What’s in it for me? A deep dive into Myanmar's fascinating history.

For decades, journalists reporting on Myanmar told a simple story about the country. It pitted a
virtuous population of nonviolent Buddhists against a brutal military regime that had isolated the
country from the wider world. 

When the military stepped back in 2011 and Myanmar embraced democracy, it appeared that justice
had triumphed. But then a new wave of iniquitous violence began to crest – and this time the
Buddhists were the aggressors. 

What had gone wrong? Why, with democracy and equality on the horizon, did so many Buddhists
attack and condemn their Muslim neighbors? These blinks address these questions, explaining how
the conflict began and why Myanmar’s democrats are still struggling to end it. 

In these blinks, you’ll learn 

why many Buddhists regard Muslims as enemies of the nation;

how British colonial policy shaped ethnic conflict in Myanmar; and 

what the pro-democracy movement and the dictatorship have in common. 

The transition from dictatorship to democracy was a cause of anti-Muslim violence in the summer of
2012.

Rakhine State is Myanmar’s westernmost region. Much longer than it is wide, the state’s coastline
begins at the Bangladesh border in the north and runs south along the Bay of Bengal for some 300
miles.

Sittwe, the state’s capital, is a fishing town. For many years, its Muslim and Buddhist inhabitants lived
together in relative harmony. In neighborhoods like Nasi, they didn’t just work and trade together
– they sent their kids to the same schools and often intermarried. 

In the summer of 2012, that changed. After months of rumors that Muslims were attacking
Buddhists, busses full of armed vigilantes began appearing in Sittwe. On June 12, they moved into
Nasi, where they spent the day burning down Muslim-owned houses and driving their residents into
displacement camps. It was the first of many similar incidents. 

The key message in this blink is: The transition from dictatorship to democracy was a cause of anti-
Muslim violence in the summer of 2012. 

The targets of this violence were Muslims known as Rohingya, an ethnic minority in Rakhine State. 

The Rohingya see themselves as Myanmar, but Rakhine Buddhists deny their claims to common
citizenship. As they see it, the Rohingya aren’t from Myanmar at all. Instead, they’re the descendants
of Bengali immigrants from Bangladesh and India, who crossed the border and settled on land that
rightfully belongs to the Rakhine Buddhist majority. 

Losing their land isn’t the only thing Rakhine Buddhists fear. Like many nationalists in Myanmar, they
call the nation’s border with Bangladesh the “Western Gate.” This is the final frontier between the
Muslim world to the east and the Buddhist world to the west, and it is all that stands between them
and “Islamization.” As one Rakhine Buddhist told the author, “If I don’t protect my race, then it will
disappear.” 
Why, after years of peaceful coexistence, did so many Rakhine Buddhists suddenly feel that they
were under attack? One answer is that the campaign against the Rohingya coincided with another
development in Myanmar: the shift from dictatorship to democracy. 

Between 2011 and 2015, Myanmar – which had been ruled by a military dictatorship since 1962 –
adopted a more democratic system. During the years of dictatorial rule, the country’s army had
suppressed the political movements of ethnic minorities. Now that the military wasn’t in charge,
though, groups like the Rohingya might start asserting their rights. And that, Rakhine Buddhists
feared, would erode their rights.

Extremists used newfound freedoms to target the Rohingya.

What triggered the violence in 2012? There are two explanations. 

The first has often been cited by participants. In May 2012, a Buddhist seamstress was raped and
murdered in Rakhine State. Three men described as “Bengali Muslim” were arrested, tried, and
found guilty. Days later, 300 Buddhists beat ten Muslim men to death in a “revenge” attack. The
victims of this attack had nothing to do with the seamstress’s murder, so why were they targeted? 

This question brings us to the second explanation. By the summer, crimes perpetrated by Muslims
weren’t understood as random acts of violence – they were seen as expressions of a sinister plan to
drive Buddhists out of the state. This narrative had been some time in the making. 

The key message in this blink is: Extremists used newfound freedoms to target the Rohingya. 

Day-to-day life in multi-ethnic towns like Sittwe was relatively peaceful in 2011, but many Buddhist
intellectuals and political leaders were already crafting a new and divisive narrative. 

That year, Rakhine Buddhists convened at a seminar in Yangon to discuss the Rohingya. There,
scholars argued that “Bengali Muslims” had fabricated the label “Rohingya” to lay claim to a country
that didn’t belong to them. 

