Fighting Imagined Invasions with Administrative Violence II MYANMAR The first case is Myanmar (known officially as Burma until 1989). 17 In Myanmar, from the 1970s onwards, a variety of ethnic and religious minorities have been either gradually stripped of their citizenship (as it is the case for the Rohingya in Rakhine State) or demoted to a second-class citizenship status (through ‘naturalised’ and ‘associated’ citizenship for persons of Indian, Pakistani, Nepali, Bangladeshi or Chinese descent, as provided by the Burma Citizenship Law 1982). 18 Such process has been intimately interconnected with an overt nativist narrative that places the 135 ‘recognised national races’ as the primary group entitled to full citizenship as legitimate members of Burmese society. The basic tenet of such a narrative is openly racist from a biological perspective and differentiates between ‘pure’ and ‘mixed’ blood. There is a group of legitimate and genuine citizens: the ‘Taingyingtha’ (the recognised ethnic groups) whose blood is ‘pure’. 19 The ‘others’ be they Rohingya or persons of Chinese or Indian descent are considered by the government authorities to be of ‘mixed blood’ 20 and legally either second-class citizens or outright stateless. 21 In a sense, such a scheme embeds the colonial legacy of subordinate and master races and represents (as in the cases of Dominican Republic and Assam in India) an expression of ‘postcolonial whiteness’. 22 The nativist logic behind the rejection of non-Taingyintha unproblematically presents them as outsiders due to their South Asian origin and includes an effort to reinterpret history and produce a narrative whereby such groups are presented as infiltrators, illegal migrants not legitimately entitled to full citizenship. 23 The idea that Burma would be swamped by persons of Indian origin was very present in the political debates of the 1930s. As a representative of the Burmese Chamber of Commerce put it: ‘[w]e are sure to be swamped in a few years’ time… If this state of affairs is allowed to go on forever, the Burmese nation will slowly and surely disappear from the earth’. 24 Such feelings contributed to the Indo–Burmese 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 In 1989, the State Law and Restoration Council changed the country's official English name from the ‘Socialist Republic of the Union of Burma’ to the ‘Union of Myanmar’ in an effort to move away from British colonial influences and to encompass all ethnic groups in the country (in addition to the Bamar). See Lowell Dittmer, ‘Burma vs Myanmar — What’s in a Name?’ 48(6) Asian Survey 885. Burma Citizenship Law, Law No 4 of 1982, 15 October 1982 (‘Burma Citizenship Law 1982’). The idea of ‘Indian’ ancestry needs here to be qualified, as Burma was formally a province of British India between 1886 and 1937. Former British India territories Pakistan and Bangladesh became independent in 1947 and 1971 respectively. As General Ne Win put it: ‘racially, only pure-blooded nationals will be called citizens’: General Ne Win (Speech, Central Meeting Hall at President House, 8 October 1982), reproduced in The Working People’s Daily (Burma, 9 October 1982) https://www.burmalibrary.org/docs6/Ne_Win%27s_speech_Oct-1982-Citizenship_Law.pdf (‘General Ne Win Speech’). In Burmese: ‘thwe Hnaw’ or ‘ေသွးေ�ှာ’. Kyaw Nyi Nyi, ‘Adulteration of Pure Native Blood by Aliens? Mixed Race Kapya in Colonial and Post-Colonial Myanmar’ (2019) 25(3) Social Identities 345. López (n 16) 4. Maya Tudor, ‘Why Nativism Rather Than Nativism Represents Southeast Asia’s Democratic Danger’ The Asia Dialogue (Blog Post, 18 March 2019) <https://theasiadialogue.com/2019/03/18/why-nativism-rather-than-nationalism-representssoutheast-asias-democratic-danger/>. Legislative Council of the Governor of Burma, Proceedings of the Legislative Council of the Governor of Burma, sixth session, third council, vol XVIII (Superintendent, Government Printing and Stationery 1932) 285, quoted in Nyi Nyi Kyaw (n 21) 350. 199