¹ The exact figure of the total length of the border remains disputed. Burma (currently Myanmar) shares 320 km of border with Bangladesh on its western frontier. According to the Home Ministry of Bangladesh, of its total land boundary of 4,413 km, it shares 271 km with Myanmar and 4,142 km with India. According to the Indian government border website, India shares a 1,643 km long border with Myanmar. Arunachal Pradesh, Nagaland, Manipur, and Mizoram are the states that share the border with Myanmar. For the purposes of this article, we will focus on the Burma-Bangladesh borders, including the riverine border (Naf River).

² Letter, Office of the Inspector of Immigration, Maungdaw, to the Controller of Immigration, Rangoon, Burma, regarding the entry of illegal immigrants into Arakan. Ministry of Foreign Affairs. File no. FMB48. 16 March 1948. As an international border, the line separating Burma and Bangladesh originated as a boundary line between districts of British India. In 1937, when British Burma and British India were created, the border took on a semi-international status. It became fully international when the British relinquished power to India/Pakistan (1947) and Burma (1948). Independent Burma now shared a border with the two independent states that resulted from the partition of British India into India and Pakistan. Maungdaw is a town in the Arakan (currently Rakhine) state in the western part of Burma (now Myanmar). It is the administrative seat of Maungdaw township and Maungdaw district. Maungdaw is the westernmost city of Myanmar and borders Bangladesh.

³ Baud, Michael and van Schendel, Willem, ‘Towards a Comparative History of the Borderlands’, Journal of World History, vol. 8, no. 2, Fall 1997, pp. 211–242CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Borders are political divides that arose as a result of the state-building process that was first perfected in Europe but soon applied all over the world. A borderland is usually understood as the region in one nation that is significantly affected by an international border. Scholars in recent decades have argued for a more nuanced definition involving a cross border perspective, in which the region on both sides of the border are taken as units of analysis. This approach has allowed for the consideration of the paradoxical character of borderlands. Borders create political, social, and cultural distinctions, but simultaneously imply the existence of (new) and perhaps reinforcing of older networks and systems of interaction across them. The existence of borders may be the point of departure of such studies, but an equally important part were the social networks that reach across the borders.

⁴ Christie, Clive J., ‘At the Frontier of the Islamic World: The Arakanese Muslims’, in Christi, C. J. (ed.), A Modern History of Southeast Asia: Decolonization, Nationalism and Separatism. (I. B. Tauris, London, 1996), pp. 161–171Google Scholar.

⁵ Ibid., pp. 169–170. Similar kinds of narratives can be heard in other parts of Southeast Asia. David Brown, ‘From Peripheral Communities to Ethnic Nations: Separatism in Southeast Asia’, Pacific Affairs, vol. 61, no. 1, Spring 1988, pp. 51–77. Kusuma Snitwongse and Willard Scott Thompson (eds), Ethnic Conflicts in Southeast Asia. (ISEAS, Singapore, 2005).

⁶ van Schendel, Willem, ‘Geographies of Knowing, Geographies of Ignorance: Jumping Scale in Southeast Asia’, Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, vol. 20, 2002, pp. 647–668CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁷ Datta, Antara, Refugees and Borders in South Asia: The Great Exodus of 1971. (Routledge, London, 2013)Google Scholar.

⁸ Ibid., pp. 45–46.

⁹ The post-independence and partition situation created a huge influx of refugees through the borders in South Asia. In 1951, the United Nations Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees defined a refugee as one who ‘owing to a well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular group or political opinion is outside the country of his nationality and is unable or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to avail himself of the protection of that country; or who, not having a nationality and being outside the country of his former habitual residence as a result of such events, is unable or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to return to it’. To this day, Burma (Myanmar) is still not a signatory to the 1951 Refugee Convention and the 1967 Protocol.