This idea was elaborated in the pages of Buddhist newspapers and journals. The Rohingya, it was
said, were a newly created ethnic group. Their claim to a long-standing presence in Rakhine State
was little more than a ploy to wrest control from the Buddhist majority. One journal edited by senior
monks and politicians portrayed the Rohingya as “terrorists” who posed an “existential threat” to
Myanmar. The word kalar, a disparaging term for South Asians with dark skin, meanwhile became
synonymous with Muslims. 
What accounted for this escalation? Well, as we’ve seen, 2011 marked the beginning of Myanmar’s
transition to democracy and open elections. The military didn’t just loosen its hold on the political
process – it also relinquished its iron grip on the media. For the first time since 1962, publications
didn’t pass through the hands of a military censor. 

This was a historic triumph, but it had an unexpected consequence. Although the military regime had
often stoked resentment against ethnic minorities, it had pulled back when these ideas began
spreading too far. A popular outburst, after all, was uncontrollable, which made it dangerous to the
regime. 

Now, though, it didn’t control the flow of information, giving extremists free rein to spread their
ideas. 

Anti-Muslim violence spread throughout Myanmar after June 2012.

Clashes between Rohingya and Buddhists became increasingly common after June 2012. The violence
was tit for tat; attacks by one side were answered with reprisals by the other. 

The media, however, applied a double standard in reporting the conflict. Buddhists were portrayed
as only ever acting in self-defense. The Rohingya, by contrast, were “terrorists” who were always on
the offensive. 

On social media, none-too-subtle connections were drawn between what was happening in Rakhine
State and global events. Buddhists circulated images of both the September 2001 attacks on New
York and the Taliban's destruction of the Buddhas of Bamiyan, in Afghanistan. The implication was
clear: the Rohingya were part of a global war on other faiths. This idea justified the harshest possible
response. 

The key message in this blink is: Anti-Muslim violence spread throughout Myanmar after June 2012.

One month after the neighborhood of Nasi was burned down, Myanmar’s president promised to
“take care of our own ethnic nationalities.” The Rohingya were excluded from this pledge. They had
come to the country “illegally,” which meant that “we cannot accept them here.” 
In October 2012, there was a second wave of violence. Despite a large police presence in the state,
Rohingya villages continued to be attacked, driving their inhabitants into an ever-larger number of
makeshift refugee camps. 

Rumors spread that government forces were complicit in this violence. Eventually, evidence surfaced
proving that they often were. One video, for example, showed police armed with rifles looking on as
Buddhists attacked Muslims with spears, clubs, and chains. Other rumors told of executions and mass
graves. True or not, such hearsay led thousands of fearful Rohingya to flee to refugee camps. 

But it wasn’t just the Rohingya who were in the firing line. In the autumn, leading Rakhine monks
called for a boycott of all Muslims. This wasn’t an idle threat. When a trader was caught selling rice to
a Muslim, he was clubbed to death by fellow Rakhine Buddhists. 

Anti-Muslim sentiment now spread into Myanmar’s interior. In the distant state of Kayin, another
boycott targeted Kayin Muslims – an ethnic group unrelated to the Rohingya. A spate of grenade
attacks on mosques followed. Another unrelated group, Kaman Muslims, were also singled out. In
the most notorious case, a 94-year-old Kaman woman died of stab wounds after being attacked by a
Buddhist mob. In Mandalay, a city 400 miles northeast of Rakhine State, a Muslim neighborhood was
burned down, creating some 12,000 refugees. 

The British empire’s policies in Myanmar laid the foundations for anti-Muslim resentment.

The first Muslims to settle in Myanmar arrived over 1,000 years ago. They came from Persia and India
and set up trading posts along the Bay of Bengal. Eventually, they intermarried with the local
population and became an established presence in places like Arakan – today’s Rakhine State.

Wars were a constant feature of Myanmar’s history during this time, but religion rarely played much
of a role in them. In fact, such conflict was typically driven by rival kingdoms’ claims to territory.
When kings needed soldiers, they recruited from the communities they happened to govern,
whatever their creed or ethnicity. 

This history suggests that Muslims have deep roots in Myanmar, so why do many Buddhists view
them as interlopers who need to be expelled? 

The key message in this blink is: The British empire’s policies in Myanmar laid the foundations for
anti-Muslim resentment. 
Britain annexed Myanmar in its entirety in 1885. Like other British colonies in Asia, it was quickly
integrated into a single political and economic unit. India, the British empire’s prize possession, was
at the heart of this unit.

Integrating Myanmar into the British empire meant building infrastructure, and that required
manpower – something the new colony lacked. In 1886, Britain solved this logistical problem by
dissolving Myanmar’s western border and encouraging Indians to settle in what was now called
“Burma.” 

