The abandoned Pakistanis of 1971

While noting the jubilations over the renewal of direct flights between Pakistan and Bangladesh, and the opening of an expensive designer store in Dhaka, I could not escape the tragic story of some 324,000 people who have been punished for more than fifty-four years for loving Pakistan unconditionally. Their story has yet to gain the status of newsworthiness or a place on the agenda of the Foreign Office.

Over the last fifteen years, I have sought to unveil the deeper architecture of their abandonment: policy paralysis, diplomatic indifference, and a sustained ethical withdrawal by the state that once claimed them as its own. I insist: the Biharis were not collateral damage of 1971 alone. They became victims of what followed a long, deliberate silence.

In the aftermath of Pakistan's dismemberment, those who survived targeted violence of Indian trained Bengali Mukti Bahnis were confined to "camps" across Bangladesh, without citizenship, protection or durable solutions, and were rendered stateless overnight. While Bangladesh rebuilt itself and Pakistan reoriented its foreign policy, the Biharis were left suspended in time politically inconvenient, diplomatically expendable.

Between 1973 and 1974, the Delhi Agreement, a tripartite arrangement between Pakistan, India and Bangladesh, was framed as a humanitarian mechanism for the repatriation of prisoners of war and "stranded civilians". The results, however, revealed a stark asymmetry. Over 121,000 Bengalis returned to Bangladesh with dignity and assets intact, while only about 108,000 non-Bengalis were taken to Pakistan, leaving behind an estimated 300,000 people effectively written out of the process. This was not an accident of logistics. It was a political choice.

Dr Kamal Hossain, now 88, a Bangladeshi jurist and politician, best known for his memoir Bangladesh: Quest for Freedom and Justice (2013), records an exchange during the 1974 tripartite negotiations that captures the tenor of Pakistan's approach to the remaining stranded Urdu-speaking Pakistanis. On page 38 of the first edition, he notes that when Pakistan's foreign minister Aziz Ahmed was pressed on the repatriation of the Biharis, he retorted, "Why don't you push them into India?" When told this was not feasible, he added, "Then push them into the Bay of Bengal", observing that the Biharis had by then become a "domestic headache" for the Pakistani government. This account was documented by Bangladeshi legal scholar Umran Chowdhury in Parleys with Pakistan, published in Dhaka Tribune in March 2024. While I was able to confirm the citation with Chowdhury, I could not directly access Dr Hossain to independently verify whether Aziz Ahmed uttered these words verbatim.

Yet the larger point does not hinge on a single remark. What matters is the silence of the Pakistani state on the question of repatriation, a silence that followed despite the fact that these "abandoned Pakistanis of 1971" had sided with Pakistan, believing they were defending the unity of the state.

Anti-repatriation groups and lobbies in Pakistan (sadly including Urdu speakers and Biharis too), often citing biased demographic fears or claiming that the issue has already been "resolved", methodically or randomly omit a fundamental fact: repatriation after 1971 was governed by four narrowly defined criteria that facilitated the movement of some stranded populations but systematically excluded large segments of this community.

Eligibility was limited to permanent residents of West Pakistan; employees of the former central government and their immediate families; individuals whose families were divided between the two countries, usually restricted to spouses and minor children; and a limited quota for hardship cases deemed eligible by the ICRC and the Government of Pakistan. These criteria were rooted in a Western conception of the family, narrowly defining "divided families" as husband and wife, excluding parents, siblings and other close relatives. Similarly, the interpretation of "hardship" lacked clarity and transparency.

It should never be disregarded that when "Urdu speakers/Mohajirs" appear "numerous" in Karachi, the overwhelming majority are those who migrated in 1947, arrived before the fall of Pakistan in 1971, or later moved there from other parts of Pakistan. The persecuted individuals, including many who stood by the Pakistani army, were, for the most part, made examples of. For three generations, they have been decaying in cramped, four-by-four living quarters in fourteen cities across Bangladesh, their humiliating existence sustained only through the charity of NGOs or sympathetic individuals, or through poorly paid menial labour. The question remains: who is there to hear their plea?

In an online conversation with Hasan Mohammad in 2024, for Kafe Kaam, I documented the story of this former "Geneva camp detainee" in Dhaka, now pursuing postgraduate studies abroad. His story is not exceptional; it is instructive. He mentioned that his encounters with the Pakistani High Commission were marked by indifference and arrogance rather than empathy or engagement. That arrogance, I believe, is not personal; it is institutional. It flows from a foreign policy culture that treats the Bihari question as "closed history" rather than an open moral archive.

As an advocate of peace and reconciliation with truth I am all for a viable and sincere friendship between Bangladesh and Pakistan. Yet, I repeat: no reset can be credible if it excludes the very people whose fate embodies the unanswered destruction of 1971. This is where leadership matters. Pakistan's current Foreign Secretary, Her Excellency Amna Baloch, can make her tenure a rare opportunity to move beyond inherited silences. The ask is neither radical nor unprecedented: acknowledge the stranded Biharis as a legitimate humanitarian and historical concern; include their representatives in bilateral conversations; and replace the posture of denial with one of responsibility.

This does not require reopening old hostilities. Nations do not demolish only through defeat; they shatter when they sideline and shun their people. The question before us is no longer what Pakistan lost in 1971. It is whom Pakistan chose and continues to leave behind.

The Foreign Office can do wonders by taking ownership of these citizens, something even our academics, journalists, poets, writers, humanists and feminists have so far failed to acknowledge.