Myanmar's ethnic nightmares

Book review of 'Myanmar's Integration with the World'

Myanmar’s Integration with the World 

Prabir De, Avijit Raychaudhuri (Eds)

Palgrave Macmillan

220 pages; $99

How does a syncretic region, also a key global rice bowl that is free of devastating cycles of floods and drought, become the centre of the world’s latest refugee crisis? 

Myanmar’s Arakan region suffers from none of the factors typically associated with an emerging disaster area. That it has become one shows how a century of poor leadership has reduced to a basket case a country blessed with most of the advantages nature can offer, including a low population density (82 per sq km) and a gross domestic product (GDP) per head of $5,249 (PPP) — almost the same as India’s.

Till the end of 18th century, Arakan (Rakhine, today) had rich Buddhist rulers who carried a Muslim middle name, knew Bengali and often had their coins inscribed in Arakanese, Persian and Bengali. The river Naf, which separated the Chittagong hill tracts in undivided India from Rakhine, was as porous as possible. While Muslim workers from Bengal came over as temporary labourers to work the rice fields, suffusing folk literature on both sides, the cross-cultural pattern influenced the Buddhists too. A thorough training by the Arakanese monks gave their counterparts from Bengal the approbation to preach Theravada Buddhism, wrote Swapna Bhattacharya, professor at the Department of South and South East Asian Studies at the University of Calcutta, had written in her exhaustive book, The Rakhine State of Myanmar, published in 2015. 

From there to the current episodes of ethnic cleansing is a long journey indeed. 

The first cracks in this cross-cultural edifice appeared in the late 18th century after the British inroads into the area. Government records show that almost two-thirds of Rakhine, mostly Buddhists, took shelter in Chittagong, fleeing the war between the British and the rulers of Myanmar. Relations deteriorated, thereafter. On the economic front Myanmar’s natural resources of timber, oil and rice yielded to British exploitation and they were keen to leverage Rakhine’s Sittwe as a key port, because it was closer to India than Rangoon (today’s Yangon), the British capital and the country’s main port. The British encouraged hiring workers from India to tend the rice fields, work the timber mills, and as port labour in Rangoon. The demographic character of Myanmar but especially Rakhine began to change rapidly. 

When the country gained independence, it imposed restrictions on this immigration. There was a huge repatriation of people back to India. As the Buddhist majority, despite internecine rebel movements, became more loyal to the military government in Rangoon after the Second World War, other locals who had offered the British strong support were gradually made to feel unwelcome. Rohingyas, the common term that came to describe them, was ironically a descriptor from Bengal (Rohinga) to describe all Myanmerese people. And as Myanmar shut itself off from the world in the 1950s, Rakhine and all other regions of the country fell into disrepair. 

As the curtain lifts following the national elections of 2011, Prabir De, professor and coordinator at the Asean-India Centre at RIS, and Ajitava Raychaudhuri, professor at Jadavpur University, explore Myanmar’s re-engagement with the rest of the world. The country is strategically placed in the world’s most exciting economic geography. “Myanmar connects Asia’s three big markets — the Asean, China and India,” Mr De writes. Its role as the “double track land bridge” is pulling investments into the country. Those investments are mostly gathered around ports. While China has plans for a $10-billion Kyaukpyu port, India is developing Dawei port near Sittwe and even South Korea plans one at Pathein. All of them abut Special Economic Zones which they hope to feed. “Most of the current flow (of foreign investment) is rather skewed towards export-seeking sectors rather than infrastructure,” he notes.

This creates both challenges and opportunities, he claims. All of its opportunities will be erased if it cannot trade. But to trade with its economic powerhouse neighbours it must ensure the sanctions imposed on it are lifted. For those sanctions to be lifted and no new ones imposed, it must sort out the challenge of the Rakhine migration crisis.  

Port-led investments also keep the local population dissatisfied since their skill requirements will not be addressed. “Most of the unorganised employment is concentrated in sectors which may not be aligned with trade. In such circumstances, trade or foreign investment promotion as well as better trade facilitation may not be very helpful in creating a momentum for employment generation,” notes the co-editor Mr Raychaudhuri. In a country suffering half a century of xenophobia, which can mean trouble, especially if in the pursuit of drawing in those investments the political leadership is seen making peace with minorities. This is where Daw Suu Kyi’s difficulties lie. 

In this region of gathering storm, India needs to be more than the source of massive investment. (Myanmar is India’s largest destination for infrastructure investment in South Asia). It has to blunt the edges of the current migration crisis. One of the chapters offers an unusual option. Myanmar needs medicines from India, which are often smuggled. Relax the trade rules and also allow schoolchildren from Rakhine to travel to states like Mizoram to study. These are unconventional but promising ways for India to draw closer a nation that is still finding its way in a globalised world.