The Mayu Frontier District ( my, မေယုနယ်ခြားခရိုင်) was a short-lived administrative zone of Burma (present-day

Myanmar Myanmar, ; UK pronunciations: US pronunciations incl. . Note: Wikipedia's IPA conventions require indicating /r/ even in British English although only some British English speakers pronounce r at the end of syllables. As John C. Wells, Joh ...

) which existed between 1961 and 1964. It covered the

Maungdaw District Maungdaw District ( my, မောင်တောခရိုင်) is a district of Rakhine State in western Myanmar (Burma). Its capital city is Maungdaw and the population density is about 295 persons per square kilometer. Roughly 91 percent of ...

of present-day

Rakhine State Rakhine State (; , , ; formerly known as Arakan State) is a Administrative divisions of Myanmar, state in Myanmar (Burma). Situated on the western coast, it is bordered by Chin State to the north, Magway Region, Bago Region and Ayeyarwady R ...

in the historical region of

Arakan Arakan ( or ) is a historic coastal region in Southeast Asia. Its borders faced the Bay of Bengal to its west, the Indian subcontinent to its north and Burma proper to its east. The Arakan Mountains isolated the region and made it accessi ...

. The zone was administered directly from the capital Rangoon (present-day

Yangon Yangon ( my, ရန်ကုန်; ; ), formerly spelled as Rangoon, is the capital of the Yangon Region and the largest city of Myanmar (also known as Burma). Yangon served as the capital of Myanmar until 2006, when the military government ...

Geography

The Mayu Frontier District was named after the Mayu River. It included

Maungdaw Township Maungdaw Township ( my, မောင်တောမြို့နယ် ) is a township of Maungdaw District in Rakhine State, Myanmar (Burma). The principal town is Maungdaw. The township has a large Muslim Rohingya population, roughly 80% of ...

Buthidaung Township Buthidaung Township ( my, ဘူးသီးတောင်မြို့နယ် ) is a township of Maungdaw District in the Rakhine State of Myanmar (Burma). The principal town and administrative seat is Buthidaung Buthidaung (, ) is a town i ...

and a part of

Rathedaung Township Rathedaung Township ( my, ရသေ့တောင်မြို့နယ်) is a township of Sittwe District in the Rakhine State of Myanmar. The principal town is Rathedaung Rathedaung ( my, ရသေ့တောင်မြို့) is the ...

. The Mayu Range of mountains separated Maungdaw and Buthidaung. The

Naf River The Naf River ( bn, নাফ নদী ''Naf Nodi'' ; my, နတ်မြစ် ; rki, ) is an international river marking the border of southeastern Bangladesh and northwestern Myanmar. Geography The Naf River's average depth is , and ma ...

estuary formed the northern boundary of the district, on the international border with

East Pakistan East Pakistan was a Pakistani province established in 1955 by the One Unit Scheme, One Unit Policy, renaming the province as such from East Bengal, which, in modern times, is split between India and Bangladesh. Its land borders were with India ...

Background

After the

1960 Burmese general election General elections were held in Burma on 6 February 1960 to install a government to take over from General Ne Win's interim administration, established in October 1958. The military-led administration was credited for bringing stability and improv ...

, Sultan Mahmud, the Burmese health minister, advocated a state for the Arakanese Indian community in the northern part of Arakan. Mahmud suggested the

Kaladan River The Kaladan River ( my, ကုလားတန်မြစ်, ; also Kysapnadi, Beino, Bawinu and Kolodyne) is a river in eastern Mizoram State of India, and in Chin State and Rakhine State of western Myanmar. The Kaladan River is called the Chh ...

as the boundary between Muslim-majority and Buddhist-majority Arakan. Mahmud submitted his proposal to the Statehood Consultative Committee. Mahmud said that Arakanese Indians would accept a joint state with Arakanese Buddhists if there was adequate protection and representation of the Indian minority. If adequate safeguards were not possible, Mahmud proposed that a separate northern Arakan zone should be administered directly from the national capital Rangoon. On 1 May 1961,http://www.burmalibrary.org/docs14/Kei_Nemoto-Rohingya.pdf the

Prime Minister of Burma The prime minister of Myanmar is the head of government of Myanmar. The post was re-established in 2021 by the State Administration Council, the country's ruling military junta, to lead its nominally-civilian provisional government. The provis ...

