State power and identification schemes in Rakhine 85 Migrant labour into Burma was encouraged between 1945 and 1948 due to the imperative to rebuild the economy in Burma—particularly in rice-growing Rakhine. Between 1943 and 1944, famine had killed 2–3 million people in the Bengal province of India. It also impacted local populations of Assam and other regions as well as the refugees and evacuees who had fled Burma since 1942 (Naorem 2020). One of the trigger factors of the Bengal famine was the interruption of harvests and the subsequent distribution of rice produced in Rakhine as a result of Japanese offensives.45 Thus, there was a sense of urgency in bringing a migrant labour force into Rakhine and Burma to rebuild agriculture and other parts of the Burmese economy. Despite the pragmatism, the situation did not go unchallenged. By 1947, when Raschid departed for talks regarding the border demarcation between Maungdaw and Bengal with the Chief Minister of Bengal, the press in Burma misreported his visit as relating to immigration concerns in Maungdaw and Buthidaung.46 Nonetheless, the Burmese leadership also understood the need for migrant labour from India/Bangladesh. Their nationalist logic was not to stop migration but to manage and regulate it through ID schemes in ways that had not been permitted under the British. On the eve of independence, the Council of Ministers agreed that the movement of 8,000 labourers and 2,000 mill labourers across the Arakan-Chittagong border should be permitted, but that ‘some form of permit or identity-card be devised for checking whether seasonal labourers go back before the year.’47 In the lead-up to independence, there was much discussion between Burmese, British, Indian, and Pakistani representatives on borders, immigration, and who should be documented as a ‘Burmese national.’ In January 1947, Aung San by then leader of the pre-independence government, set off for talks with Nehru in Delhi, Jinnah in Karachi,48 and Atlee in London49 to negotiate independence arrangements. Prior to his departure, rumours began circulating that the Muslim League, founders of Pakistan, wanted Maungdaw and Buthidaung to be included within Pakistan after partition, on the basis that the districts were predominantly Muslim. The rumour began from statements exchanged between Suhrawardy, Chief Minister of Bengal, and U Saw, former Prime Minister of British Burma, who was to join the London talks with Aung San and who was later to assassinate him and his cabinet.50 The border issue was discussed between Aung San and Jinnah, President of the Muslim League. Jinnah reassured Aung San—and the Burmese people in a press statement—that the Muslim League had no intention of annexing Maungdaw/Buthidaung, nor ever had, suggesting the press had circulated unsubstantiated rumours.51 Meanwhile, Aung San’s close Burmese-Indian colleague, Raschid, was tasked by U Nu—the future prime minister of independent Burma, with meeting and discussing the matter with Suhrawardy in north Bengal. Original correspondence between Raschid and U Nu also shows that the suggestion of Maungdaw/Buthidaung becoming part of