New Delhi: Kevin Jee Yar has been living in the jungles of Myanmar for more than three years. For the 22 year old, the day starts at 6.30 am in the camp of the Student Armed Forces (SAF), a militia linked to the Yangon based University Students’ Union.
The student soldiers unfurl their flag, take part in physical training drills, grab breakfast and then hike up a hill to connect to a mobile network to call their family.
This is when her company is not at the frontline with the Arakan Army, one of the ethnic armed organisations fighting the military regime in Myanmar. So far, she said, they have liberated at least five towns in Southern Myanmar.
“Mera mata pita, sari family Hindu hain. Hum log Myanmar desh mein rehkar Myanmar language use karta hoon aur Hindu dharam bhasha ko thoda se hi bol sakti hoon (my parents, family is Hindu. Having lived here for long, we have become accustomed to the Burmese tongue because of which I only speak a little bit of Hindi),” she said, in broken, heavily accented Hindi.
Dressed in military fatigues with a crew cut, she used a Burmese Indian interpreter who could speak Hindi, as we talked on Zoom on a patchy Internet connection in her camp.
Behind her was the SAF sigil of a grey peacock-pheasant, the national bird of Myanmar, with a star above and two spears and missile below, hanging on a wooden plank.
‘They Call Me Kala’
“They call me kala,” said Jee Yar, who is one of the 12 women in the resistance camp in Lonelong, Southern Myanmar and the only Indian-origin Hindu among a majority of Bamars, the dominant Burmese ethnic group.
Kala is a racial slur commonly used against brown-skinned ethnic Indians and South Asians in Myanmar.
Like many Gen Z youth, some of whom Article 14 had met near the Indo-Myanmar border in Manipur shortly after the military coup in 2021, Jee Yar took part in the civil disobedience movement in her hometown in the Dawei district, in southern Myanmar.
She, like many other citizens of Myanmar, including ethnic Indians, felt a duty to be a part of the people’s resistance against the military who seized power after alleging fraud in the National League of Democracy’s (NLD) landslide victory in the 2020 election.
Most of her community went underground after the military cracked down on the protests that followed.
They soon came knocking at her door, said Jee Yar, to arrest her, her father, who was a member of the NLD, and the rest of her family, all of whom fled their home and haven’t seen each other since.
Unable to return to her old life as a repairman, Jee Yar joined the SAF, part of the People’s Defense Forces (PDF), an armed resistance group of civilians and ethnic armed organisations fighting the military.
Starting last year, the PDF forces, in coalition with the Three Brotherhood Alliance of ethnic armed groups—the Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army (MNDAA), and the Ta’ang National Liberation Army (TNLA), have ousted the military from several parts of the country, particularly in areas bordering India, Thailand, Bangladesh and China.
“There were times in the camp when I was discriminated against, but since I joined the Myanmar Hindu Union (MHU), they have started showing some respect,” added Kevin.
Cementing Their Place
For the handful of ethnic Indian soldiers fighting at the frontline, the union has helped cement their place in the Burmese resistance.
On 22 August 2024, the MHU appealed to the Indian government to intervene on behalf of Hindu communities in Myanmar.
The statement was made alongside India For Myanmar, a collective of pro-democracy activists based in India and Thailand, who have been advocating for Burmese refugees detained in Manipur and Assam.
They accused the military of playing a role in restricting their movement, freedom of religion, obtaining permissions for temples, loss of agricultural lands and long waiting periods for citizenship status despite being born in the country and asked for Burmese of Indian origin to be included in the Overseas Citizenship of India (OCI)scheme.
The Indian government is yet to respond to the statement.
The 2019 amendment to the Citizenship Act, ostensibly aimed to allow “minorities persecuted on religious grounds” the ability to acquire Indian citizenship, excluded Muslim minorities (Ahmedis, Shia and women) from Afghanistan, Pakistan and Bangladesh.
It also left religious minorities, including Hindus, of other neighbouring countries, Myanmar, Tibet and Sri Lanka, out of the ambit of the law, despite a history of hosting refugees from these countries.
Min Hein, one of the founders of the MHU, said, “We want the Indian government to change the policy on Myanmar military government and revise their diplomatic relations with them”
On 10 October 2024, Article 14 sought comment from India’s ministry of external affairs and the Myanmay’s state administration council. There was no response. We will update this copy if there is.
A History Of Silence & Subservience
In a country where ethnic minorities like Indians and Rohingyas are designated as second class citizens, courtesy the Myanmar Citizenship Law 1982, that officially designates them as ‘resident aliens’, the statement was the first time Hindus have spoken out against the military regime.
“Our parents and grandparents never raised their voice partly because they were never fully integrated into Burmese society,” said Hein, an ethnic Indian Burmese working in the United Kingdom. “This is why we have suffered”
Most Burmese of Indian descent were brought to Myanmar, as labourers and administrative workers, by the British after their invasion of lower Burma in 1852, although historical connections date back several centuries before that.
In his book on Manipuri settlements in Myanmar, Burmese historian Narayan Rao, who is a member of the HMU, traced the origins of the Meitei people in Myanmar to 1757.
