"Background: The Rohingya are a large Muslim ethnic minority in Myanmar at the center of a humanitarian catastrophe. Myanmar government does not recognize them as citizens or one of the 135 recognized ethnic groups in the country. Myanmar regards them as illegal immigrants, a view rooted in their heritage in East Bengal, now called Bangladesh.1 However, the history of the geographic region of Myanmar dates back to centuries and it is evident from the chronological conflicts that the roots of the Rohingya community belong to that region and the people are subjected to mere communal conflicts. But before discussing their origin the question naturally arises that where did this term “Rohingya” come from. As mentioned by Dr. Nasir Uddin, in his book “To host or to hurt”, ‘After summarizing the unpublished thesis of A.S. Bahar entitled “The Arakani Rohingyas in Burmese Society”, M. A. Alam codify the origin of the Rohingyas as follows: “ Rohang, the old name of the Arakan, was very familiar region for the Arab seafarers even during the pre-islamic days. Tides of people like the Arabs, Moors, Turks, Pathans, Moghuls, Central Asians, Bengalis came mostly as traders, warriors, preachers and captives overland or through sea route. Many settled in Arakan, and mixing with the local people, developed the present stock of people known as ethnic Rohingya. (To host or to hurt, Nasir Uddin) The history of the region of Burma has seen a sequence of ethnic shifts, conquests, expansion and collapse that is quite typical of the history of most regions of the world. In the last millennium and a half, there has tended to be a core state or core in the Irrawaddy Valley, which repeatedly expanded towards and contracted from the periphery of the modern day territory of Myanmar; therefore by the mid 90’s around one third of the population of Myanmar was made up of ethnic groups distinct from the Burman majority. This naturally reflected the history of interaction with China to the north, India to the west, Thailand and Laos to the east and Indonesia and Malaysia to the south. In particular, the mountainous regions to the north and east of the central Irrawaddy regions have long been home to a diverse range of non-Burmese ethnicities. Some of these groups live exclusively in modern day Myanmar but many live on both sides of the various borders. Up to the nineteenth century, the evidence points to a degree of ethnic and religious tolerance, even as the Burmese regions became increasingly dominated by Buddhism, while more marginal groups retained animist beliefs or adopted Christianity or Islam. These discussions lead to the fact that it is particularly important to separate the history of Arakan from that of Burma up to the 1800s. The core of the Burmese civilization in central Burma, along the Irrawaddy Valley is geographicaly and culturally linked to the tibetian region, southwest China and the rest of East Asia. The south (the modern day Mon and Taninthayri provinces) is part of the wider Malaysian Peninsula and has sea links to the south, including Sri Lanka and parts of Indonesia. In fact, this was the original vector for the early spread of Buddhism to Burma. However, Arakan region in the west has always been separated from the rest of Burma by a high and difficult-to-traverse coastal mountain range. As such, for most of its early history, both in terms of ethnic makeup and political economic interaction, the natural links of the region were across the Bay of Bengal to India rather than with the rest of Burma. It was also a relatively poor province, reliant on subsistence agriculture and fishing, so it was generally of little interest to would be conquerors..."