The Rohingya Crisis Is A Test For The Human Race
Jawhar
Sircar
(English version of Bengali article published in ABP on 26.9.17)
Dark rumbling clouds from Myanmar have already cast
their fearful shadows over the eastern part of this sub continent but even
so, India, that preaches VasudhaivaKutumbakam,
wishes they just blow away. Fate may, however, not oblige as we face the
biggest human rights crisis in recent times that may explode on our faces if we
are not careful and positive. The whole world is shocked at the undisguised and
endless genocide and the India has to take a firm and clear stand. One is not
making a plea to open up our borders and set up refugee camps for the
Rohingyas, but as the biggest country in this region, we really need to
demonstrate our commitment to human values, that are definitely superior to the
immediate requirements of diplomacy. Or else our credibility that has already
been damaged will worsen among common people in other countries who view with
horror many recent developments in what was earlier an enviable oasis of democracy,
plurality, tolerance and liberal principles. Foreign policy is no more limited
to Kissingers
and their secret whispers, missions and cocktails, but is wide open to the world,
through TV and print. People now decide more and there is fury building up at
the wanton slaughter of innocent Rohingya and the beheading of little children,
irrespective of what religion they profess.
But then, who are the Rohingyas and what exactly is the problem? If we
look at the map of this subcontinent we will find that in our extreme
southeastern corner, below Tripura and Mizoram, lies the Chittagong area of
Bangladesh. It extends south along the coastline like an arm around the Bay of
Bengal and this arm continues even further southwards into Myanmar, through a
narrow strip that runs along the Bay and looks at Odisha and Andhra Pradesh
from across the waters. This is Arrakan or the Rakhine region that has been
known to us as the land of the Maghs. The Rakhine kingdom had ruled the
southeast of Bengal in the 16th-17th centuries, with Chittagong as their base.
It was then that famous Bengali poets Daulat Kazi and
Syed Alaol created their works based in beautiful Rakhine. In
1666, the Mughal governor and general Shaista Khan could finally drive the
Rakhine-Maghs out and annexed Chittagong as well as all adjoining areas to
Bengal. The Rakhine region of Myanmar was hardly considered as “foreign’ by
Bengalis and in the next century, we find Shah Shujataking shelter in that
kingdom with his large retinue,after he was
defeated by his brother
Aurangzeb. He was killed later by his hosts for
mysterious reasons. The culture and the language of this region remained
somewhat different and till today, most Bengalis can hardly understand the
Chittagonian dialect which is so remarkably distinct from all others in the
family. In fact, it is often derided as a rather strange and different frontier
language. All said and done, the Chittagonian tongue is an extreme variant of
Bengali and both Muslims and Hindus of Chittagong Division speak in it, as do
the Barua-Buddhists and others in the Chittagong Hill Tracts. This dialect of
Bengali is also the main language of the Rakhine region of Myanmar, that both
Muslim Rohingyas and Buddhist Rakhines speak in, though they have a lot of
other words punched into it. Though they also speak in the official language of
Myanmar, they are considered by the Myanmarese as part of the Bengali-speaking
people and the Muslim Rohingyas are emotionally quite close to Bangladesh.
This
is one of the chief reasons why the mainstream Buddhist Myanmarese have been
persecuting them and encouraged the Buddhist Rakhines to pounce on their Muslim
Rohingya neighbours like wild beasts. But history says that these two ethnic
groups were once proud to be part of the same Rakhine kingdom that had fought
many kings and armies of Myanmar, as well as those of India. Some desperate
groups of fighters and sailors of these parts, not all, joined hands with Portuguese outlaws and pirates and constituted the dreaded
Magh-Firangi raiders of Bengal. They went deep into the countryside, ravaging
and kidnapping people, for p two hundred years till the late 18th century.
Myanmar finally defeated the Rakhine kingdom in 1785 annexed the kingdom, but
within forty year, they lost it to the British who added the Rakhine strip to
its Indian domains. The British started settling a lot of people from the
Indian mainland, especially from Chittagong and some from Noakhali in the
Rakhine region, more so after they overpowered Myanmarese kingdom in the next
few years. The point is that India may have forgotten Buddhist Rakhines and the
Muslim Rohingyas of present day Myanmar, but to both these people, India and
Bangladesh are an inseparable part of their history, for different reasons of
course.
During
the Second World War, the Japanese occupied Myanmar and it was the turn of the
British to be running away and then regrouping to fight this dirty war, by
giving arms to both the Myanmarese and the Rakhines-Rohingyas. After Myanmar
became independent in 1947, its new nationalism targeted not only prosperous
Indian settlers but also Muslim Rohingyas, who were more enterprising. In 1962,
Myanmar’s military ruler, General Ne Win played to mass sentiments and
nationalised most industries which compelled Indians to leave. The military
rulers then turned the heat on the entrepreneurial Bengali Rohingya Muslims and encouraged the
Buddhist Rakhines to raid, torture, pillage and kill their Muslim neighbours,
in successive waves of violence. Myanmar also deprived Rohingyas of their
citizenship rights and stopped basic amenities but when this did not uproot
them, state-inspired riots were unleashed. The Rohingyas retaliated by
forming the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA) who sought
and received support from Muslim terrorist organisations in Pakistan and the
Middle-east. There is information that many Rohingyas are linked to the ISIS
and are indeed ‘terrorists’ but this is the full context. They have also
attacked government and security outposts in Myanmar in retaliation, but these
give the Myanmarese state further reasons to step up their genocide in the Rakhine region.
