The perpetrators of low-intensity serial blasts in Mahabodhi Temple in Bodh  Gaya are still to be identified. But it appears to be a retaliatory act by  Indian Mujahideen (IM) to avenge the anti-Muslim violence in Burma. Last August,  a bunch of skull-capped Muslims had run riot in Lucknow over violence against  their coreligionists in Buddhist Myanmar. They publicly damaged a statue of  Buddha installed in a park. The Uttar Pradesh Police was conspicuous by  inaction.

Buddhist-Muslim conflict in Myanmar

There had been escalation of anti-Muslim violence in Myanmar this summer. The  western coastal State of Rakhine, historically Arakan, is the focal point of  this Buddhist-Muslim conflict. Rakhines, who are Buddhists, accuse the Muslim  Rohingyas of plotting to destroy Buddhism and overrun Myanmar. They say the  number 786, venerable to Muslims of South Asia, adds up to 21. Buddhists have an  occult fear that Muslims would overrun Myanmar in the 21st century. To counter  it, the Buddhists have come up with a number 969, which represents the ‘three  jewels’ –Buddha, Dharma and Sangha. The number is said to have its origin in a  book written in the late 1990s by U Kyaw Lwin, who worked in the Ministry of  Religious Affairs. But nowadays it has come to represent a Buddhist mass  movement against Muslims. It is led by Gana Wasak Sangha, a religious order in  the Mon State of Myanmar.

The numerological shadow war represents centuries old bad blood between  Buddhists and Muslims. Arakan is a coastal strip, geographically segregated from  the rest of Myanmar. As a feudatory of the Bengal Sultans in the medieval era it  was exposed to Muslim influence and settlers. “The kings of Arakan”, says Aung  San Suu Kyi in her eminently readable Freedom From Fear, “used Islamic titles, although they  and the majority of their subjects remained Buddhist. However, there are more  people of the Islamic faith to be found in Arakan than anywhere else in Burma.  Despite these Bengal and Islamic influence, however, Arakan has been a  predominantly Buddhist region for centuries.”

The feared increase in Rohingya population

But the Buddhist domination is slipping away. The Rohnigya population,  following the universal Muslim trend of higher fertility, is believed to have  crossed halfway mark in Rakhine State. This is despite the fact they were  stripped of citizenship in 1982, disenfranchised since 1974 and prohibited from  joining the army since 1948 after Burma gained independence. Some 250,000  Rohnigyas were pushed into Bangladesh in 1978 by the Ne Win Government. A  repatriation agreement was signed between Bangladesh and Myanmar between in  1992. Bangladesh tricked lakhs of unwilling Rohnigyas to return to Arakan. The  Rohingya issue, on balance, remains a hanging fire. Last year’s violence  generated fresh rounds of Rohingya refugees.

In 1994, a maximum-two-child policy was imposed on the Rohingyas. The policy  was recently re-imposed after it had been allowed to lapse. Aung San Suu Kyi,  now the Leader of Opposition in Myanmar, has criticised it as inhuman. But she  is not really a lover of Muslims, unlike the Indian secularists.

Rohigya refugees in New Delhi

In 1989, when the Junta officially renamed Burma as Myanmar and Rangoon as  Yangon, Indians were clueless. Many in north India, following the Hindi  pronunciation, thought it meant ‘Mian Maar’ (kill Muslims). Muslims of Myanmar  spilling over into India is the last thing we would want. Only last year it was  discovered that 2000 Rohingya refugees had pitched tenets before UNHRC office in  Vasant Vihar in New Delhi. They had earlier been living on the fringes of Vasant  Kunj from where they were evicted by efforts of the RWAs and Gram Sabhas. There  was no credible answer from then Home Minister P Chidambaram on how they reached  New Delhi by infiltrating into India. The Capital shut its doors on Rohingyas,  but they are likely to be living elsewhere in India with the complicity of the  UPA Government.

In the medieval ages, Islam had overrun vast swathes of land where Buddhism  flourished, including Afghanistan, Sindh and Kashmir. The Bodh Gaya temple in  Bihar, like the University of Nalanda, was razed to ground by Muslim invaders.  With Islam striking back, the Buddhists have decisively entered the clash of  civilisations. But the symbolic beginnings of this conflict were made in  February, 2001 when the Bamiyan Buddhas were turned to rubble by the Taliban in  Afghanistan. The Buddhist world thought it was too far away to be touched. Now  they might have to revise their opinion.