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| Three river-valleys of North Arakan. |
Peter Murray was also a territorial CAO (Civil Affairs Officer) with the British
Army in Northern Arakan during the Second World War.
He was the same Peter Murray mentioned by Robert Mole in his memoirs "The Temple Bells are Calling" about his time in the Arakan.
Following is his 1949 Foreign
Office memo outlining the so-called racio-religious troubles in Arakan due to
the Bengali Muslims’ relentless intrusion into Burma.
[TRANSCRIPT]
FOREIGN
OFFICE, S.W.1.
26th
January, 1949.
(F
1323/1015/79)
SECRET
Letter
to RWD Fowler
Commonwealth Relations Office
Dear
Bob,
1. As some anxiety is being felt about the disorders in
North Arakan and as little seems to be known of the factors involved, I
have thought it worthwhile to put on record what I know of the background. I
must emphasise that this is mainly based on recollections from my own personal
experience, including two years in the area during the war, and though I
believe all the statements in it to be true, they ought not to be accepted too
uncritically. I enclose five additional copies in case you think it worth
sending them to our High Commissions.
The Area
2. North Arakan consists
essentially of three river valleys, the Naaf, the Mayu, and the Kaladan, which
run roughly in a north-east to south-west direction. The two latter converge at
Akyab, the political, economic and geographical centre of the area. The
alluvial floors of the river valleys are very fertile and produce large
quantities of rice, vegetables and other crops. The hills between the valleys
rise to about 2,000 feet, are extremely rocky, steep and broken, and are for
the most part covered with thick scrub and bamboo jungle. There are no hard
roads (apart from a short road from Buthidaung to Maungdaw) and the earth roads
made during the war will, by now, have reverted to jungle. Almost all the
transport, even between neighbouring villages, is by water. The Pakistan-Arakan
boundary runs up the estuary of the Naaf river and thence north-eastward into
the hills.
The People
A) The Arakanese:
3.
The Arakanese are Buddhists, and are an offshoot of the Burmese race, speaking
a strongly differentiated form of the Burmese language. In the 16th and 17th centuries, Arakan was a powerful and
important kingdom, stretching to Chittagong in the north, where there was an
Arakanese Viceroy, and preying on the shipping of the Mogul Empire in Bengal.
The kingdom was subdued by the Burmese at the end of the 18th century, and came under British rule
in 1825. There is a fairly strong admixture of Indian blood in the Arakanese,
who are generally regarded as the Scots of Burma. Before the war there
was a small but powerful and influential Arakanese aristocracy who provided many
of Burma’s ablest politicians and civil servants, and most of her few
successful native business men.
 |
| Arakanese Buddhist of Maungdaw. |
B) The Chittagongian
Moslems:
4. These are an off-shoot
of the Bengali race, speaking a debased form of Bengali interlarded with
Portuguese, Arabic and Arakanese words. They are much more hard working and
prolific than the Arakanese and fanatically religious. They are also great seamen:
Chittagongian “lascars” manned about 20% of the British merchant navy during
the war. For the last several hundred years, they have been moving southwards,
gradually displacing and over-running the Arakanese, until in 1941 there were
only a few scattered groups of Arakanese villages left in the Chittagong
district, and nearly one-third of the 700,000 inhabitants of the Akyab district
were Moslems, mostly concentrated in the Northern part of the district. There
was a great deal of inter-marriage between the races, usually between
Chittagongian men who had come South in search of work and Arakanese women. The
children of these marriages were brought up as Moslems and assimilated to the
Chittagongian outlook. Every year at ploughing and harvest, about 20,000
Chittagongians from the north moves southward across the frontier and found
temporary employment in the rice fields of Akyab.
 |
| Rioting Bengali Muslims in Maungdaw. |
C) The
Hillmen:
5. The barren hill jungles between the
river valleys are sparsely inhabited by small groups of Hillmen akin to the
Chins further east. They are extremely timid and seldom approach the villages
of the valleys. They tend to associate with the Arakanese, to whom they are
closer by race, rather than with the Moslems.
