One true story that stands out, and is now a folklore in Indian subcontinent.

Wow! I’ve been to hell and back and very little makes me tear up anymore. But that story just did. Maybe I’m not such a nihilistic, cynical bastard after all.

Yeah, the director Chandra Prakash Dwivedi did an excellent job. He also directed the well-researched and critically acclaimed TV series on Chanakya.

This film was from a woman’s perspective and I think the film-makers did a great job portraying it. I think the story was great (credit to Amrita Pritam).

Not any more zabardasti than people from Orissa or Hyderabad moving to Pakistan. Wasnt that the whole purpose of partition?

A couple of points here:

(1) Lets keep things in perspective here. We are talking about 200,000 people who moved in 47. They had no ability to assert any identity on the tens of millions of Bengalis in Bangladesh. Also they did not speak any Bengali so they naturally favored Urdu as that was the only language they were familiar with.

(2) The Islamists for the most part also aided the Pakistani troops. The Biharis were not the only ones supporting the Pakistanis in 71.

(3) They dont look down on Bengalis and its mostly Bengalis who look down on them. They are living in very poor conditions in make shift refugee camps. They have no power to look down on anyone as they are at the mercy of their Bengali hosts who dont particularly like them.

(4) Most of these people were born after 47 and should not be punished for what happened in 47 as they had nothing to do with it. Most of them are not granted Bangladeshi citizens and its very difficult to live as stateless people in Bangladesh.

(5) There was nothing wrong in moving to East Pakistan in 47. Millions of people moved across the borders. Should the muhajirs be punished now in Pakistan?

The MQM has been able to get some of these people moved to Pakistan. As Pakistan is unwilling to take the rest, Bangladesh should grant them citizenship.

I understand your vehemence, Amitabh, but not you callousness. You can’t blame all individuals for the actions of a government, or impute malign motives to every single refugee. Some of my family mograted to East Pakistan. They moved to East Pakistan for the same reasons everyone else moved to West Pakistan — greater economic opportunities, idealism, imminent (or actual) violence, and a fear of the future for themselves and their children if they stayed in India.

They spoke Urdu and Bangla, and married their daughters into Bengali families. 1971 didn’t just destroy their lives and turn them into refugees for a second time in 25 years, it also geographically split their families by thousands of miles. It was a worse tragedy than partition, and (given that I get along fine with my Bengali relatives in California) possibly a preventable one, given greater generosity on the West Pakistani side.

(I had written a longer, more emotional post as a response — but perhaps its not appropriate here.)

Aaahh…I finally know what DLF stands for. Were they always a private company, even at that time?

What do you mean shafted? They were opposed to Bengali language and Bengali interests right from the beginning. They thought they would move to East Pakistan and assert Urdu and what was essentially equivalent to a Muhajir identity on the local Bengalis. They aided Pakistani troops in quelling the Bengali resistance in 1971. To this day many (who were born and raised in Bangladesh) can’t speak proper Bengali, which they look down on. Besides, wasn’t it unnecessary ‘zabardasti’ to up and move to Bengal for no reason other than misplaced ‘Pakistani’ fervor??? I wouldn’t be so harsh to say they deserve what they got, but they are hardly innocent.