In Myanmar, too, religion bears the main potential for conflict, pitting the
Theravada Buddhist majority against the Muslim minority. Since 2015, the
Rohingya, who have been living in the western Myanmar province of Rakhine
for generations, have fled violence at the hands of the Myanmar military and
Buddhist vigilantes by the hundreds of thousands and sought refuge in
neighbouring Bangladesh, a Muslim majority country. In the past also known as
‘Chittagonians’ (under British rule) and ‘Muslim Arkanese’, the Myanmar
government calls them ‘Bengali’, thus denying them citizenship and a rightful
place on Myanmar state territory.
Ascription and assertion
Religion, language, and race are the most salient criteria of ethnic classification
and identity. But they do not exist in a vacuum. An important distinction in any
discussion of ethnic identity is between asserted and ascribed identity, which
comes to the fore whenever one does not match the other. The story of Zuvdija
Hodžić, born in Gusinje, Montenegro, as told by political scientist Bohdana
Dimitrovova, illustrates this:
I came to Istanbul and people asked me, ‘Who are you?’ I said, ‘a Turk’, but they shook their heads:
‘Eh, you are not, you are Albanian’. So I came to Skadar as Albanian, where I was told that I was
Bosniak. So I went to Sarajevo as Bosniak and people around me asked me again what I was, and I
said, ‘Bosniak’. They thought I was mad and told me that I was Montenegrin, but with Islamic
religion. Then, in Podgorica, someone said to me that I was nothing but a Turk. Who am I, and what
am I? Nobody.As Zuvdija Hodžić found out, you are not necessarily what you think you are.
His case highlights three important points. First, he thinks he can associate
himself with the ethnic group of his choice; second, the group he wants to
associate with may reject his bid; and third, that worries him. Rather than saying
‘Who cares?’ in the face of rejection, he comes to the disconcerting conclusion
that he is nobody.
Most people do not want to be nobody and consider belonging to a community
of faith, language, or race a safeguard against such an uninviting fate. Ethnic
identities are not fixed, but are to some extent permeable. They include elements
of assertion and ascription, although assertion is not always successful, and
ascription not always refused.