The Ethnic Divide

Massacres and attempted annihilation are touchy issues. Ask a Turk about Armenia and he will be at your throat. Serbs will never accept what happened in Srebrenica. It is, therefore, not surprising that Bangladeshis do not want to talk about the "stranded Pakistanis" in their midst.

It all started during Partition when the Pakistani authorities asked Urdu-speaking Muslims from eastern Uttar Pradesh and Bihar working in the Railways and the Jute Corporation to settle in what was then East Pakistan. Several hundred thousands who had borne the brunt of the anti-Muslim riots in Bihar and UP the previous year decided to respond.

“My forefathers were from Barh near Patna,” says 50-year-old Furkan Ansari. “Dhaka is closer to Bihar than Karachi is, so we came here.” Others saw more opportunity in the less developed East Pakistan than in West Pakistan and settled in areas like Mirpur and Mohammadpur in Dhaka – a decision that they rue till now. Very soon, due to the zeal that is so common with refugees, they thrived in business, trade and government jobs.

Having no affinity with Bengali Muslims, they found the social, cultural and even political atmosphere of their new habitat quite different from that in the land they had left behind. Assimilation remained elusive and they soon became hapless victims of history.

During Bangladesh’s war of liberation in 1971, most Biharis opposed the idea. A section even aggressively propped up the armed operations of General Yahya Khan’s junta. Unfortunately for the community, Pakistan lost the war to the Mukti Bahini, which was actively armed and aided by India. The fate of the Biharis was sealed with the surrender of 90,000 Pakistani prisoners of war.

What happened next turned their world upside down. Violent reprisals were unleashed on the community. Very little emerged about their ordeal thanks to the newly-formed Bangladeshi administration and Indian officials who refused to let the story out as it “hampered the national interest”.

Although Jamil was only 12 years old when the violence first erupted, he still remembers the fateful evening of March 7, 1971, when armed Awami League members descended on his colony to "disarm" them. “My father protested but some of our own people alleged that my father was inviting death for all by not listening to the 'friendly League fellows'," remembers Jamil. That night, the killings started.

Some historians tend to say that Bengalis took revenge of Bihari's support to Pakistan but it should be kept in mind that the killings of Biharis started on March 7, 1971, eighteen days before the Pakistani army started its infamous crackdown.

Just as it is unintelligent to denounce the great German nation for the crimes of the Nazis, it would be imprudent to charge the Bengalis for the conduct of the Awami League. Many other blood-curdling tales of murder and mayhem were narrated as Jamil took me to other camps the day after. Similarly, there was no dearth of tales of acts of valour of Bengalis who sheltered and protected – at enormous peril to themselves – their fear-stricken Bihari friends and neighbours.

For 41 years now, these Biharis have been spread across Bangladesh in 66 fetid camps, each a thatched firetrap. They live as refugees, although theirs is a more atypical quandary. They did not leave their nation; their nation left them. In triumph, they would have been patriots. In rout, they were traitors.

The Bangladeshi regime issued a number of official promulgations in the shape of Presidential orders, which were in reality devices to disinherit the Biharis of their property, possessions and bank savings. For many months, those cooped up in these camps were not permitted to go out for anything, including employment, schooling or healthcare. Most live with no power, water or healthcare. Illiteracy, joblessness and undernourishment are widespread. But startlingly, there are no beggars.

Merely 15 per cent of the children residing in these camps have the opportunity to avail of basic education. Till the mid-90s, the lone school run in the Geneva camp used to receive a yearly allocation of school textbooks from the local education officer as elementary education had been made compulsory and free for all by the government. “Since 1996, they stopped giving these allocated material on the pretext that our school is not registered,” laments one of the teachers.

But that is just a vicious cycle. To obtain free textbooks, the school needs to be registered; and to do so, it has to furnish a deed of possession for the piece of land it is constructed on. And that cannot happen as Biharis cannot own that land.

But is Pakistan willing to accommodate them? Well, the answer is tricky. In 1973, under a tripartite accord between Bangladesh, India and Pakistan, the Pakistani regime received a total of 1, 26,941 persons. An extra 18,000 were repatriated in 1979, some 9,000 in 1982 and 325 in 1993. Then the procedure stopped dead. Today, the number of stranded Pakistanis in Bangladesh is around 3,00,000.

The reaction of politicos in Pakistan is shameful. The right wing parties – the champions of pan-Islamism – have little time and empathy for Biharis as they have too much else to fret about – Kashmir, Afghanistan and beyond. PPP is bound by political expediency as they dread upsetting Sindhis who believe that relocating Biharis will change the demography of Sindh. What they conveniently forget is that Pakistan adds more people to its population every month. Muttahida Quami Movement was the arch campaigner but appears to have now put the matter on the political back burner.

They once dreamt of Pakistan as the Promised Land. Now, many are unsure they would go even if they had the opportunity. Steeped in lethargy, ensnared in poverty, they have lost hope.

It is not for nothing that the younger generation is already talking about settling in Bangladesh. In fact, they now conclude that the stranded Pakistanis would be happier as naturalised Bangladeshis, particularly if they can secure a "package deal" with reimbursements for snatched property.

And the Bangladesh government has woken up to their cause though quite late. In 2003, a High Court in Bangladesh ruled in favour of ten petitioners declaring them Bangladeshi citizens and directed the Election Commission to enrol their names on the voters' list. The Supreme Court upheld the verdict and directed others to enrol as well. Quite a few complied and enrolled. Ironically, the first to beg for their votes were leaders from the Awami League and that too through posters, typed neatly in Urdu.