¹⁰ Letter, Controller of Immigration to the Pakistan Embassy in Rangoon, Burma. Proposal for the issue of passes for Arakanese Buddhists of Arakan border to cross over to Pakistan side for trade and other legitimate purposes. Foreign Office. File no. 478FMB49. 27 July 1950. Cox's Bazar is a town, a fishing port, and district headquarters in what was East Pakistan, now Bangladesh. The modern Cox's Bazar derives its name from Captain Hiram Cox (d. 1799), an officer of the British East India Company. Cox was appointed superintendent of this outpost after Warren Hastings became governor of Bengal.

¹¹ van Schendel, Willem, The Bengal Borderland: Beyond State and Nation in South Asia. (Anthem Press, London, 2005), p. 120Google Scholar.

¹² Noya Para Khal is neighbourhood (para) in the Badarkhali Union Parishad in now southeastern Bangladesh (earlier in East Pakistan). It is located 120 km south of Chittagong and in ’Cox's Bazar district in Bangladesh.

¹³ Letter, Embassy of Pakistan in Burma to the Foreign Minister, Government of the Union of Burma, Rangoon, regarding Molestation of a Pakistan patrol party of four armed constables by Burmese soldiers on the Arakan-East Pakistan border. Foreign Office. File no. AG-15/3 (21). 30 November 1949.

¹⁴ Van Schendel, The Bengal Borderland, pp. 54–55.

¹⁵ A huge part of this border is hilly terrain and a river. The Naf River is an elongated estuary in the extreme southeast of Cox's Bazar district dividing it from Arakan in Myanmar. It rises in the Arakan hills on the southeastern borders of the district and falls into the Bay of Bengal varying from 1.61 km to 3.22 km in its width. Ullah, Akm Ahsan, ‘Rohingya Refugees to Bangladesh: Historical Exclusions and Contemporary Marginalization’, Journal of Immigrant and Refugee Studies, vol. 9, no. 2, 2011, pp. 139–161CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Van Schendel, The Bengal Borderland, Chapter 4: ‘A Patchwork Border’, pp. 53–86. At the time of creating these separate entities, border officials worked on the assumption that the border ran through the middle of the river. But rivers tended to change their course. Hence, it was difficult to adjudicate and decide on the exact boundary all the time. On the disputed island of Totadia in the middle of the Naf River, see Ali, Mahmud, The Fearful State: Power, People and Internal War in South Asia. (Zed Press, London, 1993)Google Scholar. Also, Kyle Gardner, ‘Moving Watersheds, Borderless Maps, and Imperial Geography in India's Northwestern Himalaya’, The Historical Journal (published online: 8 August 2018).

¹⁶ Jones, Reece, ‘The Border Enclaves of India and Bangladesh: The Forgotten Lands’, in Diener, A. and Hagen, J. (eds), Borderlines and Borderlands: Political Oddities at the Edge of the Nation-State. (Rowman and Littlefield, Lanham, MA, 2010), pp. 15–32Google Scholar. There are 198 enclaves along the northern border between India and Bangladesh. While technically they are part of Indian territory, being landlocked in the middle of current Bangladesh territory has cut them off from the rest of the country.

¹⁷ Cons, Jason, ‘Histories of Belonging(s): Narrating Territory, Possession, and Dispossession at the India-Bangladesh Border’, Modern Asian Studies, vol. 46, no. 3, 2012, pp. 527–558CrossRefGoogle Scholar. On licit and illicit trade on the India-Bangladesh borderland, see Ghosh, Sahana, ‘Cross-Border Activities in Everyday Life: The Bengal Borderland’, Contemporary South Asia, vol. 19, no. 1, 2011, pp. 49–60CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

¹⁸ Letter, Commissioner of Arakan Division to the Chief Secretary to the Government of Burma, Home Department on Rebellion and Disorder in Arakan. Home Department. Secret File no. 10HS46. 15 October 1946. Both Kyaukpyu (also spelled as Kyaukphyu) and An (now called Ann) are border towns and natural harbours in the current Rakhine state of Myanmar.

