Tarana: Islam, Nationalism, and Song amid the Rohingya Catastrophe

This dissertation examines Rohingya nationalism in tandem with Rohingya tarana (anthem) across the longue durée of the Mosibot—the Rohingya Catastrophe (ca. 1942–present). Rohingya taranas center the Rohingya, a predominantly stateless, Muslim-majority people who consider Arakan (Rakhine State) in western Burma (Myanmar) to be their ancestral homeland. Tarana lyrics revolve around several key themes, including the Rohingya people’s collective memories of denationalization, ethnic cleansing, and genocide; their contemporary experiences of life in long-term camps and in the diaspora; and their future aspirations for freedom, justice, self-determination, and divine salvation.

I make three interrelated arguments in the dissertation. First, I contend that tarana—first in Urdu and later in Rohingya—has played a key role in the development of Rohingya nationalism since the early twentieth century. Before the late twentieth century, Rohingya was largely an oral language, and literacy rates remain very limited among Rohingyas today. Therefore, as a predominantly oral tradition, tarana has empowered average Rohingyas to make sense of and respond to their collective, lived experiences of denationalization, dehumanization, ethnic cleansing, genocide, and prolonged displacement.

Second, I hold that Rohingya nationalism is best understood as a form of Indigenous Muslim nationalism. I theorize Rohingya nationalism via the Rohingya concept of koomiyot, which roughly translates as “nationalism.” Much like the term nationalism itself, koomiyot can be variously understood and studied as collective identity, consciousness, or sentiment; the condition of belonging to a nation; a set of beliefs about the nation; the moral or ethical obligation to serve the nation; a political ideology or movement; or, following Benedict Anderson, a way of imagining community. I conceptualize koomiyot as a triangular relationship among three porous and interconnected Rohingya concepts: rosom (culture), din (religion), and woton (homeland). Unlike more extensively researched political formations centrally connected to Islam, such as Pakistani nationalism or pan-Islamism, koomiyot foregrounds a single ethnic group (the Rohingya people) and entails a claim to Indigeneity—namely, that the Rohingya are an Indigenous people of Arakan. Furthermore, unlike Pakistani nationalism and most pan-Islamist movements, Rohingya nationalism has emerged from conditions of mass denationalization and prolonged displacement.

Third, I argue that koomiyot, at its core, is about the validation of Rohingya identity and the affirmation of Rohingya belonging within Arakan and Burma. While some Rohingya elites and armed actors around the mid-twentieth century (whose ideological descendants remain active today) advocated for northern Arakan to be annexed by Pakistan or to become an independent Rohingya-majority state, these factions are a fringe element within the larger ecosystem of koomiyot. I take the performance and circulation of tarana among ordinary Rohingyas around the world today as evidence for my claim that koomiyot is fundamentally about the articulation, affirmation, and celebration of Rohingya identity, history, and culture and the Rohingya homeland of Arakan, as well as political demands, divine supplications, and communal aspirations for peace, justice, freedom, equality, national recognition, and citizenship for the Rohingya people within Arakan and Burma more generally.