Bhattacharjee 10.3389/fpos.2024.1144493 different borders and cultures. This linguistic and regional vagueness haunts the “stateless” identity of the Rohingya community, which was formed on the battlegrounds of the Second World War and reshaped in the border areas of Burma (present Myanmar), Pakistan, and contemporary Bangladesh. Moreover, it allows the Myanmar government to continue propagating the misconception that the Rohingya Muslims are essentially “Bengali-speaking migrants” and foreigners living in their country. Using the excuse that Rohingyas are not Myanmar nationals but Bangladeshi “resident foreigners” who do not speak Burmese and do not belong to any of Myanmar’s numerous ethnic groups, the military forces of Myanmar had resorted to violence against this minority. Since the Rohingya people have been stripped of their citizenship status under the Myanmar Citizenship Act-1982, armed violence against them is an extension of unequal government strategies. Therefore, the Myanmar government has been able to exploit this legal loophole in order to continue its recent suppression of the Rohingya minority indefinitely. Approximately one million stateless Rohingya refugees who fled from the northern area of Myanmar’s Rakhine state for fear of violence and ethnic cleansing are now living in various camps in Bangladesh. cleansing” within the British-controlled territories (Christie, 1998: 164, 165–167). When the British troops brought the Rohingya refugees back to their village communities in 1943, tensions erupted again between the two communities in retaliation for what had happened during the Second World War. This communal violence escalated to such an extent that the British military officials declared Akyab a “protected region” in order to prevent the Rohingya Muslims from returning to their hometowns and stop communal carnage between Rohingya Muslims and Rakhine Buddhists. Following the British withdrawal from Arakan and the subsequent arrival of Japanese forces, the Buddhists promptly took drastic measures against Muslims, forcing them to flee to the northern part of Arakan state and East Bengal. On the other hand, the Buddhists were primarily concentrated in the southern part of Arakan, and in addition, both sides suffered heavy losses. During the Second World War, the British merchant marine was manned by roughly 20 percent Rohingya sailors, who were identified in British archives as “far more industrious and productive than the Arakanese.” The British documents further mentioned that certain Rohingya sailors who served in the British navy were “excellent seamen.” For this reason, the British government was more sympathetic to Rohingya Muslims than Rakhine Buddhists. Though the second world war ended with the surrender of Japan in August 1945, the communal tension between the Rohingya Muslims and the Rakhine Buddhists continued, and the remaining weapons from World War II helped Rohingya Muslims and Rakhine Buddhists insurgents to re-arm themselves by 1946 (Sarkar, 2019). The British government divided British India into India and Pakistan in August 1947 on the basis of religion. India gained independence as a Hindumajority country, while Pakistan gained independence as a Muslimmajority country. Although Burma received its independence from British rule on 4th January 1948 amidst fierce competition among different ethnic minority communities within the border areas, violent activities resumed in the Rakhine state shortly after independence. The British archive documents demonstrate that a considerable number of Rohingya insurgents were “ex-army members” who launched attacks on the Burmese military’s “regular forces flanks” before fleeing to the mountains and forests. During the 1950s, a unit of Rohingya Muslims, known as Mujahideen, resorted to violent-armed struggle and expelled both non-Muslim and non-allied Muslim villagers from Maungdaw, Buthidang, and Rathdang (Tinker, 1957: 56), resulting in about 13,000 Rohingya Muslims fleeing to neighboring Pakistan and India who were never allowed to return to their homeland (International Crisis Group, 2014). The Burmese government used Rakhine Buddhist insurgents, minorities in the Rakhine state, by providing weapons against the Rohingya Muslims to repel anti-government attacks, demonstrating an initial blueprint of governmental support for violent activities against the unfortunate Rohingya Muslim minority (Sarkar, 2019). However, the Rohingya ethnic group leaders had two strategic options for assimilating into the surrounding countries: the first was the division of South Asia, and the second was the independence of Burma from the British Empire. But unfortunately, this ethnic minority failed to assimilate properly with independent Burma due to their participation in the Second World War on the British side and against the “Burmese National Army.” The “Razakar Bahini” supported Pakistan during the liberation war of Bangladesh, which was similar The enemy discourse Rohingya Muslims have a long history of being brutally attacked by the military-ruled Myanmar government. Myanmar’s brutality against this linguistically different ethnic minority has astonished people worldwide who are bewildered by the nature of this violence. Official records from the British archives demonstrate that the current situation of the Rohingya minority has its roots in the communal violence that erupted between the Rohingya Muslims and the Rakhine Buddhists during and after the Second World War due to Rohingyas’ participation in that war. Burma was ruled by the British government as a province of the then British India from 1824, and in 1937 Burma was separated and declared a separate colony of the British Empire. To counterbalance the influence of the “less dependable” Burmese and to continue stable imperial rule, imperial bureaucrats in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century encouraged widespread migration of “loyal” Indians. These conflicting allegiances shaped British military tactics in the Allied Burma Campaign during the Second World War. The British government recruited numerous Rohingya Muslim uneducated agricultural workers of the then northern Arakan to fight alongside the British-led “Fourteenth Army” against the forces of Japan during the Second World War. The Muslims of northern Arakan acted as a V-force because the then British government promised that a “Muslim national territory” would be given to the Rohingya Muslims in exchange for their assistance (Yegar, 1972: 95). Aung San (father of current Burmese politician, diplomat, and ex-State Counsellor of Myanmar Aung San Suu Kyi) led “The Burmese National Army,” which fought alongside the Japanese during the Second World War in exchange for independence from Britain. The Second World War also witnessed an eruption of communal violence between the Rohingya Muslims who supported the British and Rakhine Buddhists who helped the Japanese. Therefore, with the Japanese advancement, Muslims escaped from Japan-controlled Buddhist-majority regions to British-controlled Muslim-inhabited northern Arakan, sparking the opposite “ethnic Frontiers in Political Science 07 frontiersin.org