The
situation is going out of hand and one had expected the Indian Prime Minister
who visited Myanmar on the 6th and 7th of September this year to have
counselled President Htin Kyaw and State Counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi to take
some initiative for a ceasefire and try for a just political solution. We do
not know if India has sent any message to the real culprit, General Ming Aung
Hlang, who is masterminding this pre planned war on humanity, and Aung Suu Kyi
has lost her image and the world’s support by appearing to be playing his
pretty puppet. We definitely need to counter China’s major presence in Myanmar
and its avowed plan to encircle India,
by being nice but three facts are clear. Let us also be clear that India can
never match China’s open ruthlessness and that we can never compete against
their massive funding. But the third hard fact is that Myanmar also needs India
quite a lot to balance the Chinese dragon, as they do not intend to be their
stooge. Diplomacy has its requirements but so does humanity and India needs to
emerge as a principled country that upholds its values over immediate gains.
Its deals with an unpopular military regime is frowned upon by all and those
who believe in history believe that regimes held by force have to go, sooner or
later.
Besides, ever since Myanmar was
ruled by the military junta, it has never really been enamoured by India and
though PM Modi signed 11 MoUs during his visit to that country, we have no news
whether he raised the burning issue of genocide in Myanmar, that has already
led to the exodus of four lakhs of Rohingyas to Bangladesh. This has not only
disappointed democracy loving people all over the world, including the vast
majority in India, it has deeply
offended the only neighbour who is still with India, i.e, Bangladesh. With an
undeclared war going on in instalments on our west; a shattered relationship
with Nepal in the north, and almost open India-hating in Sri Lanka, our only
bet is with Bangladesh, that is anyway quite disappointed over water and other
issues. Besides, India’s inability to stop and punish those guilty of sustained
aggression on Indian Muslims is only weakening the secular forces in Bangladesh
who fight a daily battle against Islamic extremism. Can India afford to lose a steady friend like
Bangladesh that is steadily being poisoned by Islamic extremism? The fact that
India’s PM chose to lash out against ‘terrorism’ during his visit to Myanmar is
interpreted to be against Rohingyas and that he did not mention the brutal
military offensive against minorities has not gone down well. iUnending streams
of terror-struck and maimed people cross the Naf river and pour into Bangladesh
every day, and these include several raped women and mauled children who may never
recover from this apocalypse. They carry tales and body marks of horror that
make people shudder even on TV and social media. Bangladesh is literally
struggling to feed and give shelter to this human tsunami from the Rakhine
region, that has crossed four lakes weeks ago.
The least India could have done was
to reiterate United Nations’ unambiguous condemnation of the sustained ‘ethnic
cleansing’ that Myanmar is engaged in, but India did not. The UN Security
Council has chastised the ARSA for attacking the army, but has also condemned
Myanmar for “excessive violence during the security operations". It also
called for "immediate steps to end the violence in Rakhine, de-escalate
the situation, re-establish law and order, ensure the protection of
civilians". China had cleared this stand and India could just have taken a
similar stand, instead of appearing to support only the junta in Myanmar. We
need to support Bangladesh’s struggle against
Islamic extremism as trouble makers like Turkey’s Erdogan and the ISIS are
fishing in troubled waters, too dangerously near our borders. Even Buddhist
Thailand has openly condemned Myanmar’s excesses in the name of Buddhism and so
have Muslim Malaysia and Indonesia. India just cannot afford to hug General
Ming Aung Hlang and his killers. A section of Rohingyas are taking help from
Islamic terrorists abroad, but to condemn an entire people as terrorists
without examining the deep roots is a shallow act. This myopic view does
irreparable damage even within India and we need to step up a ‘Mission
Humanity’ immediately. A part of what we spend on war could be invested in
peace as well, so that war is avoided. India needs to send a planned series of
plane loads and shipping fleets full of relief materials to Bangladesh so that
it can provide better relief to the refugees. Or else other nations will step
into our neighbourhood and breathe down our shoulders. Massive medical and
financial aid can still save the day for India and retrieve its image from
present one of being a clumsy, witless giant that hits entire populations with
fat clubs, because it cannot fix its
arrows on those terrorists who need to be shot.
As the world’s largest and most
successful multi-cultural federation, India needs also to declare that it does
not subscribe to narrow Islam-phobia and let us ask just one question. What
would India’s attitude be if the Rohingyas were Hindus?
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