¹⁹ Letter, First Secretary, Indian Embassy in Rangoon to the Permanent Secretary, Foreign Office, Rangoon. On report that some Burmese villages from Tamu in Burma-India Border had recently been raiding villages in the Indian Territory. Foreign Office. File no. 88FMS49. 8 November 1949.

²⁰ Confidential letter, U Ba Maung, Immigration Officer, Chittagong to the Controller of Immigration Burma, Rangoon on attack on Chittagong Immigration Office by a mob. Ministry of Foreign Affairs. File no. 185FMB48. 9 March 1948.

²¹ Ullah, ‘Rohingya Refugees to Bangladesh’, pp. 139–161.

²² Curzon, Lord, ‘The Romanes Lecture on Frontiers’, delivered on 7 November 1907. (Clarendon Press, Oxford, 2007), pp. 42–43Google Scholar.

²³ Callahan, Mary P., ‘State Formation in the Shadow of the Raj: Violence, Warfare and Politics in Colonial Burma’, Southeast Asian Studies, vol. 39, no. 4, March 2002, pp. 513–536Google Scholar. The Government of India paid the bills for expensive battles in Burma, and its model of administration and the bureaucrats were assembled in India, transported, and transplanted to Burma following the final defeat of the Konbaung dynasty in 1886.

²⁴ Furnivall, J. S., Colonial Policy and Practice: A Comparative Study of Burma and Netherlands India. (New York University Press, New York, 1956), p. 25Google Scholar.

²⁵ Ibid., p, 44.

²⁶ Phayre, Arthur, ‘Account of Arakan’, Journal of the Asiatic Society, vol. 10, 1841, p. 696Google Scholar.

²⁷ Michael W. Charney, ‘Where Jambudipa and Islamdom Converged: Religious Change and the Emergence of Buddhist Communalism in Early Modern Arakan. Fifteenth to Nineteenth Centuries’, PhD thesis, University of Michigan, 1999, Chapter 10: ‘One Lands Two People: The Emergence of Communalism in Nineteenth and Twentieth Century Arakan’.

²⁸ Letter, Superintendent of the Northern Shan States to the Chief Secretary to the Government of Burma on the Murder of Jaffer, native of Arakan and his Burmese wife Ma Yuu at Yingh pan village, Ling Chuan. Political Department. File no. 1C-17 and 1C-37. 19 February 1915. This was among a long list of other cases that the border officials were at a loss to resolve. In 1910, in a very similar case, a certain Maung Dwe, a Burmese Arakanese trader, was murdered along with his wife, daughter, and niece, and his property stolen. All this supposedly took place in a British ‘administered’ village and the matter had an additional political significance because the headman of a nearby ‘unadministered’ Chin village appeared to be one of the ring leaders. The distinction between the two was that the former paid revenue and was under British control as opposed to the latter which was beyond British suzerainty or under indirect control. What followed was intense discussion between the undersecretary of the state and the commissioner as to the apt jurisdiction of the case. Letter from the Commissioner, Sagaing Division on Murder of the wife, daughter and niece of, and theft of property belonging to, one Maung Dwe, an Arakanese (or Burmese) trader on the neighbourhood of Hmanbin in the state of Kanti. Political Department. File no. 2C-26. 6 October 1910.

²⁹ Ma, Jianxiong, ‘Salt and Revenue in Frontier Formation: State Mobilized Ethnic Politics in the Yunnan-Burma Borderland since the 1720s’, Modern Asian Studies, vol. 48, no. 6, July 2013, pp. 1–33Google Scholar. McGrath, Thomas E., ‘A Warlord Frontier: The Yunnan-Burma Border Dispute, 1910–1937’, Proceedings of the Ohio Academy of History, 2003, pp. 7–30Google Scholar.

³⁰ Letter, the Superintendent of the Northern Shan States to the Chief Secretary to the Government of Burma on the Murder of Jaffer, native of Arakan and his Burmese wife Ma Yuu at Yingh pan village, Ling Chuan.

