M.P. Bhandara
(Editor’s Note: This is the second in our series of lessons to be learnt from the events of 1971. This particular piece was written by the late M.P. Bhandara, then member of the Pakistan parliament, for Dawn in 2005. The intensity of the sentiment on stranded Pakistanis remains equally valid today.)
There is a blot of shame on the fair name of Pakistan. And each one of us, who has the means and the power to do something about it but chooses to be silent, bears the burden of this guilt.
The story is familiar enough. On December 16, 1971, the Pakistan created by the Quaid-i-Azam, was lost. A sizable population who had migrated from Bihar to East Pakistan at the time of partition were declared non-citizens by the new Bangladesh government. Being culturally and linguistically different, they had not fully integrated with the people of East Pakistan.
During the civil war in East Pakistan between March and December 1971, they readily opted to defend a united Pakistan. The army used (and abused) them as human shields for the more dangerous operations.
For this crime, they have never been forgiven by the people of Bangladesh. After the war, they were herded into unsanitary ghettos on a virtually prison diet. They were branded as “traitors”, and this mark of infamy remains on their children and even their children’s children to this day.
These “traitors” are now considered as “pariahs” by Pakistan that has stopped owning them for the reason that, on migration here, they are likely to settle in Sindh and join the ethnic political ranks of New Sindhis. The estimate of those now eligible for repatriation is said to be between 100,000 and 150,000.
How cynical can we get as a nation? We can tolerate the presence of a million plus illegals from Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Burma and Afghanistan in Karachi but we shut the door tight on our “own” citizens.
We don’t recognize them as ours on the specious plea that they had migrated to East Pakistan. The logical tailpiece of this reasoning is that our eastern province was never considered part of the nation.
We accepted four million Afghan refugees in the 1980s and beat our breast in the name of Islamic solidarity. The truth is there was little solidarity but a case of push come to shove on a porous border.
Pakistan’s selective Islamic solidarity extends to Palestinians and Kashmiris, but not to Kurds in Iraq (when they were gassed) or the Sudanese in Darfur (currently in the throes of a genocide) and above all, to our own stranded “citizens” who made the mistake of their lives by siding with the Pakistan army and not the Mukti Bahini during the 1971 civil war, which is now commonly referred to as war of the Bangladesh liberation.
We choose to look the other way. This ugly blip is longer on our political radar screen. Islamic solidarity has suddenly vanished. Our rejection of these people exposes a visible crack in the mirror of Pakistan.
It calls into question the two-nation theory. Let us be honest and say that this theory was a means to an end and not an end in itself. The theory apparently died long ago when Pakistan was transformed “from a homeland for the Indian Muslims” to a theocratic Islamic state.
In any case, mass migration in the subcontinent is no longer possible and in the context of over 125 million Muslims in India, the two-nation theory does not seem to be operative for the time being.
This dichotomy on what Pakistan is or is not is the root cause of our carefully developed hypocrisy, double standards and sectarian violence. We have moved from one concept to another but find ourselves in limbo.
No wonder, the better part of our educated youth is alienated. The Quaid’s concept of Pakistan was a liberal, humanizing, outward-reaching modern state, which was a homeland for those Muslims of the subcontinent who chose to migrate at the time of partition.
The Quaid gave us the right direction, but instead, we have entered a black hole of pseudo-religiosity and are struggling to get out of it. Our amnesia on the stranded Pakistani issue calls into question our singular devotion to the Kashmir cause.
How is a suffering Kashmiri any different from a ghettoed Pakistani in Bangladesh? Both are Muslim. Does this not smack of hypocrisy and double standards? The former is regarded as a mazloom, the latter a “pariah”.
It must be heartrending to hear these “pariahs” sing the Pakistani national anthem and see them hoist our flag in the ghettos of Bangladesh on our national days.
The Rabita Trust Fund founded in 1988 succeeded in repatriating a few hundred families. It was frozen in 2001 and the process has since stopped. It is a shame that we must invite outside money to bring home our own citizens.
Have we lost all honour? We seem to have plenty of funds for all types of grandiose projects under the sun but cannot allocate a couple of hundred million rupees each year to recommence the process.
The government should meet the costs of improving the living condition in camps in Bangladesh, open schools and vocational centers and take immediate steps to repatriate 200 to 300 families annually and settle them in the Punjab. Where integration is possible in Bangladesh this should be encouraged by fiscal and other means.
Our parliament has a Kashmir committee on which millions are spent on members romping the globe to highlight the Kashmir cause with marginal results; the National Assembly can spend time to discuss the shortage of Sui gas in some remote town, it can spend hours to discuss the infringement of minor privileges of members, but it has never found the time to discuss the issue of stranded Pakistanis in Bangladesh.
Not being true to ourselves shames all of us.
Late Honorable M.P Bhandara, a Parsi gentleman is no more with us, May the Lord God rest his soul in peace and raise his stations in Ahura Mazda’s heavens. He was truly a legend and it was a his legacy to always feel and rise up to raise whatever problems were confronting our country.
Isnt it a bit shameful that a non-Muslim coutryman of ours felt the shame and suffering of Biharis?.
The blot of shame for ignoring our Bihari brethren by the suucessive Govts of Pakistan is bigger than the masaccre of our Bengalis brethren by the Pakistan army.
Most Biharis were in East Pakistan on the call of Qaid to man the jobs vacated by the migrating Hindus to West Bengal. Biharis who were die hard Pakistanese paid either with their lives during the war with India or after the establishment of Bangladesh and rot in camps under inhuman conditions. It is heartning that Bangladesh govt now granted them citizenship.
