In my last column, I wrote about the Rohingya, an ethnic group in Myanmar who have undergone intense persecution from both the military and local Buddhist nationalist groups, concluding my article with what could be done to help lessen the burden on these civilians. To fully understand the situation, though, we need to consider the premodern history of Muslim groups in Myanmar, acknowledging that British colonialism is the primary cause of the tensions that are present today. While acknowledging that these tensions are a result of intentional British policy, we also need to hold the Buddhist rulers and the current Tatmadaw military accountable, for they have continued Britain’s brutal policy of exploitation.
Muslims first began to settle in Myanmar, mainly the Rakhine region on the western coast, at the start of the ninth century when the land was ruled by the Arakanese Kingdom. The majority Buddhist ruling class, who had resided in the area for long before this Muslim migration, mostly treated their new co-inhabitants with equality and respect, welcoming many of their customs and even allowing them to serve key positions in the royal administration. This dynamic remained in the region until the British conquered the area and consolidated it with British India, whereafter a large number of Muslim immigrants settled in Burma (modern-day Myanmar) due to better economic prospects. The British continued to encourage this practice even when Burma was split off to form a separate colony.
The British followed an administrative policy known as “divide-and-rule” to maintain control in Burma, pitting a region’s ethnic or religious groups against each other in order to kill any sense of common unity. Buddhist groups grew increasingly nationalistic and xenophobic due to what they considered a continued incursion of foreign Muslim groups into their home. While some surmise that their view is due to ingrained prejudices within the Buddhist population, the current situation is not just an accidental byproduct of British policy mixed with Buddhist beliefs. It is instead a purposeful intermingling of both by the British, who sought directly to inflame local tensions and resentments between the majority Buddhist and minority Muslim populations.
A blatant and often purposeful disregard of the established religious order also allowed the British to erode Buddhist authority, which was intrinsically tied with Burmese national identity. They also gave minority groups, such as the Rohingya Muslims, special privileges to further put them at odds with their compatriots. This made Buddhist communities increasingly nervous and xenophobic and was only solidified after the Rohingya aided the British in their fight against the Japanese Empire and local Burmese nationalists during the Second World War. This xenophobia is still very much on display today, with Buddhist monks such as Wirathu gaining infamy for their anti-Muslim sentiment.
The Tatmadaw, Myanmar’s military, have continued this practice of “divide and rule.” They seized control of the country initially in a 1962 coup, continually fostering the conditions for the present-day treatment of the Rohingya, most notably with its 1982 Citizenship Law. The Rohingya and other Muslim groups have seen their own basic human rights eroded by the junta, which has all too conveniently used similar policies to that of the British to control these populations. The British were the ones who planted the seeds of this humanitarian tragedy; however, it is the Tatmadaw who have worked tirelessly to exacerbate it.
While pinning a large portion of the blame on outside factors when there are internal state actors who continue the same practices might be seen as a cop-out, I do think that the ethnic and religious tensions themselves, which are the roots of the current treatment of Muslim minority groups in Myanmar, were a direct result of British interference in the society. It is important to learn the history behind these sorts of tensions in the world because understanding a problem in totality is far more important than looking at only the present day iteration of it.
