The real casualty of the 10-month East Pakistani resistance that climaxed in Bangladesh in 1971 was not the West Pakistanis who lost a jute-laden East, which had filled most of their coffers. Nor was it the minority Bengali Hindus who fled to neighboring India during the bloody crackdown. It was the members of the Bihari community.
They had sided with the West Pakistani military to tamp down the liberation movement.
Having left the Indian state of Bihar for neighboring East Pakistan during partition in 1947, the Urdu-speaking Bihari Muslims were linguistically similar to the West Pakistanis. Active votaries for a separate homeland for Muslims in the Indian subcontinent, they had much at stake in preserving a united Pakistan.
Having nothing in common with the Bengali Muslims in East Pakistan, except Islam, they detested their demand for a separate Bengali homeland in the name of preserving the Bengali language and avoiding economic exploitation by the far-off West. Staffing most of the bureaucracy and corporate offices, Biharis formed the upper and middle class of East Pakistani society. Bengali Muslims of the East, mostly semi-literate peasants and fishermen in 1947, were slowly going to universities, attempting to rise up the social ladder and fill some of the space left over by the exodus of many Hindus during partition.
Still, a fairly large minority population of Bengali Hindus, having everything in common with their Muslim counterparts except Islam, remained.
Bengalis were denied equal economic and social acceptance by the West Pakistanis, who not only dominated politics and governance, but also imposed Urdu as a national language.
Outnumbering the West in population, East Pakistani Bengalis had already had enough by 1971. The Awami League party was not allowed to form the government despite their numbers and the military clamped down brutally instead when they decided to fight for liberation. The initial burst of anger was vented on unarmed Bihari civilians -- a minor genocide eclipsed under the media glare on the larger genocide by the West Pakistani armed forces.
After Bangladesh was born, Pakistan took back a fraction of the Bihari population. Most were left stranded, stateless, pining for the never- never land of Pakistan. From middle class, they slipped down to being downtrodden, living in uninhabitable camps, their future in limbo.
Now numbering nearly 300,000, they are still stateless, stranded. A lucky few who married Bengali women somehow 'bought' acceptance in a linguistically racial society.
Camp-dwellers eke out a living as rickshaw-pullers after paying most of their daily earnings to Bangladeshi owners or do backbreaking lacework and embroidery in subhuman conditions for a pittance on saris meant for Dhaka's slick boutiques.
Successive Pakistani governments evaded the issue of repatriation. Karachi was already an ethnic cauldron and 'mohajirs,' or Muslim refugees from the Indian subcontinent, had ignited passion and fury among the locals of mainland Pakistan.
Biharis, with nowhere to go, live an unwanted existence in Bangladesh.
Collaboration with Pakistanis in exterminating the Bengalis had failed to cut through logic in the last 37 years. Anti-national Bengalis back from exile after Bangladesh's founder Prime Minister Sheikh Mujib's assassination in 1975, later held prominent government and political positions.
Apart from Mujib's daughter Hasina and the Awami League party, no political party or dictator – neither Khaleda Zia's Bangladesh National Party nor Gen. H.M. Ershad's Jatiyo Party -- was against anti-liberation Bengalis who also helped West Pakistani soldiers hunt and kill civilians in 1971. The BNP and JP actively courted and legitimized them for their political survival, even though they did not slap citizenship on Biharis and include them in the mainstream.
Although the present caretaker government, remote-controlled by the army chief -- a liberation warrior himself -- had toyed with the idea of granting citizenship to Biharis willing to forget Pakistan and settle in Bangladesh, doubts remain about the possibility. Most of them, well into their second and third generations, born and raised in Bangladesh, may jettison remnants of their weak emotional links to the "promised land"-- where in all likelihood they will never be able to go -- if justice is delivered in the form of citizenship.
After all, why not?
True to U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger's prophecy -- he and President Richard Nixon supported the Pakistani general -- Bangladesh was a "basket case" just after 1971 and a center for Islamic fundamentalism much later. But while Bangladeshi Hindus have always found sanctuary in West Bengal and other parts of India, Bihari Muslims still remain perennially in transit as basic human rights continue to elude them. And 36 years is long enough for old wounds to heal.