These immigrants filled every position from simple day laborer to office clerk, soldier, and money
lender. In doing so, they changed the face of the country. In the 1920s, around 250,000 Muslim and
Hindu Indians entered the country every year. By 1931, Yangon, the colonial capital, was home to
212,000 Indians and just 128,000 Bamar – the largest local ethnic group. Indians also owned half of
Myanmar’s arable land. 

This was a recipe for resentment. The Myanmar nationalist movement that emerged in the 1920s
and ’30s took aim at both the British authorities and these new arrivals. Nationalists distinguished
between different Indians, though. Hindus were largely tolerated. Unlike Muslims, they didn’t require
Myanmar women to convert and raise children in their faith when they married. Muslims, by
contrast, weren’t just accused of being stooges of the British – they were also “diluting the
bloodline.” 

Kicking the British out, the nationalists’ first priority, became closely linked with a second goal:
removing Muslims. Over time, this second goal expanded to cover not just Indian Muslims who had
recently settled in Myanmar, but older Muslim populations like the Rohingya. 

Myanmar’s dictatorship sought to unify the nation by any means necessary.

For many years, visitors to Myanmar’s immigration offices were confronted with a large red sign
bearing a bold and alarming message. “The Earth,” the sign warned, “will not swallow a race to
extinction, but another race will.” 

Such messages were typical of Myanmar’s military dictatorship. After independence in 1948,
Myanmar – then still known as Burma – was rocked by instability. In 1962, the military was asked to
restore order, which it did, and then hand power back to a civilian government. This it refused to do. 

Security became the ruling ideology. Without a vigilant state and strong borders, the military
claimed, the nation’s very existence was threatened. As in the past, foreign forces would overrun
Myanmar. This time, though, they might succeed and swallow it whole. 
The key message in this blink is: Myanmar’s dictatorship sought to unify the nation by any means
necessary. 

The military council that took power in 1962 had one overriding commitment: national unity. Its
program drew on the words of a famous slogan used by nationalists during their struggle against the
British: “One voice, one blood, one nation.” Only unity, the dictatorship believed, could keep
“internal and external destructive elements” in check. 

Over the following decades, the military created a powerful narrative about its role. Rather than
building a new nation, it was restoring an old nation. Myanmar, according to this account, had
flourished for many centuries because it had been unified behind a single culture and faith
– Buddhism. 

Granted, there had always been minorities, but they had assimilated to the dominant culture and
faith. Rakhine and Bamar, after all, might belong to distinct groups, but they are both Buddhist. The
British, on the other hand, had subjugated Myanmar by introducing alien groups, especially Muslims,
who refused to assimilate, thus eroding national unity. 

There is a grain of truth in this simplistic account. British authorities were obsessed with classifying
and fixing the boundaries between different “races.” In Myanmar, they counted no fewer than 139
distinct racial groups. Alongside the encouragement of immigration from India, there is no doubt that
British policy channeled conflict along racial lines, which did undermine a unified Myanmar identity. 

The military’s account of the past wasn’t purely academic, though – it also justified its policies. As the
council saw it, its highest duty was to protect Myanmar, and the only way of doing that was to
achieve national unity. If that meant using force, so be it. 

The military regime was suspicious of Myanmar’s history of fluid ethnic identities.

Just before Myanmar gained its independence in 1948, minorities living in the country’s border
regions were promised the right to secede from the future nation state. Other groups were assured
that they’d be given the same rights as Myanmar’s largest ethnic group, the Bamar. 

Both pledges were withdrawn after independence. When the army seized power in 1962, many
groups – like the Kachin in north Myanmar – took up arms. These insurgencies were easily defeated.
In the process, however, the military became the country’s best-resourced institution. 
The fighting also boosted hardliners who wanted to take a tougher stance on national unity. From
the 1970s onward, the regime steadily narrowed the definition of citizenship in pursuit of this goal.

The key message in this blink is: The military regime was suspicious of Myanmar’s history of fluid
ethnic identities. 

Who belonged to the Myanmar nation? Ironically, the military regime followed the example set by
the British in answering this question rather than looking to Myanmar’s own history.

For much of that history, ethnic identity hadn’t defined political loyalties. Take the Bamar and Mon, a
minority from southern Myanmar. In 1740, a Mon king seeking to expand his empire put his army
under the charge of a Bamar general. These forces were eventually defeated by Mon soldiers fighting
under the banner of the Kingdom of Ava and its Bamar ruler. 

