Rohingya Crisis: An Analysis Through a Theoretical Perspective

The large scale exodus of Rohingyas to Bangladesh, Indonesia, Malaysia, and Thailand as a consequence of relentless persecution by the Myanmar state has gained worldwide attention. UN Secretary General, Guterres called it “ethnic cleansing” and the “humanitarian situation as catastrophic”. This catastrophic situation can be traced back to the systemic and structural violence perpetrated by the state and the society wherein the Burmans and Buddhism are taken as the central rallying force of the narrative of the nation-state. This paper tries to analyze the Rohingya discourse situating it in the theoretical precepts of securitization, structural violence, and ethnic identity. The historical antecedents and particular circumstances and happenings were construed selectively and systematically to highlight the ethnic, racial, cultural, and linguistic identity of Rohingyas to exclude them from the “national imagination” of the state. This culture of pervasive prejudice prevailing in Myanmar finds manifestation in the legal provisions whereby certain peripheral minorities including Rohingyas have been denied basic civil and political rights. This legal-juridical disjunction to seal the historical ethnic divide has institutionalized and structuralized the inherent prejudice leveraging the religious-cultural hegemony. The newly instated democratic form of government, by its very virtue of the call of the majority, has also been contributed to reinforce this schism. The armed attacks by ARSA has provided the tangible spur to the already nuanced systemic violence in Myanmar and the Rohingyas are caught in a vicious cycle of politicization of ethnic identity, structural violence, and securitization.