Nation-Building Across Ethnic Boundaries, Politicized Identity and a Victimized Minority: Making Sense of the Rohingya Exodus from Myanmar

 Brig Gen Abdullah Al Yusuf (Rtd.)

Introduction

Rohingya exodus from the Rakhine state of Myanmar is not a new story. The story is as old as the history of Burmanisation of Arakan (now Rakhine). Rohingyas were compelled to flee their homes, for the first time, in 1784 when the expansionist Burmese King Bodawpaya eyed on Arakan and devastated the kingdom in a ruthless offensive. Thousands of Arakanese were put to death, and the rest fled into Chittagong across the border (Buchanan, [1798] 1992: 81-82; International Crisis Group, 2014: 3). The British victory in the first Anglo-Burmese War of 1824 put an end to Burmese monarchy in Arakan and created a safe environment for the Rohingyas to return home. Again, when the Japanese invaded Burma in 1942, Rohingyas were attacked and killed for their loyalty to the British forces by the Japanese as well as their Rakhine collaborators (Leider, 2017: 196). In 1978, when the military regime of General Ne Win launched the infamous ‘Nagamin’ operation to clear Myanmar of so-called illegal immigrants, at least 300,000 Rohingyas were forced to flee to Bangladesh.

Since then, cross border forced migration of Rohingyas continued intermittently reaching its picks in 1992. Until 2010, 200,000 Rohingyas were living in Bangladesh with another 20,000 in Malaysia and a huge 700,000 in various Arab countries (Hossain, 2010: 12). The 2012 communal violence in Rakhine made a further 140,000 Rohingyas homeless (Advisory Commission on Rakhine State, 2017: 19). Fresh violence erupted in 2016 leading to new wave of refugees arriving from Myanmar to Bangladesh. Until August 2017, there were already around 307,500 Rohingya refugees living in Bangladesh. A further 900,000 are estimated to have arrived following the August 2017 massacre. Rohingyas have also made desperate attempts to seek refuge in other regional countries. In February 2009, many Rohingya refugees were rescued by Achenese sailors from the Strait of Malacca, after 21 days at sea. Over the last several years, many Rohingyas crossed in to Thailand. Many of them had been forcibly towed back to the open sea by the Coast Guards. In 2015, several mass graves of Rohingya refugees were discovered in Thai-Malaysian borders (Rahman, 2015: 292).

Since the independence of Myanmar, all the political regimes have stubbornly denied to recognize the Rohingyas as an indigenous race of the country. The official narratives of Myanmar developed by the dominant Burmans have always labelled the Rohingyas as illegal immigrants. In this article, the author argues that the Rohingya identity has been politicized through fabricated government narratives- a process initiated by the early Konbaung rulers seeking to unify Myanmar through a deliberately crafted nation-building scheme.    

Publication Type

Journal Article

Publication Year

2026

Author(s)

Brig Gen Md Mahboob Sarwar, PhD, (Rtd.)

Journal Name

Osmani Papers

Volume, Issue

1, 1

Pagination

87-97

Article Type

Paper

DOI: 10.67844/mpf6ts

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