The Rohingya of Myanmar: theoretical significance of the minority status

ABSTRACT

The Rohingya of Myanmar have been experiencing a range of human rights violations including state-sponsored genocide and ethnic cleansing. Many argue that the genesis of the crisis lies in the denial of their legal status and granting citizenship would offer a solution. This article argues that apart from such legal dynamics, significant theoretical aspects of this crisis require analysis. From a theoretical perspective, the Rohingya’s identity as a minority is important as it leads to their persecution. This article demonstrates that their minority identity has been (re)constructed over time. Four factors such as (i) development of Burmese nationalism; (ii) politicisation of identity for Burmese majority; (iii) taking away of the citizenship of Rohingya; and (iv) ethnic divisions in Myanmar society have played significant roles in (re)constructing their identity as a minority. They give rise to a type of citizenship in Myanmar, which fails to include the religious minority within its ambit.

KEYWORDS:

• Rohingya
• minority
• nationalism
• identity
• citizenship

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank the anonymous peer reviewers of Asian Ethnicity for their valuable comments on an earlier version of this article.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. Myanmar got its independence from Great Britain in 1948. At that time, Myanmar was called Burma. In 1989, the Military regime, the State Law and Order Restoration Council (SLORC), renamed Burma ‘Myanmar’. Since then, the name ‘Myanmar’ has been used officially by the United Nations. But, the term ‘Myanmar’ is still contested. In this article, I have used the name ‘Myanmar’. See Cockett, Blood, Dreams and Gold, 82.

2. Zaw, Face of Resistance.

3. Global Research, Plight and Persecution of the Rohingyas.

4. Human Rights Watch, All You Can Do.

5. Veen, Myanmar’s Muslims, 9.

6. The Citizenship Law 1982.

7. The Arakan Project, Unregistered Rohingya Refugees.

8. Pyithu Hlittaw Law No. 4 of 1982.

9. Ibid.

10. A theoretical framework demonstrates an understanding of theories and concepts to explore the meaning, nature and challenges associated with a phenomenon in more informed and effective ways and help develop a pragmatic solution. See Anfara and Mertz, Theoretical Frameworks in Qualitative Research.

11. Minow, Not only for Myself, 30–58.

12. Forsythe, ‘German Identity and the Problem of History’.

13. A minority group is a subgroup of people that consists of the smaller of two or more groups from a given population. See Leach, Brown and Worden, ‘Ethnicity and Identity Politics’.

14. Feagin, Racial and Ethnic Relations, 10.

15. Wirth, ‘The Problem of Minority Groups’.

16. Loaded term is a term used to influence an audience by using appeal to emotion or stereotypes.

17. Burguiere and Grew, Construction of Minorities, 2.

18. Ibid., 3.

19. Krasner, Power, the State.

20. Cohen, ‘Nation-state, Citizenship Identity’.

21. Ibid.

22. Ibid.

23. Dworkin and Dworkin, Minority Report; Wilson, Power, Racism and Privilege; and Blalock, Power Analysis of Racial Discrimination, 53–9.

24. Epstein, Ethos and Identity, 11.

25. Manderson, ‘Migration, Prostitution and Medical Surveillance’.

26. Baron and Byrne, Social Psychology; and Hacker, ‘Women as a Minority Group’.

27. Schermerhorn, These Our People, 5.

28. Moland, Hegel on Political Identity, 3–24; and Joireman, Nationalism and Political Identity, 1–35.

29. Eriksen, Ethnicity and Nationalism, 123.

30. This entails that the minority being physically removed from the majority, and this is justified by referring to the presumed cultural inferiority of the former. See, Ibid.

31. Anahi Viladrich and Sana Loue, ‘Minority Identity Development’, 3.

32. Race refers to a person’s physical characteristics, such as bone structure and skin, hair or eye colour. Ethnicity, on the other hand, refers to cultural factors, including nationality, regional culture, ancestry and language. See Cornell and Hartmann, Ethnicity and Race.

33. See note 31 above.

34. Sheth and Mahajan, Minority Identities.

35. Ramaga, ‘The Bases of Minority Identity’.

36. Romanucci-Ross and Vos, Ethnic Identity, 21.

37. Tomuschat, Protection of Minorities, 959.

38. Krishnaswami, Study of Discrimination, 47–8.

39. For example, see Hurd, Beyond Religious Freedom, 46.

40. Ryeng, Kroger and Martinussen, ‘Identity Status and Self-Esteem’.

41. The Rohingya could claim citizenship under the Constitution of 1947 but that became difficult under the Constitution of 1974 and they became stateless according to section 345 of the Constitution of 2008.

