Whenever I write about the trauma and endurance of approximately 324,000 Urdu-speaking Pakistanis stranded and their administratively managed statelessness in Bangladesh since 1971, I rarely receive solidarity or empathy. More often, there is a deafening silence. At times, there is derision.
Recently, however, a new response has surfaced, one that is perhaps more worrying. I am told that I am “making a fuss”; that the situation has “improved”, that “things are fine now.”
Some even insist that the derogatory label (Razakar) once used against my community has been reformed, or that recent student movements in Bangladesh reflect solidarity with us. I listened carefully. I hoped, almost praying, that they were right, and that decades of documentation, testimony, and lived reality had somehow become obsolete.
They have not.
Still, I continue to expect that the fairytales spun by several respected academics, journalists, and defence analysts about our community could somehow be true.
Alas! I also struggle to see how we can overcome the weight of these curated narratives.
When one looks beyond curated narratives, the third and, in some cases, fourth generations of non-Bengali Urdu-speakers remain where they have always been: socially stigmatised, economically marginalised, heritage and identities lost or distorted. And they remain politically invisible. They are still surviving in overcrowded and inhumane settlements euphemistically called ‘camps’ across Bangladesh. Their legal status remains precarious; their historical suffering unacknowledged; their place in renewed Pakistan–Bangladesh relations conspicuously absent.
It is this continued erasure that compelled me to place my evidence-based mappings in the domains of broadcast journalism and Urdu literature, documenting how our TV screens, poets, writers, and intellectuals in Pakistan have not addressed their obligations toward this community.
When condensed versions of these works appeared in digital forums like HumSub, IBC, Naya Daur, and a few social media platforms, I was met with the taunts that I deliberately avoid criticising the rulers or that I do not appreciate that Bangladesh has raised the issue of stranded Pakistanis.
I was taken aback. Not because the claims, if not charges, were sober, but because it was clear that neither my books, nor my columns/blogs, nor my long-form research had been read at all. And yet, paradoxically, many of my ideas, findings, and contacts have quietly made their way into the work of larger, more resourceful platforms, often without acknowledgement.
The vast majority remained confined to makeshift settlements in Bangladesh due to stringent repatriation criteria, including requirements for identity documentation, family records, proof of pre-1971 ties to Pakistan
Years of documented critique, undertaken without access to power, patronage, or compliant categories, were dismissed casually. The accusation revealed not restraint on my part, but a broader unwillingness to engage with sustained, evidence-based criticism when it does not arrive wrapped in slogans or institutional backing.
It is important to understand clearly that if Bangladesh is once again raising the issue of “stranded Pakistanis,” it must never be unnoticed that these people were not illegal migrants, trafficked, or outsiders. They settled there, owned homes and businesses, and had deep social roots. It was the blood-soaked violence of the "Liberation War" that crafted Bangladesh, and the unacknowledged genocide committed against our community that rendered them stranded and stateless. This historical causality cannot be erased or selectively forgotten.
Having said this, I have never denied or ignored the past injustices and the continuing silence and failures of Pakistan. I state this openly even though I live and work here, hold no other nationality, and have no connections with powerful elites to protect myself. My position is not driven by convenience or fear, but by conscience.
I do not possess institutional patronage, political clout, or access to elite publishing circuits. I compile my work independently and publish digitally, not out of preference, but necessity. This is not an affectation; it is the reality of writing about an abandoned community that does not fit neatly into dominant narratives of heroism or victimhood.
This piece is a snapshot of a larger research-based monograph I will publish digitally in January 2026, mapping state policies from 16 December 1971 to 16 January 2026.
Definite Repatriation and Rehabilitation Deferred and Disremembered!
While isolated repatriations took place into the 1980s and even early 1990s, no sustained, rights‑based, or formally enforceable repatriation or rehabilitation initiative comparable to the structured operations of the 1970s has been documented since the early 1980s.
The 1973 Delhi Agreement, followed by OIC and Rabita al-Alam al-Islami–facilitated operations between 1974 and 1981, remains the only structured and large-scale repatriation framework, under which approximately 170,000 stranded Pakistanis were brought to Pakistan. While a small number of families were relocated to areas such as Mia Channu and Muzaffargarh (Punjab-Pakistan) in 1993, this episode was limited, discretionary, and ad hoc, lacking any treaty basis, parliamentary mandate, or rights-based policy architecture. It did not constitute a repatriation programme, nor did it generate continuity, legal entitlement, or institutional responsibility.
