18 Hate Speech Ignited: Understanding Hate Speech in Myanmar These types of studies served to create and solidify stereotypes and essentialize ethnicity.20 Subsequently, colonial policies spread these stereotypes and sowed seeds of division, many of which manifest themselves still today. The British recruited members of the ethnic minority groups into the British-Burma Army and generally excluded ethnic majority Burmans, also called Bamars, from its ranks.21 The Bamar nationalists rose up against their colonizers, and ethnic minority soldiers from the British-Burma Army crushed these anti-colonial rebellions (1930-1932) also known as the Sayar San Rebellions, which furthered inter-ethnic tensions.22 For example, Bamar nationalist movements like the Dobama Asiayone (Our Burma Association) began propagating quantifiers of “belonging”: to be a “dobama” was to be both Buddhist and Bamar, an identity that excluded ethnic minorities on both ethnic and religious grounds; ethnic minorities and immigrants, in contrast, became associated with “thudo bama” (the Colonials’ Burma).23 In addition, British colonial discourse made broad and problematic conclusions about religious groups in Burma.24 Christianity would have received favorable treatment by the British, while other religions, including Buddhism and animism, were disfavored.25 Furthermore, the British tended to “represent Islam as something that was not a natural feature of life in Burma,” which had the effect of “differentiating Islam from things Burmese.”26 Ethnographic studies described Myanmar as a place with “one dominant population and many minor ethnic groups,” and Muslims were less visible and not as recognized in colonial Burma.27 The result of colonial policies was that “Muslims were neither recognized as a distinctive community nor were they understood as intrinsically Burmese,” despite the fact that many Muslims spoke Burmese and considered themselves Burman.28 Military Rule Post-independence Protection of minority rights and autonomy were key guarantees of the 1947 Panglong Agreement, which aimed to build national unity between Bamars and other ethnic groups.29 Proposed by one of Myanmar’s independence heroes, General Aung San, Panglong Agreement was to be the foundation for a federal, democratic Myanmar.30 However, General Aung San and members of his interim government were assassinated in 1947 before the aspirations of Panglong were fully realized.31 Myanmar gained independence the following year, and Prime Minister U Nu pursued Buddhist nationalist policies in the name of re-establishing Myanmar as it was before British colonization.32 In 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 Ibid. Kipgen, 18. John S. Furnivall, Colonial Policy and Practice: A Comparative Study of Burma and Netherland India (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1948). Ibid. Note, however, that there is also evidence of persecution of Muslims during the pre-colonial era. Donald Smith, Religion and Politics in Burma (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1965). Stephen Keck, “Reconstructing Trajectories of Islam in British Burma,” in Islam and the State in Myanmar: Muslim-Buddhist Relations and the Politics of Belonging, ed. Melissa Crouch (2016), 39-40. Ibid., 40. Ibid., 67. Thant Myint-U, The Making of Modern Burma (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 14. Ibid. Josef Silverstein, The Political Legacy of Aung San (New York: Cornell University Press, 1972), 13. Mikael Gravers, Nationalism as Political Paranoia in Burma (Richmond: Curzon Press, 1999), 42.