"The sectarian violence that erupted in Rakhine (Arakan) state in Myanmar has prompted heated discussions over ethnicity, citizenship and belonging. Subsequently, in an effort to determine accurate numbers, a fortnight-long registration exercise was conducted by government authorities in Pauktaw Township in Rakhine state in November 2012. However, the Rohingya reportedly refused to register because the authorities erased the term ?Rohingya? from completed forms and replaced it with ?Bengali?. The Rohingya fear that, once registered as ?Bengali?, they would be declared illegal immigrants by the authorities and summarily deported from the country. The Rohingya?s claim to being a bona fide ethnic group of Myanmar, and hence their claim to citizenship, is steeped in controversy. They assert that they have been living in Rakhine state for thousands of years, even before the Burmans conquered the Arakan kingdom in 1748. This is disputed by the government and certain sectors of Myanmar society who assert that the Rohingya are, in fact, illegal migrants from Chittagong in Bangladesh who crossed into Burma in the nineteenth century. The classification of ethnicity in the registration exercise may be inaccurate, but it is not accidental. The Rohingya?s refusal to being labelled ?Bengali? highlights their acute awareness of the politics of labelling, and is a way of resisting state-imposed definitions and manipulations of ethnicity, and thus criteria of belonging..."