The Urdu-speakers of Bangladesh 117 ORIGINS OF THE URDU-SPEAKING MINORITY Copyright © 2011. Edward Elgar Publishing Limited. All rights reserved. Most Urdu-speakers of Bangladesh are descendants of Muslim minority groups originating in the Indian state of Bihar, close to Bangladesh. Accordingly, the Urdu-speakers are sometimes referred to as ‘Biharis’, a term which is problematic in part because not all Urdu-speakers can trace their background to Bihar. Some of their forbearers also came from other states, such as Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal and what is now Jharkhand.1 As the term ‘Urdu-speaking minority’ suggests, this group is primarily united by language rather than by ethnicity or geographic origin.2 Some members of this community were civil servants in the British colonial administration, through which they were posted to East Bengal (now Bangladesh) to serve in the railways, police and other civil services.3 Thousands of railway workers brought their families to live near stations such as Syedpur, Parbatipur, Rangpur, Shantahar, Khulna, Jessore and Chittagong.4 In the years leading up to the Partition of India and Pakistan in 1947, the region was plagued by communal riots between Hindus and Muslims in several states, including Bihar. Communal tensions resulted in part from decades of debate over whether Hindus and Muslims could or should coexist in one united state of India or whether the country should be split apart along religious lines. Ahmed Ilias, former journalist and Executive Director of Al Falah,5 a non-governmental organization working in the Urdu-speakers’ settlements in Dhaka, writes: [t]he Bihar riots generated immense feelings of Islamic brotherhood among the Muslims of other provinces . . . . Bengali Muslims contributed generously in cash and kind to help the affected Bihari Muslims. Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, then a student leader [who would later lead the call for Bangladesh’s independence from Pakistan in 1971], toured the affected villages in Bihar with his relief team. He was so moved and excited by the scene of the refugee camps that he urged the Bihari refugees to come to East Bengal for their shelter and settlement.6 At the time of India’s independence and Partition of the country in 1947, communal violence between Hindus and Muslims intensified. Tensions in Kashmir prompted revenge attacks against both Hindus and Muslims in several parts of India. Until the 1960s, millions of Muslims poured into East Pakistan (previously East Bengal, and by this time part of post-Partition Pakistan) as refugees, and Muslims in that state in turn committed violence against Hindus, forcing as many as four million across the border into India. Ilias notes that ‘[t]he local Bengali community was Statelessness Citizenship117 : A Comparative Study on the Benefits of Nationality, edited by Brad K. Blitz, and Maureen Lynch, M2482 - BLITZand PRINT.indd 21/12/2010 11:56 Edward Elgar Publishing Limited, 2011. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/bham/detail.action?docID=655534. Created from bham on 2023-11-30 09:57:20.