‘No other community has suffered so much as the Biharis.’

Was the break-up of Pakistan a well-planned event on the part of Indira Gandhi?
If you visit the liberation war museum in Dhaka or if you read the testimonies of the Awami League leadership at the time, they claim to have been working on separation since the early 1960s. The facts of the Agartala Conspiracy are well-documented. India had been fuelling the separatist movement in East Pakistan for years and their efforts bore fruit, thanks also to the short-sightedness and poor judgement of the Pakistani leadership at the time.

Why were the people of East Pakistan treated as second-class citizens, resulting in their alienation from the state?
There was no plan or malice to treat the East Pakistanis poorly. Don’t forget there were four PMs from East Pakistan from 1951 to 1971. A lot had to do with lack of vision on the part of successive leaderships and some historic factors:

Firstly, I would say a major mistake was to declare Urdu as the national language at the outset (corrected after 5 years). Secondly, the ICS officers who opted for East Pakistan in 1947/48 were all Urdu-speaking - except for one. Thirdly, there was no industrial base in East Pakistan at the time of independence. This was gradually built by non-Bengali investors who arrived from places like Calcutta, Rangoon and other parts of the subcontinent. The management and workers in these factories and jute mills were largely Urdu-speaking immigrants.

Similarly, the East Pakistan railways was manned largely by Urdu-speaking immigrants. With time, these disparities were being reduced and a new Bengali workforce was emerging, but evidently not fast enough.

Did the emergence of Bangladesh as an independent nation prove the ‘Two Nation Theory’ wrong?
I used to believe that too; but it is not entirely so. We need to acknowledge that the political emancipation of the Bengali Muslims (i.e. their own two-nation concept) gave birth to the Muslim League, the movement that created Pakistan. They favoured the decision by the British to create a separate state of East Bengal from West Bengal in 1905 to free them of the economic domination of the Hindus. The separate province was rescinded by the British under pressure from the Hindus in 1911. But the Muslims of East Bengal had been awakened and continued their movement for self determination.

What about the people who migrated from the newly-liberated areas of Pakistan to India?
I met a Hindu academic whose family had migrated to the Indian state of Tripura and some to Assam from the areas that became East Pakistan. It was interesting to hear how language and culture presented the same kind of challenges to them as it did to many Urdu speakers in East Pakistan. I suppose, such challenges should be expected and handled with care by both the immigrant as well as the host communities.

No serious and planned efforts were made in Pakistan to debunk the false narrative propagated by Bangladesh and India about the 1971 events. Please comment.

It seems Pakistan has been on the defensive ever since the 1971 debacle. The exit of foreign journalists in 1971 and strict local press censorship meant the world, including Pakistanis were being fed only the narratives of India and later Bangladesh.

An unforeseen consequence of removal of international media was that the large-scale massacre of the Urdu-speaking people went completely unreported. After the army action the world press focussed exclusively on the excesses of the Pakistan Army. Then, after December 1971, the mass graves of the Urdu-speaking people were dug up and displayed on world TV screens as massacre of Bengalis by the Pakistan Army. The dead could not speak and no one was left to refute the propaganda. This happened in the district where I lived and in many other locations where I know that thousands of Urdu-speaking people were massacred by Bengali nationalists.

Do you think Pakistan has lost its way in search of a direction as a nation?
It is almost a verdict question. I would say all Pakistanis (not just the government) need to do some soul-searching. We need to collectively find a way to bring back the vision of our founding fathers and stop the slide to hopelessness that we see, especially among our youth.

What is the future of those Pakistanis stranded in Bangladesh, and what about the Bengalis living in Pakistan?
I believe both Pakistan and Bangladesh need to see this as a humanitarian issue and not treat these people as pawns in a game of one-upmanship.

No other community has suffered as much as the Biharis in the aftermath of the Partition of both 1947 and 1971. Even after 50 years of the 1971 break-up, they are disowned by both Pakistan and Bangladesh. Bear in mind that nearly 85% of the camp dwellers in Bangladesh today were born after 1971. These people need to live with dignity and participate in economic activities the same way as others.

The Bengalis living in Pakistan also face many similar issues which need to be resolved. On both sides, we have real human beings, not nameless statistics. They need to be given the choice to reunite with their families, in case of divided families. They must be granted basic human rights so they can bring prosperity to themselves and the countries they chose to live in. Remember, a well-established historic fact is that the immigrant communities anywhere work harder and bring prosperity to themselves and the country where they live.

While the political atmosphere in Pakistan is always ripe with the ‘maqami’ and ‘ghair maqami’ debate, what does the future hold for the Mohajirs in the country?
The politicians routinely exploit the ethnic card without regard to the damage it does to the Mohajir nationhood. It is no surprise, even after 75 years of independence, we remain a divided people. I do not know what will change this. Perhaps more education, equal opportunity for all, fair allocation of resources and creation of administrative units that is not based on ethnic labels alone.

Do you see any similarity between the last days of East Pakistan and today’s Pakistan?
Personally, I do not see many similarities. While we have witnessed some insurgency in one province, we do not see populist nationalist agendas taking hold. Also, unlike the Eastern half, today’s Pakistan is a geographically contiguous unit. Territorial integrity makes a repeat of military defeat such as 1971, less likely.