I was in Italy presenting an exhibition of Rohingya photographs when the curator quietly pulled me aside to check the pronunciation — was it “Ro-hin-jaa” or “Ro-hin-gya”? That sincere question captured a wider issue: People can be unsure of the most basic facts about the Rohingya, starting with how to say their name.
Much of that uncertainty stems from two loud, rival narratives. On the one hand, Myanmar nationalists brand the Rohingya as recent “Bengali” interlopers, erasing eight centuries of Arakanese history to justify exclusion. On the other hand, many Bangladeshis, who meet the community mainly as impoverished refugees from Rakhine, assume they are either Burmese (BARMAR) Muslims or speakers of a Chittagonian-like dialect, without realizing the deeper Arakanese roots of both language and identity.
The interview that follows, conducted with Razia Sultana, a Rohingya lawyer, border-history specialist, and founder of the Rights for Women Welfare Society (RWWS) whose own family settled in Bangladesh from Burma decades ago, aims to cut through that noise. In less than 10 brisk questions she explains why script does not equal ethnicity, how shared alphabets are weaponized to deny citizenship, and where poets, migration patterns and oral tradition fit into the story.
If you have ever wondered whether the Rohingya are “real Arakanese” or “just Bengalis,” Razia’s answers should settle the matter, starting, appropriately, with how to pronounce the name itself.
Razia, people often say the Rohingya are just “Bengalis who crossed the border.” Could you start by clarifying where the Rohingya language actually sits in the region’s linguistic family tree?
Gladly. The Rohingya speak Ruáingga, whose deepest literary roots lie in Puti — a Sanskrit-inflected court idiom once used across coastal Arakan and southern Chittagong. Its script resembles Bengali, but structurally it is far closer to Chittagonian and even Chakma. And if Sanskrit roots made one “Bengali,” then Burmese would be Bengali too — an obvious absurdity. That visual similarity has been misused by the Myanmar state to label Rohingya as Bengalis; in truth, the shared alphabet says more about regional scribal habits than about ethnic origin.
You mentioned Chakma. If that language is also close to Ruáingga, why has Chakma never been branded “Bengali” in the same way?
That contrast exposes a religious double standard. Chakma speakers are largely Buddhist; Ruáingga speakers are Muslim. The political calculus has been to accept Buddhist borderlanders as “indigenous” while dismissing Muslims as “foreign.” Linguistically, the two tongues share a rhythmic cadence, but only one group is stigmatized. Chakma escapes the Bengali tag because its speakers are Buddhist; Ruáingga is punished because its speakers are Muslim.
How do historic figures such as the poets Daulat Qazi and Alaol fit into this picture?
They are living proof of a two-way cultural corridor. Both were born in Chittagong but made their reputations at the Arakanese court in Mrauk U, composing in Puti. Alaol’s Padmavati and Qazi’s unfinished Chandrabati blended Sanskrit, Persian, and even Rajasthani motifs — hardly the work of parochial Bengali migrants. Their manuscripts sit today in the Bangladesh National Museum, showing how fluid that coastal literary sphere really was. Their lyrical metre survives today in Rohingya “Howla” recitations. Even Rohingya versions of the Lushai hill-folk love tale where a youth jumps from a cliff to prove his devotion were written in the same puti script.
Why, then, do many Rohingya scholars shy away from citing Puti sources that could bolster their case?
Because, every time the Puti script surfaces, detractors point to the visual likeness with Bengali letters and shout “aha, Bengalis after all!” Scholars fear inadvertently handing ammunition to a regime bent on delegitimization, so an important archival vein lies under-used. Depoliticize the question and the myth of foreignness collapses
Some argue that because Cox’s Bazar lies in Bangladesh today, its cultural overlap with Arakan proves little. What does the demographic data suggest?
Field studies indicate roughly 70% of Cox’s Bazar’s inhabitants, and upward of 85-90% in the Teknaf-Naikhongchari belt, trace ancestry to Arakan. Until the mid-18th century, these tracts paid tribute to the Arakanese court. Those Arakan-Cox’s ties endured until the British drew a hard line in the 19th century. The modern border thus slices through a long-standing cultural continuum; it did not create it.
Critics sometimes accuse the Rohingya of harbouring a ‘Greater Arakan’ agenda that would annex parts of Bangladesh. How fair is that claim?
It is a red herring. Aspirations for a supra-border Arakan come mainly from groups like the Arakan Army. Rohingya political platforms consistently call for return to Rakhine state and restoration of citizenship — not for carving fresh territory out of Bangladesh. That stance is documented in every major Rohingya communiqué since the 1990s. That is our aspiration.
During colonial times and the 1940s violence, many Arakanese, including Rohingya, sought refuge in Cox’s Bazar. Has that movement blurred identities beyond repair?
Movement across porous frontiers always leaves mixed legacies, yet, cultural inheritance endures. The Howla lyrical style the poets pioneered still survives in Rohingya oral performance; culinary and festive rhythms in Cox’s Bazar mirror Rakhine practice. Just as the Lushai people move freely between the Chittagong Hill Tracts of Bangladesh and Mizoram in India — maintaining kinship, language, and cultural practices despite the presence of an international border — so too do the Rohingya and other communities in the Arakan-Cox’s Bazar region share deep-rooted traditions that transcend the modern frontier. Those 1940s flights were war-time refuge, not economic infiltration.
Razia, I’ve spent time at the weekly haats in Ali Kadam, up in the Chittagong Hill Tracts. On market day Marma, Mizo and Bengali traders haggle side by side, swapping family news as readily as rice and turmeric. Those exchange networks go back centuries. What do they tell us about borders and about culture?
They show that modern borders are bits of paperwork, not cultural walls. Trade routes, marriage ties, and shared stories stitched Arakan to Chittagong long before the British drew a line between them. Trouble starts when politicians weaponize differences — religion here, language there — and declare that neighbours are suddenly outsiders.
Indeed, that mingling you observed a few years back would not have been possible not so long ago after Bangladesh’s independence. Any lasting solution must begin with the region’s fluid history: Honour the mixed heritage, protect pluralism, and let the old networks breathe again. Only then can the Arakan-Chittagong borderland’s tapestry of identities be woven into a future of coexistence, not erasure.
So if you had to summarize the core misunderstanding that fuels Rohingya disenfranchisement, what would it be?
A script-based fallacy equating alphabet with ethnicity, combined with a religious filter that accepts Buddhist borderlanders as native while casting Muslims as outsiders. Linguistic, literary, and demographic evidence all show the Rohingya are part of Arakan’s historical fabric. Stripping them of that identity is a political manoeuvre, not a scholarly conclusion.
Shafiur Rahman is a journalist and documentary filmmaker focusing on the politics of refugee management in South and Southeast Asia. He writes the Rohingya Refugee News newsletter.
