By Ilyas Chattha
Contemporary politics in South Asia involves historically complex questions of citizenship, loyalty, and state power. Debates about migration, internal security, and national belonging have revived concerns over how swiftly democratic norms can be compromised to serve state security needs.
In Bangladesh, these tensions remain particularly sharp: the Awami League, which played a crucial role in the founding of the country and governed for over a decade, was ousted through mass protests and subsequently barred from contesting the February 2026 elections, raising serious questions about political representation, democratic legitimacy, and the future of electoral competition. Such developments highlight the fragility of democratic processes and demonstrate how political crises can reshape notions of citizenship, rights, and participation.
The violent breakup of Pakistan in 1971
remains a fundamental trauma that continues to shape the geopolitical and social landscape of modern South Asia.
While the dominant historical narrative often emphasizes the high-stakes diplomacy of the Cold War, the massive refugee crisis in India, and the public surrender of the Pakistani military in Dhaka, a more obscure and overlooked history remains largely unexplored. This hidden history involves the systematic detention of tens of thousands of Bengali civilians within West Pakistan—an episode that stands as one of the most significant examples of mutual mass internment since the end of the Second World War.
To fully comprehend the internment of 1971, one must trace the structural contradictions that defined the Pakistani state from its inception in 1947. Conceived as a singular homeland for South Asian Muslims, Pakistan was a geographic anomaly consisting of two ‘wings’—East and West Pakistan—separated by over a thousand miles of Indian territory. From the beginning, the ruling elite in West Pakistan attempted to bridge this geographic and cultural divide by forging national unity through a shared commitment to Islam.
However, this top-down approach to nation-building fundamentally ignored the deep-seated cultural and linguistic pride of the population in East Pakistan, who were overwhelmingly Bengali-speaking.
Over the decades, this cultural friction intensified as East Pakistan faced severe political marginalization and economic disparity. Resources were disproportionately concentrated in the West, fueling a sense of exploitation in the East. By the 1960s, the Awami League, led by Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, emerged as a powerful vanguard for Bengali interests, advocating for provincial autonomy and a more equitable distribution of state power.
The tension between the two wings reached a definitive breaking point following the general election of 1970. In a result that shocked the military establishment, the Awami League secured a decisive parliamentary majority. Rather than transferring power to the elected Bengali leadership, the military regime under General Yahya Khan chose a path of political stalling, leading to a total constitutional impasse. In March 1971, the state’s strategy shifted from political maneuvering to blunt military repression with the launch of ‘Operation Searchlight’. This brutal campaign in East Pakistan ignited a civil war that eventually escalated into a full-scale regional conflict involving India.
When Pakistani forces finally capitulated in December 1971, the resulting balance of power was profoundly lopsided, leaving the government in Islamabad in a state of unprecedented national humiliation. More than 90,000 Pakistani soldiers were taken as prisoners of war (POWs) and transferred to Indian custody. Desperate to secure the return of these military personnel and seeking leverage for post-war negotiations, the Pakistani state turned its attention to the 81,000 Bengalis living in West Pakistan. These individuals—including senior civil servants, military personnel, professionals, and their families—were not incidental victims of the war’s conclusion. Instead, they were deliberately transformed into diplomatic leverage.
In a chilling display of state power, the very concept of citizenship was instrumentalized for political gain.
Through a series of administrative directives and bureaucratic memoranda, the state officially redefined the designation ‘Bengali.’ What was once a cultural identity was now classified as a security designation: ‘traitors’.
This legal erasure of rights transformed state employees into disloyal subjects overnight.
To manage this newly designated population of ‘traitors,’ fifty internment camps were established across West Pakistan. The detention of these civilians was not merely a physical confinement but a strategic move to use them as pawns in a high-stakes diplomatic game.
Perhaps the most notorious of these sites was Shagai Fort, a grim relic of the British colonial era. Perched near the Afghan border, the fort was originally a strategic military outpost guarding the Khyber Pass. Between 1971 and 1973, however, it became a site of immense suffering for thousands of Bengali detainees. The conditions within the fort were described by survivors as ‘subhuman’. Designed for a small military contingent, the facility was quickly overwhelmed by the number of internees. Reports from the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) provided a harrowing glimpse into the reality of life behind the fort’s walls, noting inadequate diets, appalling hygiene, and virtually non-existent medical facilities.
Detainees faced extreme overcrowding, with as many as twenty men crammed into a single room. For months, many lived without beds, proper sanitation, or access to basic healthcare. These environments became breeding grounds for disease, with outbreaks of influenza, fever, and chickenpox ravaging a population already weakened by malnutrition and the psychological weight of indefinite detention. One escaped Bengali soldier recalled the daily struggle for survival caused by the lack of even basic latrines and medical aid.
The diplomatic deadlock regarding the detainees finally shifted in late August 1973. Following intense negotiations, India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh signed a tripartite agreement. This agreement coordinated a mass exchange: Pakistan consented to the repatriation of the interned Bengalis in exchange for the release of the 90,000 Pakistani POWs held by India.
For the Bengalis, the flight back to Dhaka was envisioned as a homecoming to a land of liberation. However, the ordeal did not end upon their arrival in the newly independent Bangladesh.
In a state where national legitimacy was often measured by participation in the ‘Liberation War’, the former internees found themselves in an ambiguous moral position.
Viewed as ‘disloyal’ by the state they had left and labelled as ‘bastard repatriates’ in the land they returned to, they experienced a layered marginalization.
They remained trapped between being seen as a traitor to one nation or a mere bystander to the birth of another.
More than fifty years have passed since these events, yet the narrative of the 1971 war remains sanitized into a simple tale of victory and defeat. This simplification overlooks the reality that thousands of civilians were treated as casualties of a modern bureaucracy’s cold-blooded diplomacy. The internment of Bengalis in West Pakistan was not an accident of war, but a calculated act of statecraft that instrumentalized human lives for political gain. The ordeal of these internees remains a hidden chapter of South Asian history, waiting to be fully recognized.
Ilyas Chattha is a Professor in History at Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS) and the author of Citizens to Traitors: Bengali Internment in Pakistan, 1971–1974 (Cambridge University Press, 2025).