Unlike other Indian-origin ethnic groups who practise Hinduism, Meitei Kathe have been classified as a subgroup of the Chin people, one of the 135 recognised national ethnicities of Myanmar, according to the 2014 census.
But this, Rao said, only applied to Buddhists.
“If you look fair, not brown, and are followers of Buddhism, then you are a Burmese national ethnic group,” Rao, who is part Telugu and part Meitei, told Article 14. “The rest become Burmese-born foreigners.”
India’s Diaspora In Myanmar
Besides agricultural workers and labourers, money lenders and traders from Tamil Nadu had also migrated to Burma in 1869 with the economically thriving Indian diaspora making up 53% of the population of the country in 1931.
Post-independence, however, they were subject to discrimination from the ethnic Burmese. This led to waves of Indo-Burmese emigration, particularly after U Nu, the first Prime Minister of Burma, nationalised businesses and ‘Burmanised’ languages and religious practices.
The latest estimates of the Indian Burmese population, of 2.9 million people of Indian descent of whom 2.5 million are Persons of Indian Origin (PIO), 2000 Indian citizens and 400,000 stateless, relies on the L M Singhvi Committee report, sanctioned by the Indian government in 2004.
The MHU, made up of over 100 mostly overseas Myanmar nationals of Indian, Gorkha and Meitei origin, was formed in 2024 and stands in contrast to the All Myanmar Tamil Hindu Foundation, made up of affluent traders and businessmen, who are close to the military regime.
Discrimination and violence against Hindus in Myanmar predate the 2021 coup. “We don’t even know if we are being naturalised even as we are discriminated against.
Now, whoever is against the military regime is being targeted,” said Hein. “But for us it’s even worse. We face worse torture than other dissenters in prison”
The Assistance Association for Political Prisoners, a nonprofit operating out of Thailand, found that a total of 5712 people have been killed, 27,485 arrested and 20,991 detained, as of 30 September 2024. As the data is not categorised by religion or ethnicity, it is not known how many of the victims are Hindus or of Indian ethnicity.
Anita’s Story
In June 2024, Anita’s (who asked to be identified only by her first name) 21 year old son was detained by the military on account of his participation in the demonstrations immediately after the coup.
The 55 year old from Mandalay, whose grandfather came from India 95 years ago, said, “The military has kept him in jail and asked for 10,000,000 Burmese kyat (approximately Rs 400,000) to release him.”
She has seen him only once in jail, alleging he had been tortured and had bruises on his back and feet.
She does not know under which law he has been held and alleged no criminal procedure appeared to have been followed. She has been told that he will have to serve a five-year sentence for “anti-military activities”.
She said the police demanded 1,500,000 Burmese kyats to move him to a disable-friendly prison,
“We don’t even have 100,000 Kyats,” Anita told Article 14. “We have been dhobis (washermen) since my grandfather’s time.”
Counting On India’s Support
In past military coups in Myanmar, like in 1988, India supported the pro-democracy movement against the Tatmadaw, the armed forces of Myanmar.
Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi offered temporary refuge to the displaced who crossed the border over to Northeast Indian states like Mizoram and Manipur as well as the national capital at the cost of its diplomatic relations with the military regime.
Veteran Burmese journalists, Soe Myint and Thin Thin Aung started the independent news outlet, Mizzima, in 1998 during their exile in New Delhi.
Mizzima was one of the first outlets to be outlawed after the coup in February 2021, following which some of their staff workers took refuge in India before they moved to other countries.
However, the current BJP government has only sought to strengthen their relationship with the military regime over its commercial interests, including the Kaladan port, secure its borders and to counter China’s influence over both the military and ethnic armed groups.
Reporting for Himal Magazine from Mae Sot, a town on the Thailand-Myanmar border, in June, several stakeholders within Myanmar’s government in exile told this reporter that India was only concerned about China’s influence.
A 2023 report from the United Nations revealed that 22 Indian government owned and private firms supplied arms and raw materials for manufacturing weapons worth $51 million (or Rs 421 crore) to the military regime since the 2021 coup.
The UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in Myanmar, Tom Andrews, noted that India’s continued supply of materials to Myanmar used in surveillance, artillery and missiles—killing at least 5600 civilians with more than 3 million displaced—could be considered a violation of customary international humanitarian law.
According to the report, India responded that the arms supplied to Myanmar were part of commitments made to the civilian government before the coup and were exported in light of New Delhi’s own domestic security concerns.
No Reason To Support The Junta
Angshuman Choudhury, a research scholar at the National University of Singapore, an expert on Indo-Myanmar relations, said there was no strategic reason for the Indian government to arm the military Junta as they have “repeatedly disregarded” India’s interests, particularly in regard to valley-based insurgent groups from Manipur, who have their bases in Myanmar.
“The Myanmar army has never really been serious about acting against them, despite India specifically urging it to,” he told Article 14.
“In fact, they have proactively supported these groups after the 2021 coup, either directly or through their proxy militia known as the Pyu Saw Htee (PSH)”.