42. Su-Ann, Rohingya Or Bengali.

43. This point is discussed elaborately under the headline of ‘Approaches to the Politicisation of Identity’.

44. Islam, Politics of Islamic Identity.

45. Layton-Henry, ‘Minorities’.

46. Gutmann, ‘Multiculturalism and Identity Politics’.

47. Eisenberg and Kymlicka, Identity Politics, 4.

48. Taylor, Multiculturalism.

49. See note 11 above.

50. Alcoff, Hames-Garcia, Mohanty and Moya, Identity Politics Reconsidered, 6.

51. Brown,’Wounded Attachments’.

52. Ibid., 202, 220.

53. See note 50 above.

54. Ibid.

55. Ibid.

56. The field of ‘politics of difference’ has a lot of literature. I will not be able to engage with it here but do acknowledge that it is not only a negative development. For details, see Wilmsen and McAllister, Politics of Difference; Noonan, Critical Humanism; Weedon, Feminism, Theory and the Politics; and Young, Justice and the Politics.

57. See note 11 above.

58. Cressida, ‘Identity Politics’.

59. Kobayashi, Identity Politics, 284.

60. See note 29 above.

61. There is no single definition of liberalism and this is a debate I need to avoid. For the purposes of this thesis, the understanding of Liberal Democracy is the one often used to describe western democratic political systems where attempts are made to defend and increase civil liberties; regulate government intervention affecting the citizenry and which increase the equal scope for religious, political and intellectual freedom of citizens. See Chan, Liberalism, Democracy and Development, 130–74.

62. Green, Shadow of Unfairness, 6; and Dandaneau, Taking It Big, 206.

63. Kymlick, Liberalism, Community, and Culture.

64. See note 29 above.

65. Taylor, Multiculturalism and ‘The Politics of Recognition’.

66. Ibid., 43.

67. Kymlicka, Multicultural Citizenship, 90.

68. Parekh, Rethinking Multiculturalism.

69. Pagge, ‘Group Rights and Ethnicity’.

70. Ibid., 210.

71. Ibid.

72. From the end of the 18th century until the 1930s, the word race appeared to explain major historical phenomena. The word racism was first used at the end of the 1930s to refer to this doctrine which claimed that race determined culture. Then rediscovery of the weight of ethnicity by American sociologists in the 1960s contributed to a new redefinition of different groups in terms of ‘ethnic groups’. See Schnapper, ‘Race: History of the Concept’.

73. Fullerton, Sameness and Identity.

74. See note 24 above.

75. Kenschaft, Clark and Ciambrone, Gender Inequality, 14.

76. Substantive equality tends to recognise that policies and practices which may appear to be non-discriminatory but may not address the specific needs of certain groups of people. In effect, they may be indirectly discriminatory, creating systemic discrimination.

77. Within the framework of equality in the law, a distinction is often made between formal and substantive equality. Formal equality concerns consistency more than substance and focuses on discrimination that can be identified based on the mere appearance or form of a measure, that is, distinctions are explicitly based on prohibited grounds of differentiation. Substantive equality, on the other hand, emphasises whether a ground for differentiation results in prohibited discrimination and also recognises the fact that discrimination can be either direct or indirect in nature. See Tobler, Indirect Discrimination, 25–6.

78. Song, Justice, Gender, and the Politics, 3.

79. Lloyd, Beyond Identity Politics.

80. Jarach, Essentialism and the Problem of Identity.

81. In contrast, studies exist suggesting that particular identity should not be emphasised. Those studies have examined whether individual differences in essentialist beliefs about race or ethnicity are associated with prejudiced attitudes or if there is any correlations between essentialist thinking and measures of racism. Relatedly, researchers have found that essentialist thinking among members of a society is associated with a less welcoming attitude to any groups having a different identity with reluctance to integrate them with the majority. Essentialist thinking also has implications for people’s ability to negotiate bicultural identities. As per essentialism, the differences and hierarchy among the groups are natural, and hence, essentialism can appear to be a defensive perspective and counter-narrative of the idea of sameness. And thus, there is a need for the recognition of difference; differences matter (though not in every context) and may substantially impact the rights and interest of a group that has any lack of sameness. See Dar-Nimrod and Heine, ‘Exposure to scientific theories.’ Chao, Chen, Roisman and Hong, ‘Essentializing Race’; Wong, Kymlicka’s Liberal Theory.

