New Delhi, June 21 -- Myanmar President Min Aung Hlaing, in his first visit abroad since becoming president in April this year, was in India on May 30. Upon arriving on a five-day visit, Min Aung Hlaing-a Buddhist by faith-visited Bodh Gaya and offered prayers at the Mahabodhi Temple. During his stay, he held talks with Prime Minister Narendra Modi, focusing on areas including trade, connectivity, border security, and defence. Both sides shared the importance of working closely towards the completion of the Kaladan Multi-Modal Transit Transport Project and the India-Myanmar-Thailand Trilateral Highway.
Between the 2021 coup and being elected president in 2026, Min Aung Hlaing travelled to Russia and China. Modi's last official visit to Myanmar was in 2017. Analysts argued that, by choosing India as his first foreign destination, Min Aung Hlaing might have signalled a pragmatic shift to engage with democratic powers to counter Myanmar's overwhelming geopolitical reliance on China. Nevertheless, Myanmar President Min Aung Hlaing arrived in China on June 15 on a five-day visit for talks with his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, and other leaders to strengthen close strategic ties between the two countries. Chinese President Xi Jinping, during their meeting, endorsed the political leadership of Myanmar's military chief-turned-president, Min Aung Hlaing, as the two met in Beijing to map out the future development of bilateral ties. Xi also spoke about making greater contributions to regional peace and development through China's bilateral ties with Myanmar. The two countries share an almost 2,200-km (1,367-mile) land border.
Both Myanmar and India, which share a 1,643-km (1,021-mile) border, are highly diverse nations with complex ethnic and religious structures. Prolonged unrest in Myanmar has adversely impacted Bangladesh and India's states of Manipur, Nagaland, and Mizoram. In the recently held elections in West Bengal and Assam, Myanmar's Rohingya refugee issue became a highly polarising political concern. The debate centred on allegations of illegal immigration through Bangladesh affecting voter rolls, state security, and demographics, resulting in a strict government crackdown, targeted deportations, and border interceptions.
Rohingya - From a Bona Fide Citizen to a Stateless Person
Myanmar is home to over 135 distinct ethnic groups, considered the "national races". The majority is the Bamar (Burman) people, who make up roughly 68 per cent of the population. The remaining 32 per cent of the population includes several major ethnic groups, primarily concentrated around the country's mountainous border regions and seven ethnic states. These are: (i) Shan (~9 per cent), (ii) Karen (Kayin) (~7 per cent), (iii) Rakhine (Arakanese) (~4 per cent), (iv) Chin (~2 per cent), (v) Mon (~2 per cent), (vi) Kachin (~1.5 per cent), and (vii) Kayah (Karenni) (~1 per cent). Other significant communities include people of Chinese and Indian descent, the Naga, Pa-O, Wa, and the Rohingya in Rakhine State. The Rohingya are an ethnic Muslim group in the majority-Buddhist country and make up around 2 per cent-about one million people-of the total population of 50 million.
Since August 20, 2010, Myanmar has been divided into seven Dyine (States), seven Taing (Regions), and the Naypyidaw Union Territory. The states are primarily inhabited by major ethnic tribes and minorities. The regions are home to the Bamar majority. The seven regions are Ayeyarwady, Bago, Magwe, Mandalay, Sagaing, Tanintharyi, and Yangon.
At the time of independence in 1948 from the British Empire, Myanmar opted for a hybrid citizenship regime that allowed for paths to citizenship based on both jus sanguinis (citizenship on parentage or descent) and jus soli (citizenship based on place of birth) principles, as well as a liberal naturalisation policy. Under Burma's first Constitution (1947) and the subsequent Union Citizenship Law (1948), many Rohingya gained citizenship status and associated identity documents.
From 1948 to 1952, most Rohingya held Union Citizenship Cards (UCCs); from 1948 to 1955, many Rohingya were issued Citizenship Certificates. Under the 1949 Resident Registration Act and the 1951 Resident Registration Rules, all residents were required to comply with new civil registration regulations. After 1951, citizens over the age of twelve were issued National Registration Cards (NRCs), replacing the former Citizenship Certificates and UCCs. Non-citizens were issued Foreign Registration Certificates. Many residents of Rakhine State, including Rohingya, like other Burmese nationals, were issued NRCs.
After a change of government following a military coup in 1962, the citizenship status of the Rohingya became increasingly precarious. In 1978, a citizenship scrutiny exercise in Rakhine State triggered the mass displacement of Rohingya and stripped many of their citizenship documentation. Authorities launched a citizenship scrutiny operation, named "Nagamin", throughout Sittwe and northern Rakhine State, during which every Rohingya had to present identity documents under the threat of arrest. Atrocities committed by authorities led to some 280,000 Rohingya fleeing to Bangladesh, including around 150,000 with valid identity documents. Mass forced repatriation from Bangladesh followed, but the legal status of the returnees was not reinstated.
Myanmar's new Citizenship Act of 1982 rendered millions of Muslims stateless, even though they had settled in the Arakan (now Rakhine) region between the eighth and eighteenth centuries during the pre-British period. The Rohingyas are often described as one of the world's most persecuted minority groups. The conflict that broke out in Rakhine State on August 25, 2017, between Arakan Buddhists and Muslims forced the mass exodus of the Rohingyas from Myanmar to Bangladesh. The stateless Rohingyas of Myanmar became refugees.