U Nu Nu ( my, ဦးနု; ; 25 May 1907 – 14 February 1995), commonly known as U Nu also known by the honorific name Thakin Nu, was a leading Burmese statesman and nationalist politician. He was the first Prime Minister of Burma under the pr ...

implemented Mahmud's ideas, albeit the new zone did not extend up to the Kaladan River.

Demographics

The Mayu Frontier District had an Arakanese Indian majority, among whom most were

Muslim Muslims ( ar, المسلمون, , ) are people who adhere to Islam, a monotheistic religion belonging to the Abrahamic tradition. They consider the Quran, the foundational religious text of Islam, to be the verbatim word of the God of Abrah ...

. During this period, the term "

Rohingya The Rohingya people () are a stateless Indo-Aryan ethnic group who predominantly follow Islam and reside in Rakhine State, Myanmar (previously known as Burma). Before the Rohingya genocide in 2017, when over 740,000 fled to Bangladesh, an ...

" was widely used to label the Indian community of Arakan, including in the speeches of Burmese leaders and on Burmese radio broadcasts. The term was popularized by

M. A. Gaffar Mohammed Abdul Gaffar (1910–1966), also known as Abdul Gaffar, was a politician from Arakan, Burma (now Rakhine State, Myanmar). He was elected to the Legislature of Burma in British Burma from Buthidaung in 1947. After Burmese independence in ...

after he submitted a memorandum to the first Burmese government in 1949.

Administration

Between 1961 and 1962, the Mayu Frontier District was governed by the elected government in Rangoon. The

1962 Burmese coup d'état The 1962 Burmese coup d'état on 2 March 1962 marked the beginning of one-party rule and the political dominance of the army in Burma (now Myanmar) which spanned the course of 26 years. In the coup, the military replaced the civilian AFPFL-g ...

ended Burmese

parliamentary democracy A parliamentary system, or parliamentarian democracy, is a system of democratic governance of a state (or subordinate entity) where the executive derives its democratic legitimacy from its ability to command the support ("confidence") of the ...

. Following the coup, the Mayu Frontier District was directly administered by the

Tatmadaw Tatmadaw (, , ) is the official name of the armed forces of Myanmar (formerly Burma). It is administered by the Ministry of Defence and composed of the Myanmar Army, the Myanmar Navy and the Myanmar Air Force. Auxiliary services include th ...

(Myanmar Armed Forces) and the

Union Revolutionary Council The Union Revolutionary Council ( my, နိုင်ငံတော်တော်လှန်ရေးကောင်စီ), officially the Revolutionary Council of the Union of Burma ( my, ပြည်ထောင်စုမြန်မာန ...

Dissolution

The Burmese military ended the special status of the district in February 1964. The Mayu Frontier area was placed under the responsibility of the Ministry of Home Affairs. In 1974, when Burmese dictator

Ne Win Ne Win ( my, နေဝင်း ; 10 July 1910, or 14 or 24 May 1911 – 5 December 2002) was a Burmese politician and military commander who served as Prime Minister of Burma from 1958 to 1960 and 1962 to 1974, and also President of Burma ...

proclaimed the

Socialist Republic of the Union of Burma , conventional_long_name = Union of Burma Socialist Republic of the Union of Burma , common_name = Burma , status = , status_text = , p1 = Post-independence Burma, 1948–1962Uni ...

, the Mayu Frontier area was incorporated into

Arakan State Rakhine State (; , , ; formerly known as Arakan State) is a Administrative divisions of Myanmar, state in Myanmar (Burma). Situated on the western coast, it is bordered by Chin State to the north, Magway Region, Bago Region and Ayeyarwady R ...

as the

References