82. Hirschfeld, Race in the Making.

83. Gil-White, ‘Are Ethnic Groups Biological Species to the Human Brain?’

84. Mahalingam, ‘Essentialism, Culture, and Beliefs’.

85. Haslam, Rothschild and Ernst, ‘Are Essentialist Beliefs Associated with Prejudice?’

86. Rothbart and Taylor, ‘Category Labels and Social Reality.’

87. See note 82 above.

88. See note 83 above.

89. Yzerbyt, Rocher and Schadron, ‘Stereotypes as Explanations.’

90. Verkuyten, ‘Discourses about Ethnic Group.’

91. Phinney, Horenczyk, Liebkind and Vedder, ‘Ethnic Identity, Immigration.’

92. Galache, Rohingya and National Identities in Burma.

93. Taylor, State in Myanmar, 15–20.

94. Kipgen, Democratisation of Myanmar, 50.

95. Crouch and Lindsey, Law, Society and Transition, 366.

96. Smith, Burma: Insurgency.

97. Section 3.

98. Mullen, Pathways that Changed Myanmar.

99. The contemporary idea of minority identity is a complex intermix of various factors notably nationalism, politicisation of identity, citizenship and ethnicity. See Layachi, ‘The Berbers in Algeria.’

100. Delanty and Kumar, SAGE Handbook of Nations.

101. Easman, Ethnic Politics, 28.

102. Smith, National Identity, 72.

103. Connor, Etnonacionalismo, 42.

104. Ibid.

105. Haas, ‘What is Nationalism.’

106. See Breuilly, Oxford Handbook of the History of Nationalism, 3.

107. See Dunn, ‘Nationalism.’; Hutchinson and Smith, Nationalism, 3.

108. Diversity refers to a plurality of identities, and it is seen as a condition of human existence rather than as the effect of an enunciation of difference that constitutes hierarchies and asymmetries of power. See Ranchman, Identity in Question, 5.

109. Sidel, ‘Nationalism in Post-Independence Southeast Asia.’

110. David, Comparative Politics, 47.

111. Reynolds, ‘Nation and state: Thailand.’

112. Ibid., 24.

113. Mookherhee, ‘The Aesthetics of Nations.’

114. Ibid., 4.

115. Schutz, Clemens and Murray, ‘The Fading Memory of Homo Non Sacer.’

116. Anderson, Gibney and Paoletti, ‘Citizenship, Deportation and the Boundaries of Belonging.’

117. Pugh, Is Citizenship the Answer, 12.

118. Smith, ‘Ethnicity and Nationalism.’

119. Smithy, ‘Ethnie and Nation in the Modern World.’

120. Weber, From Max Weber, 176.

121. Ibid., 172.

122. Connor, ‘A Nation is a Nation.’

123. Hastings, Construction of Nationhood, 30.

124. Falcone, Myanmar and the Karen Conflict.

125. Massey, ‘Geographies of Responsibility.’; Penrose and Mole, ‘Nation-States and National Identity.’; Intrapersonal choice indicates – what group one belongs to and interpersonal choice indicates – how other groups related to one’s group. See note 110 above.

126. Such categorisation defines people’s social identity and accentuates their perceived similarity to people’s cognitive representation of the defining features of the group like group prototypicality. See Hogg, Terry and White, ‘The Tale of Two Theories.’

127. See note 110 above.

128. Poole contends that national identity is ‘the primary form of identity’, seeing that it encompasses and relates to all other manifestations of political identity. See Poole, Nation and Identity, 67; Nation states are the only legitimate geopolitical unit, which generates the rights for those having national identity. See Pawelec and Grimm, ‘Does National Identity Matter?’

129. The way identity becomes politicised is illustrated broadly later.

130. Civic nationalism promotes an inclusive type of nationalism. It uses a jus soli understanding of nationhood to define the nation. Jus soli is a principle that indicates that the citizenship of someone is determined by the place of her birth. Ethnic nationalism, on the other hand, presents a more exclusive model of nationalism. It is founded on the principle of jus sanguinis, which indicates that citizenship is not determined by place of birth but by having one or both parents who are citizens of the state. See Brown, Contemporary Nationalism; Gans, Limits of Nationalism; Plamenatz, ‘Two Types of Nationalism.’; Smith, Nationalism; Spinner, Civic and Ethnic Nationalism; Hechter, Containing Nationalism; and Muller, ‘Us and Them the Enduring Power.’

