Bihari Refugees

I remember very well whatever happened during the decade of 70s. Whosoever was at fault politically is a fact no one can deny, but the history lesson given in the chowk is one-sided to say the least. I wish one of the so-called Bihari had access to this forum and could shed the light on what happened to them at hand of Mukti Bahamni before the ``murderer`` Pak Fauj had to do what they did to stop what was going on. There are always two sides of every story. What the army had to suffer no body talks. Calling a spade a spade is not a very accurate lesson of history.

RE: Hi Moe, good to see your name across the display here in my warm and cosy study.

I was out raged to see that our people (notice: I refrain using the term ``nation``) have not learnt from history and keep on saying and doing the same things. I was a bit taken aback to see my reply to Abidi sahib posted on the main chowk. There are already some people posting responses there. I hope others will step forward and speak out without fear. Inconvenient truths seem to be too uncomfortable for public harmony.

Thank you for the support.

RE: SOHAIL RABBANI

Thanks, once again, for a much needed history lesson!!

RE: SCEPTIC

Thanks for the support.

It`s interesting that almost every ethnic group in Pakistan, at one time or another, has been labelled ``traitors`` by those in power and some subjected to military operations. Makes one wonder who the real traitors are.

Dr. Rabbani, your cyber soulmate Moe here. Thanks for taking the time to educate us all.
Your article belongs on the Main Page of Chowk so that everyone gets an opportunity to
read it. I, for one, appreciated your brief history of Pakistani civil war very much. BTW, I love your writing style!

RE: Sajjad Haider Abidi sahib

You may claim that I am taking your words out of context, but I must reprimand you for a grave transgression that you have (even if inadvertently) committed.

You wrote: “...they have been loyal with Pakistan and fought with traitors and enemies shoulder to shoulder with our army. ...”

“...fought with traitors...”!!! What traitors??? If there were any traitors in the whole 1971 tragedy, they were the ones wearing khaki uniforms.

I suspect that you may be too young to have been around then, and therefore understandably naive, because your generation was never told the truth. But if you are from my generation or older, then you have a case of severe amnesia. Allow me to refresh your memory.

Once upon a time there was East Pakistan and West Pakistan, but it was supposed to be one country because its basis of cretion was not ethnicity but religion...yeah, right !

The population of East Pakistan was 53% and West Pakistan was 47%. Naturally, the total number of seats in Parliament were divided up proportionately and East Pakistan had more seats than all of West Pakistan. When the 1970 elections results came in, Sheikh Mujib ur-Rehman’s Awami League had won every seat in the National Assembly from the East except TWO. Maulana Bhashani, and Nur ul-Amin were the ONLY two who got elected and were not of the Awami League. (Maulana Bhashani, decided to stay in Bengal. Nur ul-Amin sided with the military government.)

The math worked out such that Mujib ur-Rehman had a total majority in the National Assembly and therefore did not need any coalition partners to form the government.

No one had anticipated such a landslide. No body thought he would win an overall majority because his party did not field any candidates in West Pakistan. Abdul Vali Khan (Ghaffar Khan’s son) was his nominal ally in the West and had no candidates in the East. Any way, when the results came in the Islamabad establishment started having nightmares about dark, short, filthy, ugly, fish-and-rice eaters from Bengal becoming their bosses. Of course, they were going to destroy “our” Pakistan. Weren’t they Hindu sympathizers any way? Had they not said that they will institute Bengali language (which is a language of kafirs because it is written like hindi) in their schools and Urdu was going to be abolished? And was it not Hazrat Quaid-i-Azam Rehmat-ullah-Elah’s command that Urdu was sacred to Pakistan. How dare that filthy upstart “traitor” think he was going to be our Prime Minister? How dare he aspire to occupy the office once inhabited by our beloved Shaheed-i-Millat. etc., etc.

After the election results were confirmed and a week passed there were calls for convening the National Assembly session so that the new parliament could be sworn in and the government formed. There was, in the mean time, a flurry of activity in the Rawalpindi GHQ at the end of which the military dictator of Pakistan, general Agah Mohammed Yahya Khan changed the rules of the game. He said that the Assembly will be called into session within 90 days, and then it will first have to form a new constitution within 90 days (or was it 120 days, I don’t remember), and only AFTER that will a date be fixed for the transfer of power to the new government. If the Assembly failed to pass a new constitution (i.e., with 66% votes), then it will be dissolved. In the mean time, he decreed, martial law will rule supreme.

Understandably, Sheikh Mujib ur-Rehman was furious and declared Yahya Khan a usurper and announced that he will call the parliament into session any way. He said that the new National Assembly will hold its first session in Decca and proceeded to invite all the elected Assembly members from Punjab, Sindh, NWFP and Balouchistan to come and attend the Assembly and defy the illegal military government. Thus began the crisis.

Zulfikar Ali Bhutto who should have been leader of the opposition in the united Assembly, could be the majority leader Iand thus PM) if the Bengalis were not counted. He conveniently sided with the military and declared that he will “break the legs” of any MNA who goes to Decca. Yahya Khan declared the proposed session to be held in Decca as illegal and threatened to disqualify all those who attended it.

To cut the long story short, Yahya Khan hurriedly started transferring troops to Bengal and began preparation for a crackdown while engaging Mujib in negotiations to delay the crisis. Zulfikar Ali Bhutto was a party to the negotiations.