³¹ Tagliacozzo, Eric, ‘Ambiguous Commodities, Unstable Frontiers: The Case of Burma, Siam, and Imperial Britain, 1800–1900’, Society for Comparative Study of Society and History, vol. 46, issue 2, April 2004, pp. 354–377Google Scholar.

³² Letter, G. D. Burges, Official Commissioner of Arakan to the Secretary to the Chief Commissioner, Rangoon on raid in the Arakan Hill Tract. Foreign (Political). File no. 49-p. 5 April 1886.

³³ Ibid. In this particular report, the commissioner of Arakan reported a ‘violent crime’ committed by the Kachins on the village on the Peng River near the border. The report went on to give gruesome details of the murders committed and the pursuit of the raiders by the authorities in order to secure the borders.

³⁴ Letter, Officiating Chief Secretary to the Government of Burma to the Secretary to the Government of India, Foreign Department, Rangoon. Political Department. File no. 3L-1. 8 June 1907.

³⁵ Letter, the Commissioner of Arakan Division to the Chief Secretary of Burma on measures taken to abolish slavery in the hill district of Arakan. Political Department. File no. 626. 31 August 1922.

³⁶ Letter, Commissioner of Arakan Division, Akyab to the Chief Secretary to the Government of Burma on the Kwisa Raid case in the Arakan Division. Political Department. File no. 399 B. 1 November 1929.

³⁷ Ibid., p. 22.

³⁸ Ibid., p. 28.

³⁸ Ibid., p. 36.

⁴⁰ Letter, Chief Secretary Home and Political Department to the Commissioner, Sagaing Division on the subject of prohibition of the entry of persons from Burma into Tibet without specific permission. Political Department. File no. 502 B 36. 1936–37.

⁴¹ Appeal, the Bengal Arakanese Buddhist Association Cox's Bazar (Chittagong) to the Heads of Governments of Burma and Pakistan. Foreign Office. File no. PA-70/ (51). 24 November 1947.

⁴² Letter, Eastern Bengal Burmese-Arakanese National Congress, Bengal Arakanese Buddhist Association, Bengal Arakanese Buddhist Congress and the A.F.P.F.L. Akyab to the Heads of Governments of Burma and Pakistan. Ibid.

⁴³ Ibid.

⁴⁴ Letter, First Secretary, Burmese Embassy, Karachi to The Secretary to the Government of Burma, Department of Foreign Affairs, Secretariat Rangoon. Foreign Office. File no. PA-70/ (51). 17 January 1948.

⁴⁵ Confidential letter, Burmese Embassy in Karachi regarding Repatriation and Resettlement in Burma of Arakanese Buddhists from Pakistan. Ibid. March 1950.

⁴⁶ Immigration into Burma of Arakanese and Burmese people residing in Bengal Province, India. Industry and Labor Department, Government of Burma. File no. 78LA46. 29 January 1946.

⁴⁷ Ibid. The weekly intelligence report of the district superintendent of police, Akyab, for the week ending 8 April 1950, mentioned that the Muslims of Ramu had destroyed a Buddhist temple in the Taungshe Arakanese village in the Cox's Bazar subdivision, Chittagong division. Following this a communal riot began between the two communities.

⁴⁸ Draft letter regarding Repatriation into Burma of Arakanese and Burmese Buddhists settled in the Chittagong and Barisal district of Bengal, India. Industry and Labor Department, Government of Burma. File no. 78LA46. 29 January 1946.

⁴⁹ The Council of State would make the decision about whether any ethnic group was national or not. Further, children born of naturalized parents or associate parents would be given citizenship based on the decision of the government. Registration of Foreigners Act, 1940. Union Citizenship. Immigration and Foreigner Act. Accession no. 905. 1948/3-1/. Note that 1823 was the year prior to the first Anglo-Burman conflict.

