‘Ethnic Conflict’ and ‘Buddhist–Muslim Divide’: A Discourse Analysis of the Rohingya Crisis

Discourses are formed on written or verbal texts of communication in a society where mediated ideas contribute at large (Dahlberg & Phelan, 2011). Therefore, the role of media in the production, and reproduction, of discourse is crucial and hence discourse analysis unfolds the hidden dynamics of social text. This chapter critically discusses two leading discourses—ethnic conflict and Buddhist–Muslim divide—that emerged following the massive Rohingya influx in 2027 when more than 750,000 Rohingya fled a genocidal attack in Rakhine state, Myanmar (Uddin, 2022a, b). When we talk about discourse, people tend to take from Michel Foucault’s concept (Foucault, 1976), we mean when words or phrases or ideas amid overuse become a holding of public knowledge about a particular issue in a particular context in a particular frame of thought (see Coulthard, 2014). A theoretical discussion could take readers to a wider context, but discourse emerges largely from the media use of words and phrases to indicate a particular case, issue, event, or fact (see Chiluwa, 2022). In the context of the Rohingya crisis, print and electronic media at both the local and global stages project it as the outcome of ethnic conflict and Buddhist–Muslim clashes in the Rakhine state. That was the reason why ‘ethnic conflict’ and ‘Buddhist–Muslims’ divide have become two popular discourses to represent the Rohingya crisis (Wildan, 2021). Much has been talked about the Rohingya atrocities, their brutal experience, unexplainable miseries, and genocidal experience (Uddin, 2022a, b). Victimhood and refugeehood have also taken up enough space in Rohingya literature (Uddin, 2022a, b) that grew up following the recent massive Rohingya influx into Bangladesh. However, the discourses that emerged following the influx and post-influx have remained less discussed and less explored in the academic world and research domain. This chapter brings in two leading discourses—ethnic conflict and Buddhist–Muslim divide—and their critical analysis by using both the content analysis of the secondary sources and empirical data gathered from first-hand ethnographic research. Two discourses—ethnic conflict and the Buddhist–Muslim divide—are widely presented as the reasons behind the massive Rohingya influx in Bangladesh. The Rohingya refugee crisis has often been represented as an ‘ethnic conflict’ between two ethnic groups—Rakhine and Rohingya— and an interfaith conflict between two faiths—Buddhism and Islam—following a ‘religious divide.’ The chapter presents that Bangladeshi print and electronic media often portray the Rohingya crisis within the framework of the same discourse of ethnic conflict between Rakhine and Rohingya, but this is not the case because the Myanmar state was heavily involved in the production of massive influx. The crisis is also widely projected as a conflict between two religious groups: Buddhists and Muslims. However, this is the outcome of the state’s authoritarian approach toward people of different cultures, languages, and faiths like the Rohingya. The chapter brings an argument that this is also an oversimplification of projecting the Rohingya crisis with a very one-eyed and narrow interpretation of the larger atrocious and brutal canvas. This chapter, with its empirically informed analysis, essentially dismantles these popular discourses built and mediated by local and global media outlets.