The Fate of Post-partition Migratees to Pakistan: In 1946, 16 August was declared as the Direct Action Day by Jinnah and Suhrawardy, the then Chief Minister of Bengal organized a riot in Calcutta. The Muslim hooligans working for the Muslim League were let loose in the city with the assurance that neither army nor police would interfere with them. The killings started that very evening after the meeting at the Ochterlony Monument had been over. Not much later, the Hindu hooligans retaliated. Suhrawardy found himself to be at the mercy of the underworld of the city. His strategy had failed! Hindus were found to have been prepared for the attack! He rushed to Mahatma Gandhi, the great sympathiser of the Muslims of India, for salvage from the debacle. Gandhi came and helped to quell the riots in Calcutta. The city was saved from a great slaughter which had been initiated by the Chief Minister of the province himself. Then there was riot in Bihar in retaliation of riots in Calcutta. Biharis were devastated. Muslims suffered most. Hindus had fared better in Bihar. In 1947, after the partition, Biharis formed the largest block of migratees to Pakistan. Some came to East Pakistan, others to West Pakistan. Both Muslim majority areas. Those who went to West Pakistan and settled mostly in the province of Sindh. Largest part settled in the city of Karachi. The memory of the 1946 riots made them take the decision to migrate. Biharis neither in East Pakistan, nor in the West could become assimilated among the local population. That they were all Muslims, the main ground of the Two Nation Theory, did not work for them. They remained segregated from the people as Mohajirs in West Pakistan. After almost seven decades they have remained the same Mohajirs. Would they ever be able to come out of the derogatory identity? There is no hope. For they have already formed a party with the name of Mohajir Qaumi Movement (MQM). To Jinnahs two nation another has been added: the Mohajir nation. Faith-nation yielded to the ethnic-nation. The faith-identity yielded to ethnic-identity. The idea of ethnic-nationality cum identity was scientific as well as the stand of the Congress. Have anybody, any supporter of the Two Nation Theory ever pondered over the miserable failure of this spurious theory? The MQM would never come to power in Pakistan. They sometimes help other parties to form government in the Centre and the Province of Sindh. In East Pakistan, their position was weaker than in West Pakistan. They could not form a separate party. They remained Biharis and centred in planned way in the Mirpur and Mohammadpur of Dhaka. They settled in other towns of East Pakistan in segregated areas and lived as a different ethnic groups, as Biharis, with their distinct culture, not as part of the Muslim nation. Here also, with a different name the Muslim nation of Jinnah was split into two further nations: Bengali Muslims and Bihari Muslims. Can we claim that this fact invalidated the Two Nation Theory? Mirpur became a killing ground for the Bengalis during 1971. At the very beginning, in every habitations of East Pakistan, the Bengali Muslims attacked the Bihari Muslims, their brothers in faith and a part of the Muslim nation. They were not acknowledged as a part of the Bengali Muslim nation. Biharis in their turn, despite the genocide unleashed by the Pakistanis, supported them and joined in the fray as rajakars. At the end of the war many fled back to India. Many of them now are hawkers in the streets of Calcutta. Others were thrown into the Geneva Camp in Dhaka. Pakistan initially accepted as token a few of them. Later on that ceased and they remained stranded in the said camp and was designated as the Stranded Pakistanis. Pakistan has never acknowledged any responsibility for them and extended any help for them. What a tragic fate of the Theory and what a tragic fate for those who were lured by Jinnah and the Muslim League to believe in that in 1947!
Posted on: Mon, 28 Apr 2014 20:27:24 +0000
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