Ethnic identity was also fluid. Mon and Bamar were both easily identifiable, but these markers
weren’t permanent. Traditional ponytails could be cut or styled differently; clothes could be
swapped. Any Mon could become a Bamar, and many did. 

The military regime was suspicious of such fluidity. Like the British, they believed that groups had
fixed biological traits that determined their status and behavior. Because these traits were
hardwired, a Mon couldn’t become a Bamar – he could only disguise himself as one. From a
nationalist perspective, this was an acute danger to Myanmar. Why was that? Well, it meant that
enemies of the nation might go undetected. 

In 1982, the regime updated the 1931 British survey that had found 139 distinct ethnic groups in
Myanmar and listed 135 “national races.” From now on, citizens’ ethnicities appeared on their ID
cards, and this defined their place in society. If your card stated that you were Bamar, you had
greater freedoms; if your card stated you were Kachin, you were a suspect to be policed.

As we’ll see in the next blink, some groups were excluded entirely. 

The dictatorship excluded the Rohingya from its index of national races.

When the regime created its index of 135 “national races,” it applied a simple rule: if there was
evidence of a group living in the country before 1824 – the year Britain annexed Arakan – they also
belonged in the modern nation. 
The Rohingya met this standard. In the late eighteenth century, for example, a Scottish physician
called Francis Buchanan wrote a study of languages in Arakan. In it, he noted that one of the tongues
used in the area was of Indian origin and was spoken by Muslims known as “Rooinga.” Other
European texts supported Buchanan’s observations. 

In 1982, despite the historical evidence, the government withdrew its recognition of the Rohingya.
“Rakhine Muslims,” the group’s official designation, did not appear in the index. 

The key message in this blink is: The dictatorship excluded the Rohingya from its index of national
races. 

Myanmar subjects first received national ID cards in 1952. These documents, issued by a civilian
government after independence, did not state the holder’s ethnicity – a reflection of the fact that
citizenship wasn’t dependent on ethnic identity. In fact, anyone who had lived in the country for
eight years or who could prove a family presence in the country going back two generations was
granted citizenship. 

As we’ve seen, though, ethnicity did appear on ID cards after 1982, the year that the Citizenship Act
was passed. This act redefined citizenship, which was now explicitly tied to ethnic identity. To be a
member of the Myanmar nation, you had to belong to one of the 135 national races. If you didn’t
belong to one of those races, you had no legal standing.

What did this mean for the Rohingya? Well, there was an ominous precedent. 

One of the military dictatorship’s first acts after taking power in 1962 was to whip up a storm of
xenophobic resentment against Indian and Chinese communities. These immigrants, it claimed, had
no “natural” connection to the country and could at any time become dangerous “internal enemies.”
In 1965, the government confiscated Indian- and Chinese-owned property and drove hundreds of
thousands of Indians and Chinese out of the country. 

In 1989, Rohingya Muslims were forced to hand in their old ID cards and told to wait for new
documents to be issued. Many Rohingya, especially those who continued to call for political rights for
their community, never received government identification papers again. 

Resettling Buddhists was part of a plan to change Rakhine State’s demographics.

In the mid-1990s, wardens in Myanmar’s prisons approached criminals belonging to Buddhist ethnic
groups and made them a compelling offer. They could either continue to languish in jail, or they
could be released early. The catch? They would have to move to Rakhine State. 

Those who agreed boarded a ship in Yangon, Myanmar’s capital until 2006. After a four-day journey,
they disembarked in Sittwe. From there, they traveled over land to remote villages in the north.
When they arrived, they were given newly built houses, a monthly stipend, food rations, cows, and
paddy fields.

By the standards of Myanmar’s virtually nonexistent welfare state, this was an extraordinarily
generous setup. So why was the government splurging all this cash on thieves, pickpockets, and even
murderers? 

The key message in this blink is: Resettling Buddhists was part of a plan to change Rakhine State’s
demographics. 

In the late ’80s, Myanmar’s dictatorship became increasingly concerned about Rakhine State. Despite
its move to strip the Rohingya of legal rights, it believed the region was being “lost” to a Muslim
population whose numbers continued to be bolstered by Bengali immigrants. 

Unable to secure the border, the government devised a demographic “rescue plan.” This plan had
two prongs. The first was to place Bamar officials in the highest offices in the state and put garrisons
of loyal troops at their disposal. 

This part of the plan drew on deep-seated resentments. During the Second World War, Rohingya
forces fought the Japanese alongside the British army. After the war, Britain gave the highest
administrative offices in Rakhine State to Muslims – a reward for their loyalty. Many Buddhist
nationalists were still bitter about this experience of being ruled by “foreigners.” 