⁵⁰ Letter, Controller of Immigration to The Permanent Secretary, Foreign Office, Rangoon, Burma on question of distinguishing people like Arakanese Muslims in Arakan and Shan Tayokes in the Kachin and Northern Shan States, whose nationalities are in doubt. Foreign Office. File no. 541 FMB50. August 1950. ‘Although the Shan Tayokes who have settled in any of the territories included within the Union of Burma as their permanent home from the period anterior to 1823 ad can be regarded as one of the indigenous races of Burma, in view of section 3(1) of the Union Citizenship Act, those Shan Tayokes of Kyan-tar and Kyan-Si and those living in Yunnan and who owe no allegiance to the Union cannot be deemed to belong to the indigenous races of Burma. Again, under section 4(2) of the same Act, only those descended from ancestors who for two generations at least have all made any of the territories included within the Union their permanent home and whose parents and themselves were born in any such territories, are to be deemed citizens of the Union. Hence, the Shan Tayokes from Yunnan side cannot be regarded as Union Citizens for the mere reasons that they have Shan blood. They can only be regarded as indigenous nationals of those countries whose land borders are coterminous with the border of the Union and when such people desire to enter Burma they should be in possession of Frontier Passes to enter the Union up to a depth of 10 miles and Immigration Permits if they wish to come into the country beyond 10 miles.’

⁵¹ Minutes of the meeting, Illegal Immigrants on distinguishing people like Arakanese Muslims in Arakan and Shan Tayokes in the Kachin and Northern Shan States, whose nationalities are in doubt. Foreign Office. File no. 541 FMB50. 19 March 1952.

⁵² Repatriation of and Resettlement in Burma of Arakanese Buddhists from Pakistan. Foreign Office. File no. PA-70/ (51). 24 November 1947.

⁵³ Letter, Vice Consul, Burmese Consulate, Chittagong to the First Secretary, Burmese Embassy, Karachi, 1 February 1951, in ibid.

⁵⁴ Letter, the Burmese Embassy in Karachi, Pakistan to the Permanent Secretary, Foreign Office, Rangoon on the subject of Grievances of the Arakanese Settlers. Foreign Office. File no. PA-70/ (51). 24 November 1947.

⁵⁵ Letter, Controller of Immigration to the Pakistan Embassy in Rangoon, Burma. Proposal for the Issue of Passes for Arakanese Buddhists of Arakan Border to Cross over to Pakistan Side for trade and other Legitimate Purposes.

⁵⁶ Reply, Pakistan Embassy to the Foreign Office, Rangoon Burma on the proposal for the Issue of Passes for Arakanese Buddhists of Arakan Border to Cross over to Pakistan Side for trade and other Legitimate Purposes. Ibid.

⁵⁷ Petition objecting to the ill-treatment of Pakistani Arakanese in Pakistan in demonstration outside Pakistan Ambassador's residence for alleged discriminatory treatment accorded to Arakanese settlers in East Pakistan. Foreign Office. File no. PA 85/006 (62). 24 February 1962.

⁵⁸ Ibid.

⁵⁹ Response, Embassy of Pakistan in Rangoon to the alleged discriminatory treatment accorded to Arakanese settlers in East Pakistan. Foreign Office. File no. PA 85/006 (62). 17 April 1962.

⁶⁰ Ibid.

⁶¹ Ibid.

⁶² Union councils are the smallest rural administrative and local government units in East Pakistan, now Bangladesh.

⁶³ Response, Embassy of Pakistan in Rangoon to the alleged discriminatory treatment accorded to Arakanese settlers in East Pakistan.

⁶⁴ Fazila-Yacoobali Zamindar, Vazira, The Long Partition and the Making of Modern South Asia. (Columbia University Press, New York, 2007), p. 162Google Scholar.

⁶⁵ Ibid.

⁶⁶ Withdrawal of Passports from five Burmese Muslims students proceeding to Pakistan to receive military training. Government of the Union of Burma. Foreign Office. File no. 126 FDS 48. 31 December 1948.

