Contexts - The Rough Guide to Myanmar - page 508

MYANMAR'S ETHNIC GROUPS
Myanmar is home to an extraordinary patchwork of peoples. No fewer than 135 dif-
ferent ethnic groups are officially recognized by the government, arranged into eight
“majornationalethnicraces”:Bamar,Chin,Kachin,Kayah,Kayin,Mon,Rakhineand
Shan. There are also some major ethnic groups not officially recognized, including the
Burmese Chinese (three percent of the population), Burmese Indians (two percent of
the population) and the embattled Rohingya , not to mention the mixed-race Anglo-
Burmese. Most ethnic groups speak their own language, with Burmese as a second lan-
guage - although some (such as the Rakhine) speak a dialect of Burmese as their first
language.
Ethnically,Myanmarisdominatedbythe Bamar ,whohaveoccupiedthefertileAyeyarwady
valley and central plains for the past thousand years. Other ethnic groups tend to inhabit the
country's mountainous margins, battling inhospitable terrain and (in recent decades) wide-
spread military repression and human-rights abuses - every single major ethnic group in the
country has been at war with the central government at some point since independence, with
most insurgencies dragging on into the 1990s or - in the case of the Kayin - even more re-
cently.
Bamar
FarandawayMyanmar'slargestethnicgrouparethe Bamar (stilloccasionallyreferredtoby
theiroldcolonial-eraname,“Burmans”,or,lessaccurately,asthe“Burmese”,althoughprop-
erly speaking this adjective refers to all citizens of Myanmar rather than the Bamar alone).
The Bamar now make up over two-thirds of the national population - almost 34 million
people - and have largely assimilated formerly distinct ethnic groups including the now van-
ished Pyu peopleaswellaslargenumbersofformerlyindependentMonandotherminorities
who have been steadily Burmanized over the past centuries.
Originally hailing from Yunnan in southern China, the Bamar's traditional heartlands were
the fertile Ayeyarwady River valley and surrounding plains, where they first settled around
1000 AD, establishing the kingdom of Bagan. Bamar culture and language are now inextric-
ably bound up with that of the nation as a whole - the Bamar language, Burmese, is now
Myanmar's official mother tongue, and many other marks of Bamar identity (the wearing of
longyi and thanaka , for example) have become synonymous with the country as a whole.
Shan
Myanmar's second-largest ethnic group - roughly nine percent of the population (around 4.5
million people) - the Shan live mainly in eastern Myanmar (as well as across the border in
northern Thailand), where they have given their name to the country's largest state. Cultur-