But the question arises why successive govts did not rise up to their duties to absorb the Biharis in mainsteam Pakistan of today?.
Credit goes to Nawaz Sharif to accept some of the stranded Pakistanese and settle them in Punjab, the bulk of 300,000 were left to their fate of living a most miserable lives in make-shift camps and regarded as pariah by Bengalis.
I have heared it with many sources that Saudi Arabia did agree to accept all 300,000 of them and provide funds for their repartiation to the Holy Land during Z.A.Bhutto’s rule, but instead all ethnic Sindhis were sent in place of Biharis.
I was a resident of Jeddah during that period and saw lots of Sindhis groups arriving there, and most were so shabbily dressed that it was a shame for Pakistan. Male head of family would be wearing a dirty long shirt on a ” themad”, and barefooted, his wife too shabbily dressed, and a small child bareffoted and only wearng a long shirt.
What a shameful act to deprive the rightful Biharis to settle and earn a decent living in Holy Land.
Arrival of those destitute and unskilled Sindhis was the reason most Pakistanese in Saudi Arabia, although some holding very high ranking positions started to be regardede as low persons and called ‘ rafiqees”, a endearment by the Saudis for their negros slaves.
There surely is something wrong with the way things are done in Pakistan. We could tolerate more than 4 million ghadar afghanese and still keep them here and could not allow bonafide and true Pakistani Bihari brethren, which were only fraction and fraction of the number of Afghanese we still hold to our bossoms.
Shame on us and on the way our establishment thinks and works in Pakistan.
Arvind,
Please read up a little bit more about the issue before jumping to criticize. For instance, read this pretty fair assessment of the citizenship status of Biharis in Bangladesh, written by an official of the UNHCR.
http://rsq.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/reprint/25/3/54. pdf
There has been significant discrimination against Biharis in Bangladesh over the years, more so by the Government than by ordinary citizens . There is no doubt about it. However, it is also true that Biharis have over the years repeatedly been offered Bangladeshi citizenship. Over the years, the opposition to such offers has considerably reduced (as has the number of stateless Biharis), but the fact remains that a significant number of people refuse such offers. They continue to insist on repatriation to Pakistan. The reasons for this are varied and it requires a full article by itself to go into them.
As to people choosing to live in squalid camps, let me just say this much – if the Government in any city of South Asia offers a free house (the camps consist of built up homes, not hutments) and free rations, there would be enough takers for it, howsoever squalid the conditions in those places are. People in the camps live of their own free will – any Bihari who wishes to leave is free to do so and settle anywhere in Bangladesh. There are no restrictions both legally and in practice. There is zero comparison of the Biharis’ situation with that of Palestinians in Gaza/West Bank.
The Bangladeshi courts have consistently ruled in favor of the grant of citizenship to all Biharis. Implementation might not keep up with judicial pronouncements, but that is a common bane across South Asia. The point I was making is that even their legal status as Pakistani citizens does not exist, despite their having been Pakistani citizens until 1971 and their continued allegiance to Pakistan.
There is no attempt to blame the victim on my part. I was merely pointing to the fact that it is inaccurate to say that they are stateless because they were deprived of Bangladeshi citizenship after 1971. They were offered Bangladeshi citizenship. More than half the original number took up the offer. Others did not. Even now, pretty much any Bihari could take up Bangladeshi citizenship and/or move out of the camps. Those are just the facts.
@Sridhar:
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Thus, only those who chose to not accept Bangladeshi citizenship and chose not to assimilate into that society remain stateless today.
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Eternal politics of blaming the victim themselves. They themselves want to live in the ghetto( same way palestinians want to live in Gaza/West bank). Please…. give me a break.
I agree that Biharis backed the wrong horse during Independence of Bangladesh. And it was tragic for them.
But, to say that after 24 years, they want to live a ghettoized life is a stretch.
The article is inaccurate in its portrayal of the problem. There is no question that the Biharis were not seen as welcome members of the newly liberated country of Bangladesh. This had some history. The Biharis actively opposed the language movement and many of them were also involved in the Razakar and Al Shams groups that went around murdering and intimidating the Bengalis during 1971. That said, the vast majority of Biharis were only focused on living their lives and did no harm to any Bengali. The treatment of Biharis and the stereotyping of an entire ethnic group by the newly independent country was a shameful part of its history.
The part that I disagree with is the author’s contention that the Biharis were dispossessed of their citizenship by Bangladesh. In 1972, Bangladesh offered citizenship to all Biharis in the country. More than half accepted and assimilated into Bangladeshi society. The rest rejected Bangladeshi citizenship and opted to emigrate to Pakistan instead. Afterwards, many of the Biharis, losing all hope of ever migrating to Pakistan, have accepted Bangladeshi citizenship and have become a part of that society. Also, the Bangladeshi courts have given automatic citizenship to all Biharis born after 1971 and those who were minors in 1971. This has given Bangladeshi citizenship to more than half the remaining Biharis at the time. Thus, only those who chose to not accept Bangladeshi citizenship and chose not to assimilate into that society remain stateless today.
Given these facts, it seems bizarre that Pakistan would not want them to come and settle in Pakistan. These are the most loyal of citizens – those who chose to remain in camps rather than accept Bangladeshi citizens even after 38 years. The only plausible explanation, it appears, for the continued apathy of the Government and people in Pakistan to their plight, especially given the relative ease of settling them in Pakistan, seems to be the very same feelings of ethnic superiority that resulted in the discrimination against Bengalis in the first 24 years of the country’s history.
good article. nothing will happened though