Statelessness & Citizenship Review 2020 2(2) riots of July 1938, which forced the return/migration to India of thousands of persons of Indian descent. 25 Two decades later, in the early 1960s and under the ‘Burmanisation’ programmes of General Ne Win, the nationalisation of property and other measures drove thousands of Indians and others out of Burma. 26 Following a similar nativist logic, in Rakhine State, the forcible displacement crises that led to the internal displacement or expulsion of Rohingya and other predominantly Muslim minorities to Bangladesh in 1978, 1991–92, 2012, 2016 and the largest one in 2017 and 2018 suggest links between deprivation of nationality motivated by nativism and broader processes of exclusion that have ultimately led to international crimes such as crimes against humanity and possibly genocide. 27 A Citizenship and Nativism in Myanmar Since the early 20th century, Burmese nationalism has struggled to define the national identity of what would later become independent Burma. 28 While citizenship during this period was influenced by many other non-nativist notions, an idea of one nation, one language and one equivalent state took the form of a Buddhist and Bamar-centred national project to be followed harmoniously by the other ‘national races’. 29 This vision was more or less evenly reflected (albeit with significant shifts) in the historiographies presented in school text books, in an effort at nation-building. 30 Such a view, however, contrasted with the tensions implicit in a highly diverse society with a wide variety of ethnic groups as well as persons of Indian or Chinese ancestry, colonial workers and their descendants. 31 The need to ensure peace and to accommodate the other ethnic groups that lived in the territory led to the recognition of certain ethnic groups (Kachin, Karen, Karenni, Chin and Shan) and their administrative territories in the 1947 The Constitution of the Union of Burma. 32 Most importantly, the Union Citizenship Act 1948 recognised the Arakanese, Burmese, Kachin, Kayah, Karen, Chin and Shan, together with any other group which may have settled in the territory before the First Anglo Burmese War (1823) as ‘indigenous races’. 33 Between 1948 and 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 Rajashree Mazumder, ‘“I Do Not Envy You”: Mixed Marriages and Immigration Debates in the 1920s and 1930s Rangoon, Burma’ (2014) 41(4) The Indian Economic and Social History Review 497, 515–517. Renaud Egreteau, ‘Burmese Indians in Contemporary Burma: Heritage, Influence, and Perceptions Since 1988’ (2011) 12(1) Asian Ethnicity 33, 40; Michael Gravens, Nationalism as Political Paranoia in Burma: An Essay on the Historical Practice of Power (Curzon 1999) 60; Renauld Egreteau, ‘The Idealization of a Lost Paradise: Narratives of Nostalgia and Traumatic Return Migration among Indian Repatriates from Burma Since the 1960s’ (2014) 18(1) Journal of Burma Studies 137. For a historical overview of such crises, see Martin Smith, Rakhine State, A Land in Conflict in Myanmar’s Western Frontier (Transnational Institute 2019). Syed Badrul Ahsan, ‘The Rohingya Crisis: Why the World Must Act Decisively’ (2018) 49(4) Asian Affairs 571, 573–75. Mikael Gravers, Nationalism as Political Paranoia in Burma: An Essay on the Historical Practice of Power (Nordic Institute of Asian Studies 1993) 35–41. Rosalie Metro and Nicolas Salem-Gervais, ‘A Text-book Case of Nation Building: The Evolution of History Curricula in Myanmar’ (2012) 16(1) The Journal of Burma Studies, 27– 78. José María Arraiza, ‘Myanmar, The Unflinching Law of the Ethnic Citizen and the “Mixed Blood” Other’ in Dimitry Kochenov and Justin Lindeboom (eds), Quality of Nationality Index (4th ed, Hart Publishing 2020). The Constitution of the Union of Burma (1947) (Union of Burma) ss 5,6,7. See also at pt V. Union Citizenship Act 1948, Act No LXVI of 1948 (Union of Burma) s 3(1). 200