Bhattacharjee 10.3389/fpos.2024.1144493 FIGURE 2 Analytical framework. of the Rohingya community have been living in Myanmar for a long time, they are still considered illegitimate settlers or immigrants from Bangladesh by the majority of Myanmar citizens. The first sign of Muslim presence in the Myanmar region was in the 1430s when the Bengali Muslims established their settlements in this area with “Naramekhla Min Saw Mon,” the last king of the Launggyet dynasty (renowned as Suleiman Shah, the founder of Arakan’s prominent Mrauk-U dynasty) (Chan, 2005). From the nineteenth century onwards, the northern part of Arakan (Rakhine state) was linked to British India through an imperial nexus of peoples’ movement, transportation, and governance because Burma was administered by the then British government as part of British India. During the British colonial period between 1824 and 1948, labor migration from Bengal to Burma was considered a significant internal migration. As a result of the 1942 Arakan massacres, the then British government armed the Muslims of the northern part of Arakan to serve as a buffer zone between the British and Japanese forces, which sparked intercommunal tensions within the region. Following the British withdrawal, communal violence broke out between Buddhist Rakhine supporters of Japan and Rohingya Muslim villagers who supported the British (Yegar, 1972: 95). An Arakanese Muslim group tried to unite Maungdaw and Buthidang in East Pakistan after Burma gained independence in 1948, but Muhammad Ali Jinnah (the founder of Pakistan) and the Burmese Constituent Assembly rejected the idea. The Myanmar government began classifying Rohingya minority people as “illegal immigrants” in this context (Tinker, 1957: 357). Nevertheless, the Rohingyas were represented in Myanmar’s parliament, and several Rohingyas held a number of prominent government positions, including two female members of parliament. Following the 1956 general election, six parliamentarians were elected to the Burmese parliament, and Sultan Mahmud (the Ex Rohingyapolitician in the then British India) was appointed health minister in Prime Minister U Nu’s cabinet. In 1960, Mahmud rejected the idea of Frontiers in Political Science a unified Arakan province, proposing that either the Northern part of the Arakan state should be made a separate province or controlled by the central government. In response to Jinnah’s refusal to admit the northern Arakan region within Pakistan, several Rohingyas formed the Mujahid Party, which aspired to create an independent Islamic state in the northern-Arakan area (Tinker, 1957: 56). Pakistan sent an early warning to the Myanmar government in 1950 about Burmese atrocities against Rohingya Muslims. Subsequently, after a lengthy negotiation settlement, the government of Pakistan decided to stop supporting the Rohingya Mujahids and arrested their leader Cassim (Qasim) in 1954. In the same year, Burmese troops intensified their counter-insurgency operations and suppressed the Arakan rebellion (Nu, 1975: 272). The researcher argued that language is a vital issue in defining ethnicity and nationality because linguistic wars are consistent with real-world violence. During their struggle for citizenship in Pakistan, a Muslim-majority nation-state divided from British India, the Rohingya Arakan Mujahideen Party (RAMP) insisted on using the Urdu script. Although the Rohingya Arakanese Muslim Autonomy Movement wanted autonomy in independent Burma, there was a campaign to accept the Burmese script for their language. The 1952 language issue marked a violent conflict between the Pakistani government and Bengali-speaking students in East Pakistan’s capital (Dhaka) that almost turned Urdu’s claim to the Rohingya language into a betrayal. Due to the similarities between the Rohingya language and the Chittagongian dialect of the Bengali language, the Rohingya Muslims’ adoption of Urdu as a language is treachery because the Urdu-speaking Pakistani government was oppressing their ethnic brothers in East Pakistan. Burmese, Urdu, Nagori, and Hanifi are just a few of the Rohingya language scripts that bear witness to the struggle of the Rohingyas to maintain their identity on the increasingly harsh borders of different nations-states. It demonstrates the endeavors of the Rohingya minority to seek recognition and refugee status across 06 frontiersin.org