5. Every national and every person born of parents, both of whom are nationals
[taingyintha] are citizens by birth.” (Burma, 1982)
Clearly, in law, concepts of ‘nationals’ and ‘citizens’ are so closely interwoven in Myanmar as to nearly
be synonymous. Critically, both are largely premised on the notion of having been present in Myanmar
before 1823 (the year before the first Anglo-Burmese War). This is thus the standard for being
considered ‘indigenous’. It also reads as ‘present before European colonialism’. The wording of Article 3
is almost identically copied from the Union Citizenship Act of 1948, which was drawn up in the first year
of independence.3 However, Articles 4 and 5 are new. The 1948 Act read, “any person descended from
ancestors who for two generations at least have all made any of the territories included within the
Union their permanent home…shall be deemed a citizen of the Union” (Union of Burma, 1948). This
allowed for relative jus soli citizenship—being taingyintha was not necessary for citizenship, just
documented ancestry. Sections 4 and 5 of the 1982 Law ended that practice by drawing citizenship laws
along jus sanguinus lines, and requiring not only one, but both parents to be taingyintha for citizenship to
be passed on.
The Council of State, as per their directive in Section 4 of the 1982 Law, officially designated
135 ethnic groups as taingyintha, a number which has not changed since—these are comprised of
‘subgroups’ of the nine wider groups listed in Article 3. As such, indigeneity became not only socially
constructed, but also bureaucratically defined and implemented (Nah, 2006). The number was never
formally announced, nor was the decision-making behind which groups were included made public—its
formulation is in fact rather mysterious (Ferguson, 2015). To this day, it is challenging to find which
groups are even officially included, as the list was not added in any appendixes to the Constitution or
other laws. Officials primarily pointed to the 1931 and 1953-54 censuses as precedent, the first of which
was carried out by the British colonial administration, again bringing colonialism back into the frame.
These censuses are thus very relevant to explain.
Citizenship laws, the census and colonialism are closely intertwined. The census was, at one
point, how colonizers understood their dominions: today, it retains significance for nation-states seeking
to understand—and shape—their polities (Anderson, 1983; Ferguson, 2015). Further, the census is a
source of political fictions (Stoler, 2010). Census-makers claim to simply catalogue difference, while
actually the act of cataloguing is itself producing difference. Census-makers also claim to solely
document social membership, when in reality the census is creating affiliations and subject positions
(Stoler, 2010). Combining and building off of these two insights, census officials also claim to simply
‘catalogue indigeneity’—that is, to catalogue who is indigenous and who is not—when in practice they are
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