Yahya then declared that, “...the man (Mujib ur-Rehman) and his followers are TRAITORS and ENEMIES of Pakistan...,” (I heard that speech, those fateful words still reverberate in my ears) and disqualified the legitimate representatives of the majority of the country’s populations. Thus a new historical precedent was established where 53% of the population were denounced as “traitors”.

Those were the traitors you were referring to. They were the majority of the population of the country that once upon a time existed.

Mujib ur-Rehman was arrested and put in Multan jail. We were told that he had been a long standing Indian agent who was previously involved in the Agarthala conspiracy. (Agarthala, by the way, was another cruel joke but that was played by another general who promoted himself, like Idi Amin Dada did, to the exalted rank of Field Marshal.)

General Yahya called the rump parliament into session and staged a travesty which made Pakistan the laughing stalk of the world. Nur ul-Amin, who was the only Bengali MNA and represented a party that won only one seat in the National Assembly, was made Prime Minister. The poor fossil was a thousand years old, could hardly stand up unaided, it was just pathetic. The sorry bugger was so frail that he often used to pee in his pants. Zulfikar Ali Bhutto was made Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister and we were told that all is well. Then the Pak Fauj proceeded to kill thousands of its own citizens. The civil war began.

Pak Fauj, with its brutal intelligence apprartus systematically murdered doctors, lawyers, professors, journalists, students and intellectuals who were deemed to be enemy sympathizers and traitors. Those were the “traitors” you were referring to, Abidi sahib.

Many of our Pak Faujis, raped, pillaged and wantonly slaughtered civilians, only because they were, on average, darker and shorter, ate fish-and-rice instead of dal roti, and spoke Bengali, not Urdu. That, my dear Abidi sahib, is what made them “traitors”.

Hundreds of thousands of Bengalis fled for their lives and crossed the border over to Hindustan. India saw a perfect opportunity and got involved and Pak Fauj got the dog-crap beat out of it and ignominiously surrendered en mass on December 16, 1971.

Yahya Khan was deposed by Lt. Gen. Gul Hassan, and Air Marshall Rahim Khan, who summoned Bhutto and, on December 20th, hurriedly made him President and chief-martial-law administrator after the war ended in the West. Bhutto continued the travesty by appointing the semi-comatosed Nur ul-Amin his Vice President. Mujib languished in jail for months longer.



PS:
If you want more of these rantings on this subject, I have another article in the Civic Center of the Chowk, it is titled “Old Pakistan Is Dead, Long Live New Pakistan.”

If the Biharis want to be in Pakistan, especially because they were on ``our side`` in the 1971 massacre, then it is ``our responsibility`` to allow them into Paksitan. Even though, it was a massacre perpetrated by the Pakistani army, not the people, we as Pakistanis bear the moral responsibility for both the traumatized and dead Bangladeshis and the abandoned Biharis.

However, is there any validity to the threat Sindhis feel to their political power by the rehabilitation of Biharis? I am not too familiar with either sides of the argument, so I may be completely off the mark: I just want to know if there are plans to settle Biharis in Punjab or NWFP or Balochistan? or just in Sindh?

Very interesting.

There is little doubt that Biharis have not been permitted to enter Pakistan because of the ``presumed`` economic/political threat to the existing, original inhabitants. Syed Ahmed, raises a fine point: on the one hand we have morality and on the other we have economic sense.

Reminds me of a true story I heard [not entirely accurate because it has been many years]: A nobel laureate in economics considered slavery as an acceptable norm. Upon being questioned on this controversial issue his response was simple - dont confuse morality with economics. From a purely economic standpoint, cheap bonded labor makes eminent economic sense. The reason that it is wrong is a moral one.

Basically, his point is that if you dont apply the morality constraint on economics then there are numerous things that become possible. For instance, recycling dead bodies, killing old people before they become an economic drain, eliminating the physically disabled, etc. etc. Now, would we do all of them? Or should we argue that some are less repugnant therefore they should be done?

I feel that the issue of Biharis has been politically guided. People with little wealth usually have big hearts. To me this is a humanitarian issue. It is irrelevant that the Biharis should be accepted because they fought against traitors or against the enemy or whatever, it is relevant that they want to come to Pakistan and it is important that Pakistan should not be facist and racist in the making of this decision.

My earlier comments had little to do with
emotionalism. They were provocative, yes, emotional no. I claim no ethnic or other affiliation with them. Nations are built on fundamental principles of equity. NO citizen can be denied the right to reside in own country based on economic criteria ( it is even unconsitutional :-)). Otherwise most socities would have
genocidal policies, against the improvished, the weak, the disabled and the aged.
Pakistani`s tend to confuse fundamental principles with economic realities.
As a consequence we justify all illegal acts on some reason` etre ( economics seems to be the prevailing fad).
This is a moral issue, and should be addressed as such. Much to my chagrin, this
topic is almost taboo in Pakistani circles,
partly because of the prevelant apathy and ethnic bigotry that afflicts our nation, and partly because we are both victims and perpetrators of machiavallian politics.
I will not be the least suprised if this thread receives the least amount of traffic.
Moral courage has always been in short
supply in our culture.

Now we have really opened Pandora`s box.
Every citizen of our country has right to
reside in Pakistan. These individuals are
Pakistani citizens who have been denied the
right to return becuse they happened to be
of the wrong ethnicity and unfortunately cannot even buy their way there. Ethnic Nationalists should concentrate on improving their communities rather than concentrating on political hegemony. 200,00 - 250,00 improvished souls would hardly cause a ripple in the political landscape. This is but a clear example of the racial and ethnic
bigotry that is prevelant in our land. Der Fruher would be proud.


Sig Heil