Syed Ali, a member of East Pakistan Rifles, revolted against Pakistan in 1971 and fought valiantly in the battle field of Sector-6. He was awarded the Bir Protik gallantry award after the independence of Bangladesh.
This man was an Urdu-speaking Muslim who migrated from Bihar of India in 1947. Unlike others of his community, he joined the liberation war of Bangladesh and fought with great courage. After the liberation war, when he returned to home, he came to know that his wife and children were killed, allegedly by some freedom fighters.
Most of the male members of the Urdu-speaking Muslim community in Bangladesh supported the idea of a united Pakistan and collaborated with the Pakistani Army, but the other side of the story says there were a few others who believed that the Pakistanis were doing an injustice to us and supported our movement.
When Bangladesh won its freedom, the Urdu-speaking Muslims were asked to leave Bangladesh for Pakistan. Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman offered to swap the Urdu-speakers of Bangladesh with the stranded Bengalis in Pakistan. Pakistan let the stranded Bengalis return, but refused to take back the Urdu-speaking Muslims of Bangladesh.
Eventually, the fate of Urdu-speaking Muslims was decided when Aziz Ahmed, the foreign secretary of Pakistan, asked Dr Kamal Hossain, also the foreign minister of Bangladesh, to either push them to India, to where they came from, or throw all of them into the Bay of Bengal.
The Urdu-speaking Muslims of Bangladesh, commonly known as Biharis, who migrated from India during the partition, were encompassed in some 50 refugee camps after the liberation war ended. According to ActionAid, there are 116 such refugee camps in Bangladesh till date.
They do not qualify under the United Nations definition of refugees, and for almost 37 years, Biharis were denied Bangladeshi citizenship. They have been denied education, employment, medical care, and other basic rights for decades.
Most of the Biharis had to leave their properties after the independence of Bangladesh. They could not buy property since then. The only thing they have is 64sqft rooms where 8-10 members of a family reside. Residents there are so confined that during the summer of 2006, five people died from the heat in the camps where the narrow lanes and small rooms make proper ventilation almost impossible.
The successive governments of Bangladesh since the independence refused to provide them with gas and other services. Though the camps in the capital get free electricity, the camps outside the capital hardly get that privilege. The water supply often becomes contaminated with sewerage and camp residents are left with no choice but to continue drinking it.
In these circumstances, 10 petitioners from the Geneva camp of Biharis filed a writ with the High Court of Bangladesh demanding citizenship that can assure their basic rights. On May 26, 2003, the High Court ruled in favour of the petitioners, declaring them Bangladeshi citizens.
On November 26, 2007, Stranded Pakistani Youth Rehabilitation Movement filed a similar writ petition seeking a HC order to recognise the Biharis living in 116 camps across the country as citizens of Bangladesh. On May 18, 2008, the HC ruled in favour of the Biharis and declared them as the citizens of Bangladesh. The Biharis, for the first time in the history of Bangladesh, were able to cast their vote in the ninth national parliamentary elections in 2008.
Despite the HC ruling, the Biharis of Bangladesh are believed by many as stranded Pakistanis. No precise step was taken to rehabilitate these people in our society. Moreover, many Bangladeshis still believe that a Bihari does not deserve the basic rights of a Bangladeshi citizen. Biharis, with their different culture, language, and inglorious past of collaborating with the Pakistani army of occupation during the liberation war, struggled to mingle with Bangladeshis after independence.
The recent developments in the Bihari camp in the capital and the brutality against them remind us of how vulnerable this community is.
We Bangladeshis, even our national leaders like Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, once fought for the partition of India. And when it happened, both Pakistan and India had to take responsibility for hundreds of thousands of refugees. After the direct action day proclaimed by Jinnah that resulted in a violent riot named “the week of long knives,” these Urdu-speaking Muslims had to leave their homeland for a safer destination – Pakistan.
Bangladesh, once a part of Pakistan, has to admit its historical responsibility of providing a safe future to the 300,000 Biharis by rehabilitating them in our society and making use of them in the workforce. We have assimilated the vested properties and all other lucrative outcomes of the partition, and used them to improve our economic condition. Now we have to look upon the other outcomes of the partition.
The chief minister of West Bengal, Mamata Banerjee, to develop the condition of Urdu-speaking Muslims in her state, passed the West Bengal Official Language (Amendment) Bill, 2012, which proposes that Urdu be used as an official language in districts, blocks, and sub-divisions where the Urdu-speaking population exceeds 10%. Even when BJP was out to drive the Bangladeshi migrants out of India, she batted in their favour. While on the other side of the Radcliff line, the authority is trying to utilise the migrant population, we are still in a dilemma.
Syed Ali was able to show his courage and liberate the country because his fellow Bengalis helped him by not suspecting him of being a double agent. We have to lend a hand to the Urdu-speaking Muslims of Bangladesh to come out of their filthy camps and work for a better and unified Bangladesh.
