The frequency with which scholars of Myanmar attribute the consolidation of the Ayeyarwady Valley communities in the twelfth century to the beginnings of the country’s modern history speaks to the widespread belief, heavily reinforced by the junta after it took power in 1962, that Myanmar is and always was a Bamar Buddhist country – that to be Bamar, and therefore a true son of the soil, means to be Buddhist, and that a threat to one was a threat to the other.