It is imperative to admit that this initiative benefited only a small fraction of stranded Pakistanis. The vast majority remained confined to makeshift settlements in Bangladesh due to stringent repatriation criteria, including requirements for identity documentation, family records, proof of pre-1971 ties to Pakistan, age and birth verification, and clearance from Bangladeshi authorities, conditions that most could not realistically meet.
Until rhetoric gives way to enforceable programmes, whether for repatriation, dignified rehabilitation, or unequivocal citizenship, the myth of improvement will remain exactly that: a myth
The oft-repeated narrative of “gradual improvement” does not withstand scrutiny. Legal rulings in Bangladesh in 2003 and 2008 granted (unequal and incomplete) citizenship rights to specific categories, but implementation has been largely uneven, slow, and socially obstructed. Voter registration occurred, but social discrimination and documentation hurdles persist.
‘Camps’, such as the ironically named Geneva Camp in Dhaka, continue to exist not as humanitarian shelters, but as permanent reminders of deferred responsibility.
Pakistan’s gestures have been no less limited. The Sindh Assembly’s 2025 resolution acknowledging “abandoned Pakistanis” is symbolically important, but symbolism without institutional follow-through is hollow. Without endorsement by the National Assembly, corresponding resolutions in other provinces, and most crucially a binding framework for repatriation or structured rehabilitation, such gestures remain political footnotes rather than policy turning points.
More than five decades after the end of “visible hostilities”, the non-Bengali Urdu-speaking community in Bangladesh continues to live with the consequences of statelessness. Repatriation and rehabilitation have been acknowledged verbally, diplomatically, and symbolically, yet never pursued with seriousness or continuity.
Tens of thousands are being left behind, and generations have since been born into legal limbo. I repeat: statelessness did not endure because it was inevitable; it endured because it was administratively managed and politically convenient.
The dismal policy record (from 16 December 1972 to date) reads less like a roadmap to justice and more like an archive of delay: recognition without enforcement, resolutions without implementation, and commemoration without accountability.
Selective Mourning and Memory = Ridiculing Civilian and Military Shuhdhas of 1971
What deepens this injury is the politics of memory itself.
The recent, largely uncritical public admiration surrounding the death of Begum Khaleda Zia, widow of a former major of the Pakistan Army who later defected, has once again exposed how selectively history is narrated. A woman with no formal political training, initially confined to domestic life, she rose to become Bangladesh’s most powerful political voice, twice elected prime minister in a deeply patriarchal society.
During her tenures, relations with Pakistan were notably less acrimonious than under Awami League governments, which is why she was often described as a “friend” in Islamabad’s diplomatic vocabulary. Yet today, amid condolence statements, polite smiles, and ritual invocations of friendship, half the history is being told once again. Those who paid the highest price in 1971 without recognition, restitution, or even a footnote remain absent from public remembrance. Is this not an act of ridiculing the civilian and military shuhdhas of 1971?
As a Pakistani, I shudder at a simple question: if a serving major of the Pakistan Army were today to side with an armed movement against the state, for example, BLA, what would we call him: traitor, or tomorrow’s hero? When states narrate truth selectively for convenience, it is loyalty that is orphaned first. The stranded Pakistanis who chose Pakistan, lost everything in its name, and were then written out of its priorities, remain suspended between identity and indignity in so-called camps.
Friendship between states is desirable, but not at the cost of utter unfairness; reconciliation is hollow without confronting the past. Without speaking uncomfortable truths, diplomacy becomes performance, and unless states acknowledge their abandoned loyalists, history will continue to reward betrayal while punishing faithfulness and patriotism. For a community that remembers the massacres, the stadium killings, and the abandonment that followed, this silence is not accidental. It reinforces a painful dissonance: figures associated with rupture are rehabilitated into icons, while the stateless caught between loyalty and survival remain unnamed.
Until rhetoric gives way to enforceable programmes, whether for repatriation, dignified rehabilitation, or unequivocal citizenship, the myth of improvement will remain exactly that: a myth. And the abandoned Pakistanis will continue to live as a community acknowledged in principle, but expendable in practice.
This is not about reopening old wounds for spectacle. It is about refusing to let betrayal be disguised as reconciliation, or silence passed off as healing.