indian heritage wanted to show their support for the national independence struggle. Myanmar was their home, and they wanted to play a full part in its future.
On this basis, Muslim organizations came together from around the country to unite in a new Burma Muslim Congress (BMC) that affiliated with the AFPFL in December 1945. For the next decade, the BMC was to remain an important voice for Muslim communities in national politics. The pressures, however, were felt very differently in north Arakan. Here the historic bonds between the peoples of Arakan and Chittagong were about to be broken by the separation of what would subsequently become known as East Pakistan.
As Rajashree Mazumder has written, “People suddenly found themselves on a side of a border that made them minorities in a Muslim- majority, Hindu-majority, or Buddhist-majority population.” [6] In the aftermath of war, the situation was chaotic. Many communities remained displaced from their homes; government administration had broken down; and it was during the population movements and upheavals of these times that accusations later began of what would be called “illegal” immigration into Arakan from “Bengal”.
In fact, many Rakhine-related peoples remained on the East Pakistan side of the border following the British departure. The Naf River border had never marked a Berlin Wall between Buddhist and Muslim peoples or cultures. In the post-war period, there were also discussions as to whether “Arakanese Buddhists” should resettle on the Arakan side of the frontier. [7]
As with the Muslim population in Arakan, there were differences of opinion between recent refugees and established communities who had lived in the Chittagong region for generations.
Unlike Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar, however, the ethno-political status of the Buddhist population in Chittagong was never seriously questioned. With a population of over 200,000 citizens, the Marma people – who are Rakhine-related – are the third largest nationality in present-day Bangladesh. Kyaw Minn Htin calls them a “de-Arakanized” community.[8]
In contrast, the situation was deteriorating fast on the other side of the Naf River frontier in the countdown to the British departure. To try and protect their interests, a number of ideas were mooted by Muslim leaders. Conservative voices generally supported the BMC strategy of working with the AFPFL. But more radical positions began to be taken in the volatile politics of north Arakan.
Three, in particular, stood out: a demand for the independence of the Mayu frontier region; an autonomous region that would be part of either Arakan or the new Union; or the conjunction of Muslim-majority territories in north Arakan to the new state of (East) Pakistan. None of these ideas ever succeeded, and the last was quickly rejected by the founder leader of Pakistan, Muhammad Ali Jinnah.[9]
Nevertheless the demand for local autonomy gained strength during the post-war period. In the country’s ethicized politics, Muslim leaders quickly realized that they needed a “nationality” identity of “statehood” if their political voices were to be heard. Ethnic politics were reshaping across the country; anti-Indian sentiment was widespread; and many Muslims in Arakan felt themselves to be an unrecognized people. As the British departure loomed, discussions were already beginning about the representation of Muslims in north Arakan by the name that they use for themselves: Rohingya.
References: –
1. Martin Smith, “Arakan (Rakhine): a Land in Conflict on Myanmar’s Western Frontier” Amsterdam (2019). PP. 21-25
2. Ibid
3. Reference courtesy of Prof. Robert Anderson. Letter, “Kenneth Lindhop, Commissioner Arakan Division Akyab to E.R.L. Leach”, 28 March 1946(Leach Papers, King’s College Archive, Cambridge University). Also, Smith pp. 21-25
4. East Bengal became a province of Pakistan at its 1947 creation, East Pakistan in 1955, and Bangladesh in 1971 following a violent “Liberation War”.
5. Leider, “Conflict and Mass Violence”, p.203.
6. Mazumder, “Illegal Border Crossers”, p.1163.
7. Ibid., pp.1163-72.
8. See e.g., Kyaw Minn Htin, “The Marma from Bangladesh: A ‘de-Arakanized’ Community in Chittagong Hill Tracts”, Suvannabhumi, Vol.7: 2 December 2015, pp.133-53.
9. Moshe Yegar, The Muslims of Burma, (1972) pp.96-7.
10. Smith, p. 23
By Aman Ullah
Rohingya historian & Columnist
By Aman Ullah
Rohingya historian & Columnist