The 1982 Citizenship Act focuses on ethnicity and ancestry, providing three forms of citizenship. The law makes membership in a "national race" the primary basis for citizenship. Alternatively, citizenship may be granted if a person can demonstrate that their ancestors settled in the country prior to 1823, the year before British colonisation. If a person cannot provide evidence of this ancestry, they may still be able to claim associate or naturalised forms of citizenship. Persons who qualified under the 1948 citizenship law but who would no longer qualify under the 1982 law may be considered associate citizens if they had applied for citizenship in 1948. The apartheid-like Citizenship Act of 1982 rendered the Rohingyas stateless. The latest census, conducted in 2014 and reporting a population of more than 51.4 million, excluded the Rohingyas.
Due to decades of violence and persecution, generations of Rohingya have lived in fear. Hundreds of thousands have fled to neighbouring countries, including Bangladesh and Malaysia, either by land or by boat. Nearly one million Rohingya live in Cox's Bazar in southeastern Bangladesh, one of the largest and most densely populated refugee camps in the world.
Growing Number of Stateless Persons in India
The Myanmar Citizenship Act of 1982 rendered millions of people stateless. The same fate, some argue, awaits many in India as well. Citizenship issues in India have their roots in the partition of Bengal and Punjab in 1947. Following Partition and the formation of the Dominions of India and Pakistan, persons who migrated from territories that became part of Pakistan could be registered as Indian citizens if they, or a parent or grandparent, were born in any part of pre-Partition India as defined by the Government of India Act, 1935, and had either become domiciled in Indian territory before July 19, 1948, or had been registered as citizens of India by Dominion officials after that date but before the commencement of the Constitution.
The Citizenship Act of 1955 outlines the rules and regulations for acquiring and terminating Indian citizenship. The Act specifies five ways to acquire Indian citizenship: birth, descent, registration, naturalisation, and incorporation of territory. Citizenship by descent applies where a person born outside India after January 26, 1950, is an Indian citizen if either parent was an Indian citizen at the time of birth. However, major changes took place through the amendments of 1986 and 2003.
From July 1, 1987, the date of enforcement of the Citizenship (Amendment) Act, 1986, every person born in India on or after January 26, 1950, but before the commencement of the amendment, and either of whose parents was a citizen of India at the time of birth, would be a citizen of India by birth. This meant that if a child was born in India to parents who were not Indian citizens at the time of birth, the child would not automatically acquire Indian citizenship by birth. Thus, according to critics, the era of potential statelessness began in India.
The 2003 amendment, enacted during the government of Atal Bihari Vajpayee, further restricted citizenship by birth. It provided that a person born in India would be a citizen only if both parents were citizens of India, or if one parent was a citizen and the other was not an illegal migrant at the time of birth. The amendment also introduced and defined the notion of an "illegal immigrant", making such persons ineligible for citizenship by registration or naturalisation. According to the Act, an illegal immigrant is a foreigner who entered India without valid documents or who entered legally but overstayed the permitted period. Such persons are also liable to imprisonment for two to eight years and fines.
The Citizenship (Amendment) Act, 2019 (CAA), introduced a preferential pathway to citizenship for Hindus, Christians, Buddhists, Parsis, Jains, and Sikhs, while excluding Muslims and certain other groups.
Through the 1985 Assam Accord and the Citizenship (Amendment) Act, 1986, a distinct citizenship regime was established for Assam. This separate standard formed the basis for large-scale citizenship identification through three parallel processes: individual citizenship determination proceedings before Foreigners Tribunals, ongoing since 1964; the updating of the National Register of Citizens (NRC) in Assam, sanctioned by the Supreme Court in 2013; and the "Doubtful Voter" (D-Voter) system, which categorises people as suspected undocumented immigrants from Bangladesh. In 2019, the final draft of the updated NRC was published, ostensibly to establish a definitive record of who is a citizen and who is a foreigner or "illegal migrant". The NRC excluded 1,906,657 persons, the majority of whom are reportedly Hindu and Muslim Bengali speakers.
Fears of mass disenfranchisement and exclusion arising from the Election Commission of India's Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls have sparked significant debate, particularly in states such as Bihar, West Bengal, and Tamil Nadu, where millions of bona fide citizens are alleged to have had their names deleted from voter lists.
On June 16, Human Rights Watch, based in London, alleged that Indian authorities had been forcibly expelling ethnic Bengali residents, mostly Muslims, from West Bengal to Bangladesh without basic due process, leaving dozens of families stranded at the "zero line" between the two countries. Bangladeshi border guards reported that, since June 1, 2026, they had foiled 21 attempts by India's Border Security Force (BSF) to push more than 200 people, including children, into Bangladesh's border districts.
India is not a signatory to either the 1954 Convention Relating to the Status of Stateless Persons or the 1961 Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness and has no dedicated statelessness determination or protection framework. There are no specific safeguards to protect children born in the country from statelessness, nor any measures to prevent statelessness among foundlings.
Observations
The ruling elites of Myanmar and India have established what some scholars describe as a structure of internal colonialism, referring to the structural exploitation of marginalised ethnic, religious, or regional peripheries by a dominant centre within a single state. In Myanmar, internal colonialism is fundamentally tied to ethnic-majority Bamar supremacy over the country's diverse border regions, often referred to as the uplands. In India, internal colonialism is argued to manifest through the hegemony of dominant linguistic, religious, caste, and urban elites over remote, resource-rich, and minority-dominated territories. According to this perspective, the ruling establishments of Myanmar and India are natural allies and are seeking to redefine citizenship laws in ways that preserve existing power structures. Myanmar President Min Aung Hlaing's first foreign visit to India since assuming the presidency is cited as an example of this broader political convergence.
Published by HT Digital Content Services with permission from Millennium Post.