i had some further thoughts today on the persecution of the rohingya in burma. clearly there’s a plain out & out racist element here insofar as the dark-skinned “bengali” rohingya are different from most of the other ethnicities of burma, aside naturally from the indian minority which arrived during the british raj (most of whom left, but of those who remain many have switched their identity from hindu to buddhist in the surveys i’ve seen).

my thoughts were triggered by the fact that the rohingya do not use bengali script, but traditionally used arabic modified scripts (like urdu, ‘hanafi,’ etc.), and more recently have used burmese or roman script. the rohingya are also uniformly muslim. the burmese, in particular the dominant ethnic bamar, do not view them as a national minority because they are perceived to be recent immigrants from bengal. the rohingya themselves don’t seem to agree with this, and many claim arab or non-bengali antecedents. the latter is not totally atypical for south asian muslims, who wish to suggest exogenous origins so as to identify with the ‘ashraf’ elite muslims. but with the rohingya there are i think more details in their specific circumstance, most especially because there have long been muslims in burma, and many burmese muslims are not rohingya, and these muslims do not suffer the same degree of persecution as the rohingya.

burma is obviously self-consciously a buddhist state, or at least the ruling junta perceives itself as such. the fact that many in the religious hierarchy have fomented unrest, or that the opposition are also believing buddhists, suggests that though the regime has used buddhism to buttress its legitimacy it is not fundamentally buddhist as such. now, it’s buddhist identity is not just window-dressing. christians in the northwest of burma complain about gov. sponsored buddhist missionaries, while karens to the east who are often catholic or protestant couch their dissent in religious terms. while only 50% of karens are christians, the leadership of the karen anti-gov. movement is wholly christian last i checked (in the 1990s the conversion of a buddhist on the governing council to christianity was heralded). but the opposition to the gov. is not purely religious, as the therevada buddhist shan ethnic minority is not less strident in its opposition to the junta than the karens or the lahu and such.

muslims are also a presence in burma, and though the rohingya of arakan are naturally prominent, and perhaps the majority of muslims in burma, they are not the only ones. in fact burma being on the fringe of muslim dominated india long had interactions with muslims, and the buddhist kings had muslim soldiers and units who arrived as mercenaries from the west. additionally, muslim merchants who plied the indian ocean routes naturally settled in burmese cities. these groups intermarried with the natives so that british ethnographers would occassionally stumble upon muslim villages of bamar ethnicity. since the bamar ethnicity is so closely identified with therevada buddhism the villagers often had explanation whereby their ancestors were muslim soldiers who had intermarried with the bamar. it seems likely that many muslim bamar were absorbed into the therevada buddhist population, Aung San Suu Kyi is reputedly descended from a prominent muslim notable at the court of the burmese kings. there was even a muslim minister ruling regime in the 1950s and 1960s from this minority population, religiously, but not ethnically or racially distinct from the burmese majority.

the racial and ethnic aspect, as well as the idea that the rohingya are interlopers who have not been part of the history of burma, therefore has to loom large. this is not to deny the religious aspect of the conflict, but that parameter must be considered in light of a host of other differences which set the rohingya apart. physically the rohingya seem to resemble bengalis from what i have seen. their language is closely related to the chittagong dialect of bengali, which should give one a major clue as to their provenance. but in the literature i’ve seen suggest that he rohingya claim they are indigenous, descendants of arabs or other groups, and not bengalis. their lack of use of the bengali script is interesting, as it suggests to be a rather conscious disaffiliation from bengali identity.

as it happens years ago my family knew a man who was rohingya. his family fled to bangladesh when he was young, and eventually he immigrated to the USA. he was a devout muslim who could speak bengali with perfect fluency. his features were slightly more “east asian” than typical for a bengali, but seeing as i have relatives whose nicknames are “jackie chan” i don’t think they were out of the norm for someone from east bengal. but, he very specifically identified as burmese, and not bengali or bangladeshi, despite growing up for many years in chittagong. my parents found this peculiar, and clearly viewed the rohingya as simply bengalis who happened to reside in burma. the exact same view of many burmese it seems!

to make more sense of the rohingya the arc of bengali ethnogenesis is critical. from what i have seen and read language is the primary marker between bengali and non-bengali. bengalis are generally small dark-skinned people, but there are some who are tall and light, and others who frankly look east asian. this range is extant within my own family and i do not thin we are atypical. nevertheless, though the range in appearance may be commented upon in an amusing fashion (e.g., “you look like jackie chan!”) there isn’t any implication that if one deviates from the modal bengali appearance one is not bengali. obviously religion can not be coterminous with bengali identity since 2/3 are muslim and 1/3 are hindu. no, it seems that the lodestar of bengali identity is language, and the high literary production which elite bengalis take some pride in, no matter whether they are indian or bangladeshi, hindu or muslim.

but has this always been so? i make a point to note that it is *elite bengalis* who focus on the literary production as illiteracy is common in bangladesh, and still relatively common in west bengal. go back 100 years and presumably it was overwhelming. i would argue that ethnic identity is a marco-social concept which makes more sense for urban elites who are more mobile. in the villages of bangladesh from what i can tell (having visited and talked to the people) even today there is only a marginal sense of bengali identity because they rarely meet non-bengalis. for them foreigners are people from across the river (e.g., meghna river, which is quite wide!).

additionally, even among the literate class within bengal the current conformation of bengali identity around bengali literature is relatively new. in the rise of islam and the bengal frontier. the author argues that bengali as the dominant mode of literate discourse in bengal only became the norm after muslim conquest, because the hindu kings tended to patronize sanskrit. but after the mughal conquest of the 16th century bengali went into decline again as urdu and persian became the elite languages. when bengali became prominent again under the british it was a “hindu” language, with muslim elites urdu or persian. the rise of a literate muslim middle class which was also bengali-identified in the 19th and 20th century slowly allowed the language to have a less hindu valence in the minds of muslims, though even during the 1971 war it is clear that muslims in north india tend to view the usage of bengali by bengali muslims as the preferred medium of elite discourse with some suspician (i.e., it’s a “hindu language”).

but in any case, how does this relate to burma and the rohingya? i believe one reason that the rohingya do not use bengali script, and disavow a bengali identity, despite their clear origins in bengali, is that they left bengal when an elite bengal muslim identity had not crystallized yet. if the rohingya were mostly illiterate peasants who arrived within the past 150 years naturally it wouldn’t be a big issue if the rohingya elite decided to use a non-bengali script, and disavow a bengali identity. they’d follow their elites. and just as many south asian muslims claim to be descended from turks, arabs or persians despite their dark brown skin and nearly identical appearance to their hindu neighbors, why couldn’t the bengalis who settled in burma disavow their bengali connections so as to fit in better in arakan? but unlike south asia, where some hindus will egg muslims on who claim non-south asian origins (for obvious reasons), the non-rohingya majority disputes the reconstruction of the past (of obvious reasons).