Refugees, Citizens, or Stateless? A Study of the Stranded Pakistanis of Bangladesh

Abstract

The Stranded Pakistanis are the Urdu-speaking Muslim community whose migration gave rise to one of the most persistent crises in South Asia in the aftermath of partition. Willem van Schendel and Md. Mahbubar Rahman placed this community in the fourth place of importance while classifying refugees who migrated from West to East Bengal after partition. Though they are called ‘Biharis,’ these migrants migrated from Uttar Pradesh and Delhi along with Bihar either during the 1946 riots or after 1947. However, the growing linguistic nationalism in East Pakistan and the consequent Liberation War made this community an ‘other’ in their own land. After the creation of Bangladesh in 1971, this community was excluded from the new nation because of the language they spoke. This paper offers a study of the trajectory of identities that this community has been thrust upon, from “Muhajirs” to “Rajakars” (wartime collaborators), “Dalaals” or Stranded Pakistanis, and finally citizens without any rights. The paper portrays how these identities shape their social, political, and economic situation in present-day Bangladesh by employing Giorgio Agamben’s concept of ‘bare life,’ Rajarshi Dasgupta's concept of ‘camouflage,’ and Ranabir Samaddar's ideas on who is a citizen and an alien. In an interview with BBC Bangla , one of the residents of the Geneva Camp called their community Juban ke Shikar (‘victims of speech’). The paper will investigate how their speech has made these migrants into stateless victims of partition and the liberation war.