131. Lecours, ‘Ethnic and Civic Nationalism.’

132. Muller, ‘Us and Them.’

133. Any opt for a civic nationalist approach (in a multicultural population) helps include a number of (minority) groups, and ethnic approach cannot include, perhaps accommodate, several such groups (rather dominates the ‘other groups’ leading to civil conflict). In other words, jus soli leads to ethnic integration and jus sanguinis leads to ethnic cleansing. See note 123 above.

134. Identity formation normally occurs at the very early stage in the national development process. But for the Rohingya, it has not occurred in Myanmar owing to the protracted ethnic divisiveness (since ethnic divisions prevent the formation of a national identity). In fact, Myanmar had to decide at the onset of its independence the type of nationalism it wants to adhere to: civic or ethnic. Such decision would resolve the crisis what Smith describes as the ‘dilemmas of national unity in a country of diversity’. Without any such decision, it embarked upon the course of ethnic nationalism excluding the Rohingya. Yet, a civic approach, in theory, has been more obvious to prevent the politicisation of the identity and avoid the conflicts. See Dittmer, Burma Or Myanmar, 20; Smith, State of Strife, 7.

135. The primordial ties stem not from social interactive rather from ‘the givens’ of social existence, like one’s religion, language, customs or instantaneous contiguity and kin connection. According to the primordialism view, a political identity is thus choice-liberated and change-resistant for biological and cultural reasons. Biological perspective emphasises that genetic kinship bond extends from a nuclear family to an extended one and then to an identity group along with a ‘politicisable’ group loyalties. Cultural perspective on the other hand strains the value of typical culture and historical kinship connections. Through this, an emotional and psychological sense of belongingness to an extended family can be envisaged, which is worth defending. Primordialism, however, concludes that (i) social attachments are largely a derivative of primordial affinities like blood ties; (ii) a political identity is static; and (iii) primordial attachments can spur political actions at any moment the primordial ties are at risk. See Geertz, Interpretation of Cultures, 259; David, above n 110, 157–58.

136. David regards political identity theory as constructivist in nature following two allied ways: (i) within the bounds of congenital physical characteristics by choosing the adoption of identity or by assigning of political significance with an understanding that identities can emerge, change or disappear as circumstances behest; and (ii) the salience of an individual’s political identity will hinge on particular sociopolitical developments and thus the politicisation of identity cannot be assumed rather becomes contextual. To be mentioned, the interplay between individual choices and social contexts presupposes a constant (re)construction of identity since they shape and constrain one another through (de)politicisation in the backdrop of socio-economic change. See note 110 above.

137. Yang, Ethnic Studies, 46.

138. See note 123 above.

139. Instrumentalism purports that political identities are strategic to advance sociopolitical interests. It concentrates on the short-term goals for which political identities are formed. See Varshney, ‘Ethnicity and Ethnic Conflict.’; Thananithichot, ‘Understanding Thai Nationalism.’

140. Azar and Burton. International Conflict Resolution.

141. Su-Ann, Myanmar’s Mountain and Maritime Borderscapes, 284.

142. State’s exclusionary power traditionally lies in its sovereignty and extends to its own territory and treatment of any group that further defines groups’ identity, citizenship, boundary and exclusivity. See Krasner, Sovereignty: Organized Hypocrisy.

143. Ibrahim, The Rohingyas: Inside Myanmar’s Hidden Genocide.

144. Cordell and Wolff, Routledge Handbook of Ethnic Conflict.

145. Gibson, James and Falvey, Rohingyas Insecurity and Citizenship.

146. Brehm, ‘State Context and Exclusionary Ideologies.’

147. Kaplan and Chacko, ‘Placing immigrant identities.’

148. Seekins, State and Society.

149. Steinberg, Burma: The State of Myanmar.

150. See note 141 above.

151. Bjornberg, ‘Rohingya Territoriality in Myanmar.’

152. Ibid., 151.

153. Ibid., 152.

154. See note 20 above.

155. Ibid.

156. Ibid., 11.

157. The term ‘citizenship’ is hard to define. A general definition of citizenship includes a membership in a political society. More precisely, it is the status of a person recognised under the custom or law as being a legal member of a sovereign state. The theoretical parsing of citizenship typically accentuates certain basic dimensions, like legal status, rights and identity. See Bosniak, ‘Citizenship Denationalized.’

