i brought , a book by Richard S. Kim, to Bangladesh. Inspired by the book's title and Kim's writing about Korean immigrant nationalism during the colonial era, I had a chance to think about the quest for statehood of the Rohingya in Bangladesh. my spontaneous writing turned into a short essay:
The quest for statehood is, to say the least, a desire of belonging of an individual to a cohort. It is perhaps a trivial desire for many of us who are born with citizenship, a birthmark that we do not choose but are given with. Yet for many others, it is a prohibited privilege that they feel and are incapacitated without. The static notion of statehood can become a contemplative question when we think about the quest for statehood. The quest for statehood is like a secular journey that we are all part of whether we have citizenship or not. I personally believe that the quest for statehood is a spiritual journey that we can partake with a desire of transcending the notion of the self. As my 6 weeks in the Rohingya refugee camps in Bangladesh are coming to an "end," a juncture before the second term of this year unfolds, I call the spirit of contemplation to blurt out my confusion.
The stateless status of the Rohingya makes the government of Myanmar as a colonizer and the government of Bangladesh as an arbitrary agent that partakes in both supporting and discriminating the Rohingya. The government of Bangladesh has supported various channels that support the Rohingya - they have opened up their borders and are have hosted nearly 1 million Rohingya refugees since 1970s. At the same time, their willingness to provide humanitarian support for their co-Muslim Rohingya community excludes invitation of them to be co-citizens of Bangladesh. Here is a common idiom that justifies this: Blood thicker than water. Well, is it? The sparsely green hill that was once a wildlife sanctuary is now overcrowded by Rohingya refugees. There is a growing number of the children of the first generation refugees, who are now entering their 20s - a period of lifetime where enthusiasm for life spills out of the body through various ups and turns of unexpected episodes called experience.
The quest for statehood transcends one's life time: It is also a prenatal and posthumous right that generations of people grow a relationship with by loving, hating and wrestling with it. While fully rooted in Bengali territory from birth, the young Rohingya - the uninvited other - have no chance to practice this right. The only way to seek an opportunity for studying further is by hiding their Rohingya identity. A 19-year Rohingya translator told me that "We (the Rohingya) have to be good at lying." She has learned to play by the 'rule.' The uninvited other hangs collectively in the air like rootless air plants at the joint hands of the governments of Bangladesh and Myanmar. While the government of Myanmar is the master architect behind this tragedy of Rohingya refugees who have been in a long exodus from their homeland, the government of Bangladesh is not any less responsible for the growing population of the stateless young Rohingya people who speak little or no Burmese but are fluent in Bengali language and are fully capable of adjusting in Bengali society.
The young Rohingya without national identification card cannot pursuit education beyond the 10th grade. In camps, although the official education ends at the 5th grade, Rohingya people often send their daughters and sons to private masters in their residential camp, who teach English, Math, and Bengali at (unregistered) tutorial centers or their houses. All Rohingya people that I have met who spoke good English studied with a private master. Yet, despite of their impressive level of excellence in English and mature work ethic, they are barred from studying further or building careers because they are deprived of citizenship. In the mean time, the government of Bangladesh continues to call for a humane repatriation of the Rohingya refugees back to Burma to the international community - this includes the young Rohingya who were born in Bangladesh and culturally identify themselves as Bengali. It is bewildering to think about the lonesome decades that the young Rohingya have had to withstand and would have to more in coming years.
Statehood is an idiosyncratic concept, in my opinion, because it grounds our identity firmly by imbuing a sense of belonging, while it discretely nurtures an attitude of exclusion towards others, who do not accord with the norms of the statehood with which one is familiar. While our conscience might dictate tolerance and benevolence in encountering differences, our learned behaviors often fringe, struggling to dismantle one’s own prejudices and assumptions about them: While it is easy to celebrate differences on an ideological level, it is difficult to truly embrace them on a daily basis. Does our "naturally human" tendency to discriminate the other justify that blood is thicker than water?
What does it take to dilute the blood?