They had sided with the West Pakistani military to tamp down the liberation movement.
Having left the Indian state of Bihar for neighboring East Pakistan during partition in 1947, the Urdu-speaking Bihari Muslims were linguistically similar to the West Pakistanis. Active votaries for a separate homeland for Muslims in the Indian subcontinent, they had much at stake in preserving a united Pakistan.
Having nothing in common with the Bengali Muslims in East Pakistan, except Islam, they detested their demand for a separate Bengali homeland in the name of preserving the Bengali language and avoiding economic exploitation by the far-off West. Staffing most of the bureaucracy and corporate offices, Biharis formed the upper and middle class of East Pakistani society. Bengali Muslims of the East, mostly semi-literate peasants and fishermen in 1947, were slowly going to universities, attempting to rise up the social ladder and fill some of the space left over by the exodus of many Hindus during partition.
Still, a fairly large minority population of Bengali Hindus, having everything in common with their Muslim counterparts except Islam, remained.
Bengalis were denied equal economic and social acceptance by the West Pakistanis, who not only dominated politics and governance, but also imposed Urdu as a national language.
Outnumbering the West in population, East Pakistani Bengalis had already had enough by 1971. The Awami League party was not allowed to form the government despite their numbers and the military clamped down brutally instead when they decided to fight for liberation. The initial burst of anger was vented on unarmed Bihari civilians -- a minor genocide eclipsed under the media glare on the larger genocide by the West Pakistani armed forces.
After Bangladesh was born, Pakistan took back a fraction of the Bihari population. Most were left stranded, stateless, pining for the never- never land of Pakistan. From middle class, they slipped down to being downtrodden, living in uninhabitable camps, their future in limbo.
Now numbering nearly 300,000, they are still stateless, stranded. A lucky few who married Bengali women somehow 'bought' acceptance in a linguistically racial society.
Camp-dwellers eke out a living as rickshaw-pullers after paying most of their daily earnings to Bangladeshi owners or do backbreaking lacework and embroidery in subhuman conditions for a pittance on saris meant for Dhaka's slick boutiques.
Successive Pakistani governments evaded the issue of repatriation. Karachi was already an ethnic cauldron and 'mohajirs,' or Muslim refugees from the Indian subcontinent, had ignited passion and fury among the locals of mainland Pakistan.
Biharis, with nowhere to go, live an unwanted existence in Bangladesh.
Collaboration with Pakistanis in exterminating the Bengalis had failed to cut through logic in the last 37 years. Anti-national Bengalis back from exile after Bangladesh's founder Prime Minister Sheikh Mujib's assassination in 1975, later held prominent government and political positions.
Apart from Mujib's daughter Hasina and the Awami League party, no political party or dictator – neither Khaleda Zia's Bangladesh National Party nor Gen. H.M. Ershad's Jatiyo Party -- was against anti-liberation Bengalis who also helped West Pakistani soldiers hunt and kill civilians in 1971. The BNP and JP actively courted and legitimized them for their political survival, even though they did not slap citizenship on Biharis and include them in the mainstream.
Although the present caretaker government, remote-controlled by the army chief -- a liberation warrior himself -- had toyed with the idea of granting citizenship to Biharis willing to forget Pakistan and settle in Bangladesh, doubts remain about the possibility. Most of them, well into their second and third generations, born and raised in Bangladesh, may jettison remnants of their weak emotional links to the "promised land"-- where in all likelihood they will never be able to go -- if justice is delivered in the form of citizenship.
After all, why not?
True to U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger's prophecy -- he and President Richard Nixon supported the Pakistani general -- Bangladesh was a "basket case" just after 1971 and a center for Islamic fundamentalism much later. But while Bangladeshi Hindus have always found sanctuary in West Bengal and other parts of India, Bihari Muslims still remain perennially in transit as basic human rights continue to elude them. And 36 years is long enough for old wounds to heal.
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