Whenever I have written about the pro-Pakistan, non-Bengali Urdu-speaking community in former East Pakistan—(which included Punjabis, Pathans, and people from UP and CP, but most prominently Bihari Muslims who migrated from Bihar)—whether in columns, podcasts, or on social media, I have faced two kinds of responses. The first is cold silence, as if no one had read, heard, or seen anything. Even self-proclaimed feminists and champions of human rights in Pakistan remained silent.

The second is a barrage of hateful and derogatory messages, often anonymous and claiming to be Bengali, though without clear identity markers. A recurring accusation in these hate notes is that Biharis looked down upon Bengalis and mistreated them in pre-1971 East Pakistan.

When I asked elderly Biharis about this charge, some admitted that a small section of their community may have harbored such attitudes. But the majority disagreed, pointing instead to intermarriages with Bengalis and fluency in Bangla as proof of social integration. Despite losing homes and loved ones during the pogroms, Biharis never forgot the kindness of Bengalis who risked their lives to shelter survivors from Mukti Bahini’s brutality. Still, I believe that if any of our elders’ attitudes—rooted perhaps in their love for West Pakistan—hurt Bengalis, we should not hesitate to acknowledge and regret that.

Yet, whatever mistakes our elders may have made, they made them in love for Pakistan. The response they received—massacres of defenseless Biharis, looting of their homes, rapes and humiliations of their women, and the forced exile of an entire community—was utterly disproportionate, inhuman, and cannot be justified in any way. But the wound needs healing, and I begin by offering an apology for a crime I never committed.

Reconciliation cannot happen without apology. Today, no one pleads the case of the Biharis’ humiliation, dispersal, and statelessness. Neither Pakistan’s state nor the global establishment thinks or cares about them. Yet despite all this, the Biharis have continued to love Pakistan unconditionally; they never burned its flag. Unlike other persecuted groups, we have no Aimen Mazari, no Mahrang Baloch, no Hamid Mir, no Mohammad Hanif. Even our own political elites remain hostage to their self-interest.

(The above section is translated from my Urdu blog originally published on HumSub on 23 October 2024: link.) https://www.humsub.com.pk/565498/dr-rakhshinda-perveen-12/
Is Silence a Policy?

More than half a century has passed since the catastrophic and criminal actions of 1971 that damaged and dismembered Pakistan and created Bangladesh through successful separatist militia. And yet, the scars remain green for those who bore the brunt of the betrayal and bloodshed —especially the stranded Pakistanis, mostly Bihari Urdu-speakers, who continue to languish in the so called camps across Bangladesh, stateless and disremembered. There is no iota of remorse within the ruling classes, elites and political parties in Pakistan.

For most ordinary Pakistanis today—especially the youth—the rupture of 1971 is at best a blurred memory, at worst a censored subject. School and college textbooks skim over the tragedy, treating it as a “political crisis” rather than a human and national tragedy and disaster . In this silence, generations grow up oblivious not only to the scale of slaughter of those who stood with Pakistan army but also to the plight of those communities—Biharis and other pro-Pakistan minorities—who stood by the state and paid with genocide, displacement, and statelessness.

What do the Internet and Artificial Intelligence tell us?

Youth and even tech savvy mature people are fond of gaining instant answers from a google search on the internet or asking AI tools even for the existential questions. What happens when one tries to find answers of some apparently straightforward but inconvenient answers through these tools.

The One-Sided Digital Narrative

Virtual space search engines and Artificial Intelligence, ironically, reinforces this silence. For instance ,Type “1971 Pakistan” into ChatGPT or other AI tools, and you are presented with a narrative almost exclusively sympathetic to Mukti Bahini. Pakistani troops are framed as perpetrators of atrocities, while massacres of pro-Pakistan civilians—including the Biharis—are scarcely mentioned. You may also get a statement that what you asked was a violation of their policy.

This skew is not a “bias of the machine” but of the sources it trains on: digital archives dominated by one-sided histories, unchallenged by Pakistani documentation. Pakistan’s absence from this information ecosystem is stark: no counter-narratives, no accessible testimony, no state-led effort to complicate simplistic histories.
Even today in many Ivy Leagues including His Highness Harvard “bhola storm” is connected with the justification of “liberation.” I personally noticed it while attending some online lectures and cousera courses.

Where is Pakistan’s 1971 Policy?

Here lies the most troubling question: what is Pakistan doing to confront or represent 1971?

To date to the best of my knowledge there is no:

1. dedicated “1971 Desk” in the Foreign Office.
2. national think tank commission.
3. university chair or research center.
4. systematic project to archive survivor testimonies.
5. curriculum reform to engage honestly and critically with the event.