The second prong was to resettle Buddhists from the country’s interior in Rakhine State, an idea first
hatched by a colonel called Tha Kyaw, an ethnic Rakhine Buddhist. Tha Kyaw believed that the
Rohingya label was part of a conspiracy to allow outsiders – primarily Bengalis – to claim the same
rights as the “indigenous” population. If this conspiracy wasn’t dealt with, he argued, Myanmar
would find itself with a large Muslim minority that would act as a bridgehead for the “Islamization” of
the country. 

Tha Kyaw’s plan won the support of the dictatorship. Like the colonel, the regime viewed Buddhism
as a social glue holding the nation together. Islam, by contrast, was a solvent weakening this bond.
Resettling Buddhists in Muslim-majority areas, it followed, would strengthen the nation. 
The pro-democracy movement refused to take the side of the Rohingya.

It wasn’t just the violence against the Rohingya and other Muslims that shocked observers like the
author. The public’s reaction to that violence was equally startling. 

When refugees carried their few remaining possessions from scorched villages, crowds of Buddhists
lined the roads to jeer and mock them. Meanwhile, violence in Rakhine State was quickly spreading
to other areas of the country, propelled by a popular wave of anti-Muslim resentment. 

But hostility and indifference weren’t restricted to nationalists who believed that the country was
engaged in a life-and-death struggle with Islam. Even the pro-democracy movement, the champion
of equality in Myanmar, showed little sign of sympathizing with the plight of the Rohingya. 

The key message in this blink is: The pro-democracy movement refused to take the side of the
Rohingya. 

For years, the pro-democracy movement led the struggle against the military regime. Its ranks are
filled with the victims of the dictatorship’s campaigns in the borderlands, and thousands of its
activists have been imprisoned. So why doesn’t this movement embrace the cause of the persecuted
Rohingya? 

Well, despite its opposition to the military, the movement shares many of the old regime’s
assumptions. Take Ko Ko Gyi, a dissident who spent 17 years in jail for his activism and is revered as a
source of moral authority in Myanmar. 

When he was interviewed about the situation in Rakhine State, he stated that the Rohingya are
“absolutely not an ethnic race of Burma.” Anyone who said different was infringing on Myanmar’s
sovereignty. If the international community continued to press for justice for the Rohingya, people
like him would end up “joining hands” with the military. Democracy, as he saw it, meant equality for
the legitimate subjects of Myanmar – not for interlopers like the Rohingya. 

Aung San Suu Kyi, the leader of the pro-democracy movement, meanwhile refused to blame
Buddhist nationalists for anti-Muslim violence. With 115,000 Rohingya in refugee camps, she claimed
that “both sides” had been at fault and that it would be unfair to single out one side in the conflict. 
Some suspect that Suu Kyi, an ethnic Bamar, may have her own anti-Rohingya prejudices – but
there’s a simpler explanation of her refusal to condemn attacks on the group. 

Having finally achieved its goal of open elections, the pro-democracy movement is caught between a
rock and a hard place. If it opposes nationalist movements that depict themselves as the defenders
of Buddhism, it will be tarred as “pro-Muslim” and lose support. If it remains silent, however, its
reputation as a champion of justice will suffer. Both scenarios risk the future of the movement. 

This is a conundrum that remains unresolved to this day. 

Final summary

The key message in these blinks:

Muslims have been an established presence in western Myanmar for hundreds of years, yet the
Buddhist majority regards them as foreign usurpers. In 2012, conflict between these two groups
escalated into an all-out assault on Muslims. Isolated incidents provided the justification for this
violence, but it drew on deeper roots. Fostered by British colonial policy, anti-Muslim sentiment
became a key plank of Myanmar nationalism. This ideology wasn’t just the official creed of the
dictatorship, though – its assumptions are widely shared across contemporary Myanmar society. 

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What to read next: Islam, by Karen Armstrong

No contemporary faith is more feared than Islam. Commonly regarded as a “religion of the sword,”
its followers are depicted as violent fanatics who seek to conquer the world. As we’ve seen in these
blinks, this interpretation of Islam, widespread among nationalists in Myanmar, can itself become a
justification for violence and persecution. 

That’s a good reason to grapple with the realities of Islam – the world’s fastest-growing religion. But
where do you start? Karen Armstrong believes there’s no better place to begin than with the history
of the creed. Understanding its multifaceted past, she suggests, can help us understand the diversity
of beliefs and customs of today’s Muslims. 

To find out more, check out our blinks to Islam.