By Kamal Sikder
Growing up on the outskirts of Dhaka—once an open stretch of marshland and now absorbed into the ever-expanding sprawl of the capital—I often heard the story of a man named Muhammad. He was a Muslim migrant from the Indian province of Bihar, who, like many others, sought refuge and belonging in East Pakistan, now Bangladesh, in the decades following the Partition of British India in 1947.
The area where I spent my childhood—between Katasur and Rayer Bazar—was not only a playground of endless fields and wetlands but also a silent witness to some of the darkest chapters of our nation’s history. One of those unspoken tragedies was the brutal massacre of non-Muslims, predominantly Hindus, during the 1971 Liberation War. The Rayer Bazar killing ground, infamous for its grim history, is now marked by a solemn memorial built by the Awami League government—a monument to remember the martyred intellectuals. But the story remains incomplete without acknowledging the lesser-known atrocities committed in the same area, particularly against the Urdu-speaking Bihari Muslim community.
Historically, Rayer Bazar and its surroundings were home to a large Hindu population. Over time, and especially following the communal tensions and wars between India and Pakistan (notably in 1965 and again in 1971), many Hindu families migrated to India. Simultaneously, Indian Muslims from Bihar and West Bengal moved into these vacated neighborhoods. Some came during Partition, others during the 1965 war, and a third wave arrived during the build-up to the Bangladesh Liberation War.
Our own mahalla in Katasur bore the mark of this demographic shift. At least five households in our area had come from West Bengal. Their refined Bengali and literary sensibilities influenced our speech and storytelling traditions. But we also had Bihari families—speakers of Urdu, many of whom had worked in government services or railways during the Pakistan period. They had made East Pakistan their home, not as opportunists, but as people who believed in the vision of a united Muslim homeland.
After 1971, everything changed.
The war’s aftermath saw an eruption of retaliatory violence. Many Bihari families, perceived to be pro-Pakistani collaborators—sometimes just for speaking Urdu—became targets of collective retribution. Muhammad was one such man. Captured by members of the Mukti Bahini, he was dragged into the very moorland where we played as children. There, he was tortured in a way no human being should ever suffer—tied to a pole, his eyes gouged out, his skin flayed. Left to die alone in a marshland haunted by jackals and foxes, his cries echoed through the nights. The people of Katasur, gripped with fear and helplessness, claimed to have heard his screams for three whole days before silence finally fell.
The killing ground of Rayer Bazar became a no-go zone in the years following independence. It was littered with corpses, but in the absence of DNA technology at the time, proper identification was impossible. Had we had the means then, perhaps we would have discovered that many of the bodies buried in haste or left to rot belonged to those voiceless Bihari Muslims, caught in the storm of war without any means to defend themselves.
There was an old man in our neighborhood—quiet, revered, and deeply religious. A Bihari by origin, he had survived only because he married a local Hindu widow and became a part of her family. To protect him, his family forbade him from speaking, lest his Urdu betray his identity. He honored their plea with stoic dignity, never uttering a word again for the rest of his life. To us, he was the community’s grandfather. But to himself, perhaps, he remained a silenced refugee.
Renowned historian Abul Asad, in his seminal book ‘Kalo Pochiser Aage o Pore’ (Before and After the Black Night of March 25), wrote that nearly 40,000 Muslims were killed during the events surrounding the Liberation War—all of them Urdu-speaking non-combatants. But this was not documented as if they do not count.
In 1996, I read a heart-wrenching report in Time magazine about the Biharis of Bangladesh—referred to as the “Forgotten Refugees of the World.” One interviewee lamented, “We are the refugees no one wants to remember.” The term “Stranded Pakistanis” was imposed on them—a misnomer at best, and a cruel rejection at worst. These people had not come from Pakistan; they had migrated from India to East Pakistan, believing they were moving to a homeland for Muslims. For them, Dhaka was not a stopover—it was their final destination, chosen for its cultural and geographic closeness. Bihar had always been historically tied to Bengal, part of the same administrative units under both the Mughal Empire’s Subah Bangal and the British Bengal Presidency.
When I visited Pakistan in 1999, I met a young man whose family had been forced to flee from Bangladesh after the war. His father and uncle had disappeared in 1971. He carried the trauma of a loss he never witnessed, but lived with every day.
To this day, many of these people continue to live in inhumane conditions in places like the Geneva Camp in Mohammadpur. Generations have been born there—stateless, rightless, and voiceless. They speak Bangla, eat our food, know no other land—but are still labelled as “stranded.”
It is time—indeed, it is overdue—for reconciliation. The Bihari Muslims of Bangladesh must not be treated as relics of a geopolitical error. They must be seen for who they are: fellow human beings, part of the mosaic of our shared history. Bangladesh was born out of the ideals of justice, dignity, and human rights. These values must extend to all our people—including those who were once our neighbors but now live behind invisible walls.
Only when we reckon with all our history—not just the convenient parts—can we call ourselves truly free.
