Clubbed With Urdu-Speakers, Biharis Retain Identity In Pakistan

Sameer Arshad Khatlani
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Abdul Kadir Khanzada represented Karachi’s Orangi Town in Pakistan's parliament when Nitish Kumar, the chief minister of the eastern Indian state of Bihar, visited his country in 2012. He wanted to invite the visiting leader to his constituency given the composition of the area, where a bulk of the voters have roots in Bihar. Khanzada told me violence uprooted his family from Alwar in Rajasthan at the time of partition in 1947 when I called him for a Times of India piece on Kumar's visit. But since 70 per cent of his constituents were of Bihari origin, he was keen on inviting Kumar. Khanzada emphasised his Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM), which represents Pakistan's Urdu-speaking people, has always supported peace with India and hoped Kumar’s visit would help the process. 

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Kumar visited the archaeological site of Mohenjo-Daro, a temple, and addressed a Hindu panchayat during his trip to Sindh, where Karachi is located. But Khanzada's plan to invite Kumar to Orangi Town did not materialise even as the chief minister's tour put a spotlight on Pakistan's Bihari community. Karachi has a sizeable Bihari population, which has retained its distinct identity despite being clubbed with the Urdu-speaking community. For years, Biharis were seen as die-hard supporters of the MQM, which has been a part of successive federal and Sindh provincial governments. The formation of a breakaway faction Bihari Quami Movement in the late noughties highlighted the community’s attempt to assert its separate identity.

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Biharis have enriched Karachi’s cosmopolitan culture. Their imprint on the city is perhaps best reflected in the Bihari kebabs, which is one of the city’s culinary attractions. The place where the early Bihar immigrants settled after Partition is still known as the Bihar Colony in Karachi’s Layari Town. Mostly well-off immigrants managed to reach Karachi, then Pakistan’s capital, in the aftermath of anti-Muslim violence in Bihar before the Partition. The rest of about three million Bihari refugees found it easier to cross over to East Pakistan (now Bangladesh). Around 1,63,000 of them were repatriated to Pakistan in the 1970s and 1980s after Bangladesh’s creation. They were accused of being collaborators, stripped of their properties, and forced into camps. Thousands returned on their own and preferred to settle in Sindh and Karachi as part of the Urdu-speaking community. MQM backed them, hoping it would consolidate its political hold over the region.

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Nearly 8,00,000 Biharis in Bangladesh declared themselves as Pakistanis after the cessation of East Pakistan. They sought to be settled in Pakistan to escape linguistic persecution. Most repatriated Biharis settled in Orangi. The process was stopped in the 1980s after it led to ethnic riots in Karachi amid fears that it would further tilt the politico-ethnic balance in favour of the city’s dominant Urdu-speaking people at the cost of the province’s native Sindhi speakers. The Sindhis are now a small minority in Karachi but dominate interior Sindh.

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The resettlement process re-started briefly in 1993 when 321 Biharis were brought to Pakistan on the condition that they would settle in Punjab to allay fears of the Sindhi nationalists. A Bihari colony was set up for them 370 km from Islamabad at Mian Channu in Punjab's Khanewal district. Successive Pakistani governments have since gone back on their promise to bring back an estimated 3,00,000 Biharis, who live in 66 camps without citizenship rights in Bangladesh.

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A report in Abu Dhabi-based The National in 2012 highlighted the miserable condition of Mian Channu’s Biharis. Their plight was a reminder of horrors of the double partition Biharis have faced while other communities uprooted in the aftermath of the 1947 division have moved on and prospered. The report highlighted the predicament of 60-year-old Manzar Husain, who arrived in Mian Channu leaving behind his daughter, now a mother of three. He expected her to be on the next flight to Pakistan, but that was not to be. Husain had lost all hopes of seeing her daughter and grandchildren. His family lost everything when they migrated to what was then East Pakistan in 1947, but he never thought he would have to face the horrors of another migration. The National reported Mian Channu’s Bihari colony looked like a slum and Punjabis had moved into most of the two-room apartments constructed for Biharis. 

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Kamran Asdar Ali, a US-based Pakistani academic whose parents  migrated from Bihar to Karachi at the time of the Partition, told me the community is very diverse in Pakistan. 'Biharis in Pakistan are there in all walks of life, from the most wealthy and influential to the lowly urban poor, much like in India,’ Ali told me in an interview for the Times of India piece. Sasaram-born scholar and anti-colonial activist Eqbal Ahmad was among the most prominent Pakistani-Biharis, who earned international acclaim. Ali told me Biharis have been given a 'politically available' Muhajir identity. He said it is a constructed ethnicity as a family that migrated from Madras or Bombay is also Muhajir and those who came from Bihar or Uttar Pradesh are also Muhajirs. 

This is an updated version of an article published in The Times of India, the author's former employer, in 2012

Sameer Arshad Khatlani is an author-journalist. He has been a Senior Assistant Editor with Hindustan Times, India’s second-biggest English newspaper. Khatlani worked in a similar capacity with The Indian Express, India's most influential newspaper known for its investigative journalism, until June 2018. Born and raised in Kashmir, he began his career with the Vijay Times, which has since been rebranded as Bangalore Mirror, in 2005 as its national-affairs correspondent. He joined Times of India, one of the world's largest selling broadsheets, in 2007. Over the next nine years, he was a part of the paper's national and international newsgathering team as an Assistant Editor. Khatlani has reported from Iraq, Pakistan, and the Maldives and covered elections and natural disasters. He received a master’s degree in History from the prestigious Jamia Millia Islamia University in New Delhi. Khatlani is a fellow with Hawaii-based American East-West Center established by the US Congress in 1960 to promote better relations and understanding with Asian, and Pacific countries through cooperative study, research, and dialogue. Penguin published Khatlani’s first book The Other Side of the Divide: A Journey into the Heart of Pakistan in February 2020. Eminent academic and King’s college professor, Christophe Jaffrelot, has called the book ‘an erudite historical account... [that] offers a comprehensive portrait of Pakistan, including the role of the army and religion—not only Islam.'