In September, Reuters reported the Indian Council of World Affairs, a government funded think tank of which India’s external affairs minister S Jaishankar is a part, invited Myanmar’ pro democracy and federalism stakeholders to New Delhi in November for a seminar on ‘Constitutionalism and Federalism’..
Besides the parallel National Unity Government (NUG), the think tank also invited ethnic minority stakeholders from the Chin, Rakhine and Kachin states.
India’s Limited Influence
Sources in the NUG told Article 14 that they “were happy” to be invited by India and are selecting which representatives would go to New Delhi in November. But Myanmar experts remain sceptical of this gesture considering India has no leverage over the military or the pro-democracy stakeholders.
A regional policy analyst based in Thailand, who has spent several years in Myanmar, said that the invite has been extended by a think tank, not the government.
“It’s not discussing the future of Myanmar’s pro democracy movement and removing the military Junta,” said the analyst, requesting not to be named or identified, since he is not authorised to speak to the media.
While India aims to help restore democracy in Myanmar the analyst said the country has no leverage. “It lacks any kind of strong engagement history with the NUG and political influence over the military,” he said.
“India still sees the military Junta as one of the main actors that still has to stay in the political field,” the analyst said. “They are likely to appeal to the military opponents to let the Junta be part of the solution”
The invite comes at a time when the Burmese State Administration Council, set up by the military regime post coup, invited ethnic armed groups and PDF forces, supported by the NUG, to join peace talks. This offer was swiftly rejected.
Silence From India
Meanwhile, the MHU hasn’t received an invitation (or a response to their appeal) from the Indian government, nor have they (or the NUG) been in touch with the INDIA bloc, the opposition alliance led by the Congress party.
So far, the military coup in Myanmar has not been discussed in the parliament even once, and has only come up in state assembly debates in Manipur and Mizoram.
India’s own record with refugees has become increasingly spotty. Indian states in the Northeast region—which share borders with Myanmar, Bangladesh, Bhutan and China—have become increasingly hostile to migrants and refugees.
Mizoram, India’s fifth smallest state, and parts of Nagaland and Manipur are the exceptions, though they remain at risk of buckling under local ‘anti-foreigner’ politics.
In 2019, Assam updated the National Register of Citizens (NRC), identifying bonafide citizens in the state based on documents with ethnic biases surfacing in the 5 year exercise monitored by the Supreme Court of India.
When talking about updating the NRC again, Assam Chief Minister, Himanta Biswa Sarma in September 2024, said, “The people whose names will not be there in the NRC, we will have to push them away to Bangladesh.” He advocated for different classes of land rights, eerily similar to Myanmar’s stratified citizenship system.
Aside from asking for increased protection of Hindus in Myanmar, the MHU has urged the Indian government to extend the OCI scheme to Myanmar Hindus in an effort to recognise their cultural and historical connections to India.
An OCI holder has no political rights (they can’t vote or contest election) but enjoy lifelong, multiple entry visas. They can avail economic, educational and financial opportunities other than acquiring agricultural land, farm houses or plantation property.
Hein told Article 14 that the demand was legitimate on the grounds that many persons of Indian origin in Myanmar have never been granted citizenship either by naturalisation or birth. But, he added, it doesn’t mean that they want to leave their country and resettle in India.
“One of my nieces graduated but got an empty envelope, not a graduation certificate in her convocation ceremony because she still doesn’t have a national identity card,” he said. “But she was born in Myanmar and so was her father.”
The union statement also talked about protection of Hindu temples in Myanmar by the military to allow access to Indian ambassadors, a clear jibe at India’s soft diplomacy in South East Asia via its heritage restoration projects.
‘India Must Show Compassion For Hindus’
In March 2020, the DPA-IV, a dedicated division in the ministry of external affairs was established for undertaking such projects through the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI).
So far, 60 preservation projects have been completed in 21 countries, including the 11th century Hindu temple in Bagan, Myanmar, constructed by King Anawrahta, regarded as the father of the Burmese kingdom.
Historian Rao told Article 14 that the ASI only works on maintaining ancient Hindu temples that date back to the 13th or before, in Mandalay’s Bagan region. “It’s never a temple constructed by the modern Hindu community,” he said.
Rao also said the Burmese military government has long tried to deny the historical connections between Hinduism and Buddhism, to justify its denial of rights for Hindu minority ethnic groups. “They ensure that the statue of the Buddha has mongoloid features, so that it doesn’t look kala,” he said.
But beyond temples, insiders said that the Indian government or even the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), BJP’s ideological parent organisation, which has a presence in Myanmar, has done little to alleviate the ethnic discrimination faced by the Indian diaspora.
Referring to organisations like All Myanmar Tamil Hindu Foundation, which works closely with the RSS, Hein said that only an ‘elite’ class of “crony” Indians who are close to the military have citizenship while the majority suffer systemic discrimination.
“India is a Hindu-majority country and they should include us since our ancestors came from India,” he said. “We may not end up using it (PIO card), but they need to show some compassion for Hindus in Myanmar”
(Makepeace Sitlhou is an award-winning independent journalist, who writes on politics, human rights and culture.)
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