Whenever I read about the Biharis of Bangladesh, I notice where the story usually begins: 1971.

I understand why. That year contains the terrible questions of loyalty, collaboration, killings and revenge. But beginning there produces a distorted picture. It turns an entire population into a problem created by a war.

My family also came from Bihar. Perhaps that makes me more sensitive to the missing part of this history.

The Urdu-speaking migrants of East Pakistan did not spend twenty-four years waiting for 1971 to happen. They worked. They raised families and entered professions. Many became part of the railways and industrial economy. Some entered government service.

Before they became the “stranded Pakistanis” of Bangladesh, they had helped build Pakistan.

Who Were the “Biharis”?

Even the name requires care.

After Partition, large numbers of Muslims moved from India into what was then East Bengal and later became East Pakistan. Many came from Bihar, particularly after the communal violence surrounding Partition. Others arrived from Uttar Pradesh and different parts of northern India.

“Bihari” gradually became a broader label for much of this non-Bengali, Urdu-speaking population.

That can obscure considerable diversity.

Some migrants arrived with professional qualifications. Others possessed industrial skills or experience in the railways. There were clerks and small businessmen. Families arrived with little except the hope that Pakistan would provide the security they had lost in India.

They did not all occupy the same social class, and they certainly did not all think alike.

What many shared was the experience of migration.

Go to the Railway Towns

If we want to understand their contribution to East Pakistan, railway towns provide a better starting point than political speeches.

Saidpur is particularly important.

Railway employment had drawn workers from Bihar even before Partition. After 1947, the railway system and its workshops offered employment to additional migrants. Urdu-speaking workers became an important presence in railway settlements, especially in northern East Pakistan.

Some brought technical experience with them.

This is where historical memory sometimes turns into exaggeration. I have heard the claim that Biharis virtually ran the railway system of East Pakistan. I would not make that claim without evidence showing their actual share of the workforce.

The documented story is significant enough.

Urdu-speaking migrants supplied skilled workers to the railways and other industries. Their presence became especially visible in places such as Saidpur, where employment and settlement developed around the railway infrastructure.

A refugee population was putting down roots.

The railway workshop was not merely a workplace. Around such workplaces grew neighbourhoods, schools and markets. Children were born who knew Bihar mainly through the memories of their parents.

East Pakistan was becoming home.

A Man From Bihar Helped Build Two Universities

Another part of this history takes me back to Karachi.

Professor A.B.A. Haleem was a political scientist with roots in Bihar. He studied at Patna University and Oxford before becoming an important figure in Pakistan’s academic life.

His institutional record is remarkable.

Haleem served as the first vice-chancellor of the University of Sindh. When that university moved from Karachi to Hyderabad, Allama I.I. Kazi assumed its leadership.

Haleem then became the first vice-chancellor of the newly established University of Karachi in 1951.

I find his story important for a reason beyond Bihari pride.

Partition is often remembered through trains filled with frightened families and people abandoning their homes. Yet migration also moved human capital across borders. Academics arrived in Pakistan. Skilled workers did the same.

New institutions depended partly on these displaced people.

Haleem’s journey from Bihar to university leadership in Pakistan is one small example of that much larger movement.

Integration Was More Complicated

Economic contribution did not automatically produce social integration.

Many Urdu-speaking migrants settled in concentrated communities. Employment could reinforce the pattern. Railway families lived around railway installations, while other migrants settled in refugee colonies and urban neighbourhoods.

Dhaka developed substantial Urdu-speaking populations in places such as Mirpur and Mohammadpur.

At first, such concentration made practical sense. Refugees needed housing. People naturally sought relatives, familiar languages and networks that could help them find work.

Over time, separation carried a cost.

Language was becoming one of the central political questions of Pakistan.

For Bengalis, the attempt to establish Urdu as the sole state language became evidence that the political order did not recognize the culture and numerical strength of East Pakistan. The Language Movement transformed Bengali from a linguistic question into a powerful expression of political identity.

Imagine how differently an Urdu-speaking refugee might have experienced the same dispute.

A family that had left Bihar for Pakistan could see Urdu as part of its connection with the new state. A Bengali student could hear official insistence on Urdu and see domination.

The same language carried two different histories.

That gap widened.

Biharis Did Not Create East Pakistan’s Grievances

This distinction matters.

It would be easy to look at the relatively visible position of Urdu-speaking migrants in some occupations and conclude that they created Bengali resentment.