History
6. The
two communities lived intermingled under British rule for 116 years without
much incident, though the latent hostility between them flared up into
occasional riots and murders. At the beginning of 1942, the British
administration collapsed, and the Japanese with the assistance of the
Arakanese occupied Akyab early in May. They did not move north of Akyab
until October 1942; and in the meantime, the area of mixed population was
the scene of repeated large-scale massacres in which thousands of people perished
or died subsequently of starvation and exposure. Eventually the two communities
separated into distinct areas, the Arakanese in the south supporting the
Japanese and the Chittagongians in the north supporting the British. The area
was a battleground for the next two years, and was thoroughly devastated by
either side. Numbers of Moslems fled northward to their relatives or to refugee
camps in Chittagong; but the fact is that at no time did the Japanese succeed
in overrunning the entire area was in great measure due to the staunch loyalty
to the Allies of the Moslems who remained.
7. In 1945 the British advanced and drove the
Japanese from Arakan. Contact was made with elements of the “Burmese National
Army” in Arakan, who as elsewhere in Burma, came over to our side and were
given arms.
8. As elsewhere in Burma, the young men who had
been in the “Resistance” were unwilling to return to their humdrum life as
cultivators or clerks; the old Arakanese nationalism and impatience of rule by
Burmese officials flared up, and the whole Division remained in a disturbed
condition up to the time f the transfer of power (4th January 1948) since when, by all
accounts, the Government has controlled little outside the main towns.
9. The
Moslems in the north, finding themselves at the end of the war in an undisputed
majority in the Maungdaw and Buthidaung Townships, at once turned their
thoughts towards secession from Burma and accession to India (or Pakistan as
that part of India later became). Indeed, if these thoughts were not already in
their minds, they were probably put there by a fanatically Moslem I.C.S.
officer who visited the area at the end of 1942, nominally to whip up support
for the British-Indian war effort. Some of their leaders interviewed Mr. Jinnah
in 1947, but received no encouragement of any irredentist Moslem movement in
north Arakan.
10. It appears, however, that the Burmese,
with little appreciation of the factors involved, made no attempt to reassure
or placate the north Arakan Moslems. No doubt the congenital incompetence of minor
Burmese officials made things worse. Eventually, in March or April 1948, the
area appears to have got out of control altogether, and since then the Burmese
garrisons have maintained themselves with difficulty in the midst of a hostile
Moslem population. The leaders of the revolt called themselves “Mujahed” which,
I believe, means a Moslem refugee from oppression, usually the oppression of a
non-Moslem Government; their numbers have been put at 3,000 – 5,000 but they
undoubtedly have the sympathy and probably active support nor only of the
Moslem population of the area which I suppose must be 100,000 – 120,000 but
also of the Moslems across the frontier in the Chittagong district, with whom
they are connected by the closest ties of race and religion – the frontier is
in fact quite artificial at this point.
 |
| Bangladesh with 160 millions is only 1/5 of Burma with 60 millions. |
11. A great deal has been made in reports of
a Communist menace. Some of the Arakanese rebels further south are known to be
under so-called Communist influence, though it is doubtful whether their
Communism is more than a mere label. It seems to me unlikely that the
“Mujahed” are Communists. They may have allied with Arakanese Communist rebels
against the Burmese administration in the hope of establishing an independent
state in Arakan after the over-throw of the Burmese Government’s authority by
means of such an alliance; but alliance of this kind must have been extremely
temporary and could not long withstand the deep racial and religious jealousies
between them.
The Future
12. It seems unlikely
that the Burmese Government will be able to restore order in Burma proper in
the near future, let alone in Arakan. The people and the minor officials in
Chittagong Division cannot be expected to watch unmoved the struggles of their brothers
across the frontier against an alien and infidel administration, and will no
doubt continue to support them. If the
Pakistan (today Bangladesh) Government were driven by events to abandon their
present correct attitude and to intervene they would I think find it very hard
to stop short of Akyab, which is the only harbour in the area and the natural
trade and communications centre; it controls the broad and fertile Kaladan rice
plain, the source of most of the 300,000 tons of rice which used to be exported
annually from North Arakan before the War. But this of course is mere
speculation.
Yours sincerely,
(P. Murray)
Related posts are at following links:
North Arakan (1944-45) by Robert Mole
1942 Islamic Genocide of Native Buddhists in Maungdaw District
Population Explosion in Bangladesh
Related posts are at following links:
North Arakan (1944-45) by Robert Mole
1942 Islamic Genocide of Native Buddhists in Maungdaw District
Population Explosion in Bangladesh
