Citizens to Traitors

The break-up of Pakistan in 1971 following a bloody civil war and military defeat by India is wrapped in layers of silences, making it difficult to ferret out the truth from the mistruths. The war ended with over 90,000 Pakistani prisoners of war (POWs) captured in East Pakistan–turned-Bangladesh, who were then transferred to Indian custody. Pakistan responded by interning roughly the same number of Bengali co-religionists in West Pakistan as leverage for the return of its captured POWs. Neither group would return home immediately in what arguably became one of the largest cases of mutual mass internment since 1945. Drawing on a wide range of untapped sources, this book traces the trajectory of this crisis of captivity in which the Bengalis found themselves as rightless citizens with 'traitor' and 'enemy' status after the Bangladesh War. Over half a century after the 1971 war, the internment of Bengalis remains a non-event in the most significant political crisis in Pakistan's history. This book explains this silence in the historiography.