northern Arakan in 1947. The aim of the Mujahid party was initially to create an autonomous Muslim state in Arakan. The local mujahideen – that’s what the Rohingya warriors proudly called themselves — fought government forces in an attempt to have the mostly Rohingya-populated Mayu peninsula in northern Rakhine State secede from Myanmar (then Burma), and after that secession, the Rohingyas hoped that territory would be annexed by East Pakistan (present-day Bangladesh). Fighting between the Rohingya and the Burmese state, then, is not a new thing; it has been going on intermittently since 1947. The Rohingya revolt eventually lost momentum in the late 1950s and early 1960s, and many of the Rohingya surrendered to government forces.

But the Muslim insurrection by the Rohingya did not disappear. It was revivedin the 1970s, which in turn led to the Burmese government mounting, in 1978, a huge military operation (Operation King Dragon) that inflicted great damage on the mujahideen, and bought a decade of relative calm. But again the Rohingya rose up against the Burmese state, and in the 1990s the “Rohingya Solidarity Organisation” attacked Burmese authorities near the border with Bangladesh. In other words, this insurgency by the Muslim Rohingya has been going on – waxing and waning – for more than half a century. It is in that context that Buddhist fears of a Muslim takeover of northern Myanmar should be viewed, and taken seriously. The Burmese monks who have recently been whipping up anti-Rohingya sentiment, and attacks on them, are not behaving out of motiveless malignity;