158. Hayek, Constitution of Liberty, 164.

159. Joppke, Citizenship and Immigration, 6.

160. See note 157 above.

161. Ignatieff, ‘The Myth of Citizenship.’

162. Citizenship is described as an inclusive category by some and by other as an exclusionary category. This inclusion–exclusion dichotomy raises a relational question – is citizenship an end in itself, or is it a means to a cohesive society? See Anderson, Citizenship: What is it, 4; and Anderson, Us and Them, 114.

163. Gow, ‘Zebra Crossings to “thick” Citizenship.’

164. Although the extension of the legal status of membership does not necessarily carry with it the rights and practices that are critical to full incorporation. The progressive trajectory has been interlaced with more regressive social narratives that has led to a process of citizenship formalism by which ‘citizenship has been extended horizontally to increasing numbers of social groups, yet the citizenship they enjoy in substance is often illusory’. See Bosniak, Citizen and the Alien, 30.

165. Turner, ‘The Erosion of Citizenship.’

166. See note 117 above.

167. Arendt, Origins of Totalitarianism.

168. Benhabib, Rights of Others, 56.

169. Arendt suggests that the ‘right to have rights’ is contingent upon the notion that incorporation into a community is based on practices and actions of the individual, as opposed to how the individual was defined at birth. In the same way that the principles of jus sanguinis and jus soli privilege a certain type of insider, one that can ‘prove’ their belonging on the basis of historical properties, granting rights and the entitlement on the basis of birth right also serves to perpetuate the marginalisation of those not possessing favourable lineage.

170. See, e.g. the Citizenship Law, 1982.

171. Blitz and Lynch, Statelessness and Citizenship.

172. Ethnic identity is derived from social negotiations where one declares an ethnic identity and then demonstrates acknowledged ethnic group markers to others. Therefore, the identity becomes contingent upon the acknowledgment of ‘ingroup’ and ‘outgroup’ members in a given jurisdiction. In sociological analysis, ethnic identity is often used synonymously with ethnicity. Considering the changes in the ethnic mix, sociologists are agreed on the ethnic divisions in most societies. Ethnic division is any division either direct or symbolic between and among contending ethnic groups and the state. While the source of the division may be political, social or economic, such a division essentially plays a causal role to ethnic conflict. See Gudykunst, Bridging Differences, 76; and Shultz, ‘State Disintegration and Ethnic Conflict.’

173. Trimble, and Dickson, ‘Ethnic Identity.’

174. See note 92 above.

175. Shapiro, Smith and Masoud, Problems and Methods.

176. Galkina, Theoretical Approaches to Ethnic Identity.

177. This point is explained broadly earlier.

178. However, this study does not pretend to clarify the truth of each claim, whether the truth is in the Buddhist majority and Myanmar Government’s claim or otherwise the claim of the Rohingya. Rather this study reviews how the opposite sides are argued, with all the dynamics occurring, whether to reject the Rohingya’s identity or to fight for the recognition.

179. Leider, ‘Rohingya: The Name, The Movement, The Quest for Identity.’

180. Callahan, Political Authority in Burma.

181. Wong, and Suan, ‘Looking for a Life.’

182. Ibid.

183. Yegar, Muslim of Burma.

184. Ibid.

185. See note 179 above.

186. Taher, Rohingya Belong to Arakan.

187. See note 92 above.

188. See note 179 above.

189. Ibid.

190. For critiques’ comments, see Walton and Hayward, Contesting Buddhist Narratives.

191. A former British ambassador to Thailand.

192. Tonkin, ‘Rohingya’ Identity.

193. Kingsbury and Laoutides, Territorial Separatism in Global Politics.

194. Bates, Political Instability Task Force.

195. Centre of Excellence for National Security, Sectarian Violence.

196. Anderson, Truth and Tribe.

197. Ibid.

198. The widespread identity claims by the Rohingya in recent years became a kind of localisation of regional identity. This included not only the Muslims in the Arakan as the Rohingya, but also other Muslims in Myanmar generally. See, Leider, ‘Relics, Statues and Predictions.’

199. White, Nation, State, and Territory.

200. See note 98 above.

201. Agamben, ‘Beyond Human Rights.’

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Jobair Alam

Md Jobair Alam is a PhD Candidate, Macquarie Law School, Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia, and an Assistant Professor (on study leave). His doctoral thesis concentrates on the Rohingya crisis of Myanmar where he wishes to propose a negotiated peaceful solution to the Rohingya situation that could serve as a lesson for any potential crisis management should a parallel situation emerge in the future.

Postal address: Md Jobair Alam, Macquarie Law School, Macquarie University, North Ryde NSW, 2109, Australia.