74 State power and identification schemes in Rakhine Rohingya participants, then, challenged these revisionist histories and ‘the myth of 1824.’ They critiqued the notions of Myanmar as a national community separate and distinct from South Asian influences. Their own histories were described as being erased or subsumed within the ‘lies’ and ‘false’ histories of Buddhist nationalism.19 Colonial categories and their legacies In this section, I consider how British colonial categorisation and identification schemes differentiated between ethnic, religious, and class groups, establishing hierarchies that enabled the regime to govern, extract labour, and protect their economic and political interests. It draws parallels with today’s citizenship hierarchies and authoritarian control in Myanmar. It focuses on how categorisation and identification systems in India and Burma during the British colonial periods were born primarily out economic expedience. As economies became export focused and labour intensive, the colonial regime sought to ensure mobility of the populations of British India as a supply of labour throughout the British Empire. Following the abolition of slavery, both indentured and ‘free’ labour were supplied through schemes which required a mixture of licensing and open borders (Amrith 2013).20 ID systems were deeply racialised and hierarchical, seeking to maintain British superiority and privilege (Mongia 1999). Roy (2016) asserts that there was a resultant shift of consciousness from social identities to more individualised legal and bureaucratised identities as colonial categories assumed an economic and social use that could be drawn on or resisted. During and after WWI and as resistance to colonial rule grew, ID systems were implemented as a form of surveillance and control through which to suppress internal opposition and external threats as the British sought to maintain dominance and exclusivity over the economies and territories within the empire (Mongia 1999; Singha 2013; Sriraman 2018). Prior to WWI in ‘the British Raj,’ a plethora of documents were issued according to different bureaucratic processes that were regionally and socially stratified. ID schemes were shaped not only by the imperatives of colonial governance but also by the practices of district officials and by resistance, negotiation, and strategic compliance from various Indian interest groups including the educated and elite groups seeking to break the ‘colour bar’ that differentiated between ‘white’ and ‘native’ subjects and prevented them from entering other parts of the empire (Singha 2013). Scholarship shows how bureaucratic identification schemes in British India did not simply reflect but also shape identities (Mongia 1999; Singha 2000; Sadiq 2009; Sriraman 2011; Roy 2016). Bureaucratic processes and categories in post-independence India and Pakistan also built on colonial administrative foundations, framed identities, and forged notions of citizenship (Sadiq 2009; Hull 2012, 2012; Sadiq 2016; Chhotray and McConnell 2018). Similarly, in contemporary Myanmar, the legal framework and the post-1989 colour-coded ID schemes