State power and identification schemes in Rakhine 83 and retain their rights; those who had been in Burma for more than seven out of the last nine years were considered ‘privileged immigrants’ and allowed to continue living in Burma with limits; those who did not meet either of the criteria would be subject to the same immigration controls as new immigrants (Mohan 1955). The 1941 immigration agreement between Burma and India, however, was neither signed off by the King nor implemented. War broke out between Britain and Japan and the agreement was interrupted (ibid.). There was organised resistance in India to the migration arrangements with Burma, in particular, against two clauses—one which required literacy in order to enter Burma and a second that attempted to prevent unions/marriages between Burmese and Indians, legislating for deportation in such cases (Mohan 1955). The riot inquiry report described how Burmese nationalism at the time highlighted Indian-Burmese marriages as a perceived threat to the nation and to Buddhism (The Riot Inquiry Committee 1939). The different categories of Indians within the Burma/India immigration agreement according to place of birth, length of residence, and loyalty, were to remain significant as the citizenship criteria was negotiated in the lead-up to independence in the 1948.38 At this time, there was considerable unease amongst those who considered themselves Burmese and were Muslim or had cultural and social links in India. A flurry of negotiations and resistance ensued in an attempt to shape these bureaucratic categories (Yegar 1972). Issues relating to the categorisation and documentation of people with mixed Buddhist-Muslim or mixed-ethnic parentage under the 1982 Citizenship rules persist today (Kyaw 2019). For example, one interviewee described how, since his parentage was mixed Rakhine Buddhist and Kaman (one of the Muslim categories of taiyintha), he was recategorised by the state authorities in 2011 as ‘Bengali,’ refused citizenship documentation, and made subject to internal movement controls.39 The issue of inter-marriage and the status of the children of such unions has continued to be an issue of deep contestation relating to citizenship and belonging. Such concerns were also echoed in the nationalist discourses relating to the ‘protection of race and religion’ bills that were adopted in 2015, which, inter alia, effectively prevented Buddhist women from marrying non-Buddhist men.40 This section has considered how the demands for borders and documentation of foreigners in the independence movement were largely thwarted following Burma’s administrative separation from India. War in Burma ushered in new conflicts as well as new physical and conceptual boundaries between Burma and India. It caused large-scale forced migrations and new negotiations over who to document as evacuees and returnees. Meanwhile, globally WWII brought the disintegration of the British Empire, and the birth of new independent nations that were to be constructed from negotiated borders and ID schemes. The following section focuses specifically on registration, documentation, and the relevance of border demarcation in Rakhine to citizenship and its ‘others’ in Burma.