⁶⁷ Letter, member of the anti-Communist Party to the Burmese Ambassador, New Delhi, Union of Burma. Foreign Office. File no. 260 FMS 49. 18 September 1949.

⁶⁸ Smith, Martin, Burma: Insurgency and the Politics of Ethnicity. (Zed Press, New York, 1999), pp. 60–64Google Scholar.

⁶⁹ Ibid., pp. 79–82.

⁷⁰ Letter, Commissioner, Arakan Division to the Chief Secretary to the Government of Burma, Home Department on Rebellion and Disorder in Arakan.

⁷¹ Kyaukpyu is a major town in the Arakan (now renamed as Rakhine) state in western Myanmar. It is the principal town of Kyaukpyu district. The town is situated on a natural harbour, which connects the rice trade between Calcutta and Rangoon (Yangon). Ramree is a small town in Kyaukpyu district.

⁷² Letter, Commissioner of the Arakan Division to the Chief Secretary to the Government of Burma. Home Department. File no. 10 HSB46. 15 October 1946.

⁷³ Gallant, Thomas W., ‘Brigandage, Piracy, Capitalism, and State-Formation: Transnational Crime from a Historical World Systems Perspective’, in McHeyman, Josiah (ed.), States and Illegal Practices. (Berg Publishers, Oxford and New York, 1999), pp. 25–61Google Scholar.

⁷⁴ Ibid., p. 40.

⁷⁵ He described Arakan as comprising the whole of Maungdaw Buthidaung townships and that portion of Rathadaung township which lay to the west of the Mayu River. It covered an area of about 3,000 square miles. The total population was as high as three lakhs (100,000), at least 90 per cent of whom were Muslims.

⁷⁶ Letter, President and Secretary of the Jamiatul-ulama, North Arakan, Maungdaw to the Chief Secretary of the Government of Burma, Rangoon on representations by the Muslims of North Arakan claiming for an Autonomous State in the Buthidaung and Maungdaw Areas. Home Department. File no. 93 HB 47. 21 February 1947. Copies of this letter was sent to the highest possible office in London; the governor of Burma; the president of the AFPFL; the commissioner of Arakan, Akyab; the editor of the Voice of Burma, Rangoon; the editors of the Statesman, Calcutta; and The Dawn, Delhi.

⁷⁷ Draft letter, Government of Burma regarding the points raised by the memorialists in representations by the Muslims of North Arakan claiming for an Autonomous State in the Buthidaung and Maungdaw Areas. Ibid. June 1947.

⁷⁸ Letter, Muhammad Abbas, President to the Jehad Council, Mujahid-i-Arakan to the Home Minister, Union of Burma, Rangoon on Muslim Inhabitants of Arakan. Prime Minister's Office. File no. 9G-CM 54. 17 April 1954.

⁷⁹ Ahsan Ullah, A. K. M., ‘Rohingya Crisis in Myanmar: Seeking Justice for the “Stateless”’, Journal of Contemporary Criminal Justice, vol. 32, issue 3, 2016, pp. 285–301CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁸⁰ International Crisis Group, Myanmar: The Politics of Rakhine State. Report no. 261, Asia, 22 October 2014, p. 4. https://www.crisisgroup.org/asia/south-east-asia/myanmar/myanmar-politics-rakhine-state, [accessed 19 September 2018].

⁸¹ Ibid., p. 5.

⁸² Ullah, ‘Rohingya Crisis in Myanmar’, p. 287.

⁸³ International Crisis Group, Myanmar, p. 6.

⁸⁴ Kipgen, Nehginpao, ‘Conflict in Rakhine State in Myanmar: Rohingya Muslims’ Conundrum’, Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs, vol. 33, no. 2, 2013, pp. 298–310CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁸⁵ Ullah, ‘Rohingya Crisis in Myanmar’, p. 292.