Existence of some scattered, controversial and isolated efforts challenging the mainstream atrocity narrative like Hasan Zaheer’s Separation of East Pakistan (1994), Lt. Gen. Niazi’s memoir The Betrayal of East Pakistan (1998), or Sarmila Bose’s Dead Reckoning (2011), Dr. Junaid Ahmed’s Creation of Bangladesh: Myths Exploded” (2002) and 1971: Ethnic Cleansing of Biharis in East Pakistan (2024), etc. do not serve as an alternative to the official thoughtful policy and allied actions. I do not see even if any of these has been translated into mass education, media, or public consciousness.

I attended both the National Security Workshop and the National Media Workshop organized by the National Defence University, Islamabad. These workshops are celebrated as prestigious platforms where civil society, parliamentarians, journalists, and military representatives come together to explore the multidimensional aspects of national security. But amid all the carefully curated lectures, discussions, and even the WhatsApp groups formed afterward, there was a deafening silence on 1971—and on the stranded Pakistanis who remain in the ghettos of Bangladesh more than five decades later. Not once was the subject raised. Each time I tried to bring it up, whether in conversation or by sharing my writings, it was quietly brushed aside, as if acknowledging this unresolved wound was too inconvenient for our national narratives.

Censored Sacrifices, Forgotten Communities

The silence is most insensitive in the case of the Biharis. Loyal to Pakistan in 1971, they were left behind after repatriation agreements stalled in the 1970s and 1980s. Generations later, they still live in squalid camps in Dhaka and other cities—stateless Pakistanis who inherited only suffering. Their genocide remains unacknowledged, their voices absent from Pakistan’s textbooks, their story erased from mass media.

The Cost of Silence

By ceding the 1971 narrative to others, Pakistan has surrendered intellectual, diplomatic, and digital ground. The youth know little about the country’s most defining rupture. AI tools recycle one-sided accounts. And the unimaginable sacrifices of forgotten communities remain unrecognized. Silence may appear convenient for the state, but it comes at the price of eroded memory, fractured identity, and historical injustice.

Dar’s Visit to Dhaka After Thirteen Years: Where Are the Stranded Pakistanis?

The arrival of Foreign Minister and Deputy Prime Minister Ishaq Dar in Dhaka is being described as the first official visit of a Pakistani foreign minister in thirteen years. Diplomatically, the occasion is significant. Yet the question remains: are the Bihari mehsoreen (stranded Pakistanis) and other non-Bengali Urdu-speakers on his agenda?

This is the same community once labeled as “stranded,” “stuck Biharis,” and at times with even more derogatory names. They stood with the flag of Pakistan. In return, they were subjected to retaliatory massacres, the humiliation of their women, the looting of their homes, and the erasure of their very identities. From 16 December 1971 until today—more than half a century—these people have lived lives of statelessness and indignity.

Dhaka’s notorious “Geneva Camp,” along with other similar camps, remains a place of human suffering. Those who live there still ask:
“Why are human beings never part of the agenda? Or are agendas never meant to be human?”

Policy notes may easily accommodate words like trade, visas, flights, and “new beginnings.” But where are the people? And if those people happen to be Biharis or non-Bengalis, do they not even qualify as human in the hierarchy of concerns?

The time has come for the Government of Pakistan to stop treating this human tragedy as a mere news item, and to show the courage to make history. The first steps in this journey should be:

1. An official visit to the Dhaka camps and a direct meeting with the representative committee of the stranded Pakistanis.
2. A joint declaration that recommendations on repatriation will be presented within three months.
3. The establishment of special consular desks in Dhaka, NADRA camps, and legal aid connections.
4. Joint parliamentary hearings in Islamabad and Dhaka where the stranded, the victimized women, and historians are all heard.
5. Scholarships, research invitations, and mutual access to archives.

Dr. Muhammad Yunus’s adviser, Touhid Hossain, remarked last year that relations would only become easier when Pakistan acknowledged 1971 and apologized. But the question must also be asked: will he explain how the atrocities committed by Mukti Bahini against Biharis were framed as part of a freedom struggle? And will there also be an apology for that?

Politics must be transformed into service, not darkness. History alone decides this. Only the names of the courageous are preserved; all others are lost to the pages of time.
Even today, thousands of eyes in Dhaka’s camps await justice. If Pakistan’s foreign minister can truly look into those eyes, perhaps—for the first time in half a century—this region might move closer to justice.

A Call for Courage

It is time Pakistan faced 1971 with intellectual honesty and political courage. This does not mean denial, nor visor defense, but a full-spectrum reckoning: acknowledging mistakes, preserving erased narratives, and asserting the stories of communities—like the Biharis—who were silenced in both Bangladesh and Pakistan.

A dedicated institutional response is overdue: a 1971 research center, curriculum reform, oral history projects, and diplomatic engagement to finally address the stranded Pakistanis’ plight.

Fifty-three years later, history still waits for Pakistan to reclaim its story—not to rewrite or tamper the past, but to ensure justice and truth are not permanently buried.