The Burmese Labyrinth. Carlos Sardiña Galache

released two years later, in July 2016. There was some fear that intercommunal violence could flare again if the new figures showed a marked growth in the Muslim population since 1983. But a quick look at the last three censuses showed clearly that, if Buddhism were under threat in Burma, Islam would be an unlikely menace. According to the 2014 census, there were 2,237,495 Muslims in the country, comprising 4.3 per cent of the total population, while Buddhists comprised around 87.9 per cent. In both the 1973 and 1983 censuses, Muslims accounted for 3.9 per cent of the population, and Buddhists for 88.8 and 89.4 per cent, respectively.⁸ Meanwhile, the Christian population grew from 4.6 per cent in 1973 and 4.9 per cent in 1983 to 6.3 per cent in 2014.⁹ According to the 2014 census, the total population in Burma was 51,486,253 (including those not enumerated, but excluding many among the up to 4 million migrants in neighbouring countries). The total population in 1983 was 35,307,913. The total population had grown by 45.8 per cent, the Buddhist population by 43.9 per cent, the Christian population by 83.4 per cent, and the Muslim population by 62.5 per cent. But the higher growth of the Muslim population was due to that of Arakan, as we shall see below. The Muslim population elsewhere in Burma – a total of 1,118,764 – grew by 40.9 per cent, from 793,950 in 1983, which was a lower rate than any other religious group, and lower than the overall growth rate of the country as a whole. But, while these data disproved the notion of a Muslim threat voiced by Buddhist ultra-nationalists, the prevalence of anti-Muslim rhetoric did not change after the results were announced.

      The most problematic aspect of the census was the Rohingya issue. The Rohingya are not included in the list of 135 ‘national races’, as only those ethnic groups that were allegedly settled in Burma before the beginning of the colonial period in 1824 are regarded as taingyinthar, and the official narrative on the Rohingya claims that they arrived later, as labourers from Bengal during the colonial period – and some even later still, as illegal immigrants after Burma’s independence in 1948. Thus, the term ‘Rohingya’ itself is rejected in Burma, on the assumption that it is a recent invention by which the ‘Bengalis’ have contrived an indigenous identity in order to gain political rights to which, as ‘foreigners’, they are not entitled.

      Meanwhile, Rohingya activists and politicians allege that their presence in Burma, and the term Rohingya itself, pre-date the arrival of the British by several centuries, and that they are as indigenous as any of the other 135 ‘national races’. In principle, the question of whether the Rohingya are taingyinthar or not should not by itself determine their citizenship status; but the distinction between taingyinthar and citizenship had become increasingly blurred in public discourse. This issue acquired more prominence than ever after the sectarian violence in 2012; by the time of the census, a seemingly academic debate on the Rohingyas’ place in the history of Arakan had become a matter of life and death.