The structural problem was much larger.

Political power remained heavily concentrated in Pakistan’s central institutions. Bengalis increasingly challenged what they saw as unequal access to state power and resources. The language conflict added a cultural dimension to those grievances.

Biharis lived inside that political structure. They did not design it.

Yet perception matters in divided societies.

Because many spoke Urdu and some worked in government-linked institutions, they could become identified with the Pakistani state. Residential concentration made the distinction between communities more visible.

Neighbours were acquiring political labels.

The migrant was no longer simply the railway mechanic living down the street. He could increasingly be seen as a “Bihari.” His Bengali neighbour was no longer merely a colleague.

National politics was entering ordinary relationships.

Then 1971 Changed Everything

Any account of the Bihari experience that avoids the difficult history of 1971 would be incomplete.

Many Urdu-speaking Biharis supported a united Pakistan. Some collaborated with Pakistani forces during the conflict. Bengali memories of that collaboration did not disappear when the war ended.

But collective guilt creates another distortion.

A population does not become responsible for every act committed by people who share its language or ethnicity. Political behaviour within the Urdu-speaking community was not necessarily uniform, just as no large community behaves as a single political actor.

Bihari civilians also suffered violence during the conflict.

The larger war was catastrophic. The Pakistan Army’s crackdown and subsequent military operations caused enormous suffering among Bengalis, while communal and retaliatory violence also consumed people identified with the other side.

By December 1971, the political geography had completely changed.

Bangladesh emerged as an independent state.

For Urdu-speaking families who had migrated from India because they believed they were moving to Pakistan, the psychological rupture must have been extraordinary. They had crossed one border in 1947.

Twenty-four years later, another border appeared around them.

From Citizens to “Stranded Pakistanis”

After independence, many Urdu-speaking residents wanted repatriation to Pakistan. Pakistan accepted some.

Many remained.

Large numbers ended up in settlements that came to be known as Bihari camps or camps for “stranded Pakistanis.” The International Committee of the Red Cross established a network of camps in 1972 for Urdu-speaking people left in Bangladesh.

The terminology captured their predicament.

They were living in Bangladesh while continuing to be identified with Pakistan. Children were then born in those settlements who had never lived in Pakistan at all.

One generation became another.

A temporary political problem hardened into a permanent social condition.

The citizenship dispute continued for decades.

In 2008, the Court Clarified Their Status

The legal turning point came on 18 May 2008.

In Md. Sadaqat Khan (Fakku) and Others v. Chief Election Commissioner, the High Court Division of Bangladesh’s Supreme Court considered the status of Urdu-speaking residents who had been excluded from voter registration.

The judgment is sometimes described too simply as a decision that “gave Biharis citizenship.”

Its meaning was more important than that.

The court held that Urdu-speaking people who met the requirements of Bangladesh’s citizenship law were nationals by operation of law. Living in a camp did not, by itself, make them foreigners.

The court directed the Election Commission to enroll eligible Urdu-speaking people who wanted to register and to provide them with national identity cards.

Consider what that meant.

For decades, people had been described as “stranded Pakistanis.” Yet many were legally citizens of the country in which they had been living all along.

A political label had survived longer than the legal logic behind it.

What Do We Remember About Them?

I return to the railway workshop.

A man leaves Bihar during the upheaval surrounding Partition. He reaches East Pakistan and finds work repairing locomotives. Bengali workers labour beside him. His children grow up nearby.

Perhaps they speak Urdu at home.

Outside, Bengali surrounds them.

For years they live under the same flag. They draw salaries from the same institutions and buy food in the same markets.

Then politics changes the meaning of their identities.

One becomes Bengali.

The other becomes Bihari.

Eventually even the country beneath their feet changes its name.

As someone whose own roots lie in Bihar, I could turn this history into a simple defence of the Bihari community. I do not think that would help us understand what happened.

There were political choices that deserve scrutiny. Collaboration during 1971 cannot be erased simply because civilians later suffered. Neither can violence against Biharis be treated as an acceptable footnote to the liberation of Bangladesh.

The more interesting history lies underneath those arguments.

These communities had not always lived as enemies. They had worked inside the same economy. Their lives crossed in railway towns and neighbourhoods long before national politics pulled their identities apart.

That is what I find most disturbing about Saidpur.

The workshop survived.

The railway tracks survived too.

What broke was the idea that the people living beside them still belonged to the same country.