Central to debate about the place of Muslims in contemporary Myanmar is a divisive historical dispute. Extreme Buddhist nationalists insist that Muslims have no organic place in the society. Muslims point to many centuries of settlement. Few systematic studies been written in English, however, making it hard to take a definitive position. Here all I do is present a very brief, schematic reading of the conclusions reached by Moshe Yegar, an Israeli diplomat stationed in Rangoon in the early 1960s. There is no reason to believe he was anything other than a disinterested historian making the best possible use of the available material. His analysis, published in 1972 as The Muslims of Burma: A Study of a Minority Group, does not look beyond Ne Win’s 1962 coup. It divides the historical record into four main segments.

The first phase is cast essentially as pre-history. Muslim seamen reached Burma in the ninth century, establishing trading colonies in coastal regions. Interior settlement dates from the eleventh century. While there undoubtedly were Muslims in Burma in these years, the source material is sketchy, suggesting they were perhaps not an important social force.

The second phase dates from no later than the fifteenth century, and comprises a long period of extensive Muslim engagement. In monarchical Burma, contemporary European travelers described major ports as Muslim, and interior settlement also intensified. By the eighteenth century, every significant city contained a sizeable Muslim community, and Muslims occupied senior military and administrative posts. Though overwhelmingly Buddhist, the society was tolerant of other faiths. In Arakan, only finally annexed by Burma in 1784 and today (as Rakhine State) the site of greatest contention, Muslims established settlements from 1430 and went on to play a decisive role in local history. Rohingyas speaking an amalgam of Arakanese, Bengali and Urdu preserved not only their religion, but also their culture through eminent writers, poets and calligraphers. Some were admitted to the royal court.

The third phase opens with British military engagement and conquest from the 1820s to the 1880s. Immigrants from India, arriving in large numbers, sparked a revolutionary change in the lives of Burmese Muslims. By 1921, Indians numbered roughly one million in a Burmese society of 11 million. Roughly half were Muslim. By 1931, the population of Rangoon was 63 percent Indian. Immigrants filled many government posts, as well as jobs in other sectors. Inter-communal hatred triggered anti-Indian riots in 1930 and anti-Muslim riots in 1938. Japanese occupation in 1942 drove many immigrants out of Burma.

The fourth phase emerges with the move to independence in 1948, and saw Arakan pursue a different path from the rest of Burma. In most of the country, Muslims sought the kind of social integration they had known before the arrival of the British. Among a strongly Buddhist people this was challenging but not impossible, as several centuries of history had shown. In Arakan, by contrast, an armed Muslim revolt known as the Mujahids’ rebellion broke out, and intense fighting caused populations to flee to heartland areas. Buddhists congregated in southern Arakan. Muslims clustered in the north. Only at the end of 1961, less than four months before the military coup, was the rebellion quashed.