Forgotten Prisoners: The Hidden History of Bengali Internment Camps in Pakistan
Over 50 years after the creation of Bangladesh in 1971, the internment of Bengalis in Pakistan remains unacknowledged in both Pakistan and Bangladesh. Ilyas Ahmad Chattha’s new book explores this hidden history and its implications for citizenship and belonging in contemporary South Asia.
Book cover of Citizens to Traitors: Bengali Internment in Pakistan, 1971–1974. Cambridge University Press
Over half a century after the 1971 war, the internment of Bengalis in Pakistan remains a missing chapter in the history of South Asia.
After Pakistan’s surrender in Dhaka in December 1971, the world’s gaze fixed on the carnage of the nine-month war and the fate of 93,000 Pakistani soldiers held as prisoners of war (POWs) in India. But invisible to the world, another story was unfolding a thousand miles away from Dhaka inside West Pakistan.
Cast as ‘traitors’
“Thousands of Bengalis — military officers, civil servants, teachers, doctors — were rounded up, stripped of their rights, and confined in internment camps. These were not enemy combatants. These were citizens who were, overnight, declared ‘traitors.’”
Pakistan had begun to intern Bengali citizens living in West Pakistan as leverage for the release of its POWs.
Pakistan’s intelligence services started loyalty screenings that singled out ‘Bengalis’ as a threat to national security. Bureaucrats, professionals, and servicemen were dismissed from jobs, forced onto leave, as well as publicly branded ‘disloyal.’
Thousands of Bengalis — military officers, civil servants, teachers, doctors — were rounded up, stripped of their rights, and confined in internment camps. These were not enemy combatants. These were citizens who were, overnight, declared ‘traitors.’
A cartoon in a Pakistani newspaper depicting Bengali separatists as proxies for an Indian attack on Pakistan, backed by Russia. The caption reads: “India has attacked Pakistan on behalf of Russian imperialism.” Image: Daily Mashriq, 3 December 1971.
The Urdu press fed the frenzy, portraying Bengali leader Sheikh Mujibur Rahman as an ‘Indian stooge’. On 12 July 1971, the editor of the Nawa-i-Waqt branded Mujib a ‘traitor’ – who plotted with India to break up Pakistan. Cartoons of Mujib emerged in multiple forms, where Mujib is portrayed as a leashed lion, an ‘agent of India’, in line with other depictions as a ‘stooge of Indira Gandhi’, and ‘enemy’ of Pakistan.
Shaikh Mujib Rehman as a leashed lion controlled by an Indian soldier. Image: Nawa-i-Waqt, 24 July 1971.
By mid-1971, the anti-Bengali campaign in West Pakistan became systematic. Bengali families were barred from leaving the country. Passports were confiscated and bank accounts were frozen. Thousands of Bengalis were loaded onto buses and trains, with windows covered to avoid a public spectacle.
A Network of Camps
Located close to the Afghan border, Shagai Fort, constructed in the 1920s, served as an internment camp. Image: Author
“Those who could not endure the conditions of the camp were classified as ‘pagals’ (mad). Ironically, it is these ‘pagal’ soldiers that were repatriated to Bangladesh first in 1973 as a ‘message of goodwill’ from Pakistan.”
An estimated 80,000 Bengalis were detained across West Pakistan. The internment camps were a mix of forts, factories, schools, and military barracks.
Shagai Fort, a crumbling colonial outpost near the Afghan border, was one of the more notorious camps, where thousands of Bengalis were detained. In Spring 1971, a group of Bengali soldiers who had served in the Pakistan army was interned in the camp. New batches of internees kept arriving till 1973, which made it the biggest internee camp.
Conditions in the camp deteriorated with each new round of internments. Food and space was shared between more people.
The camp was divided into three parts: a camp which housed civilians, a camp which housed non-combatant military-civil servicepersons, and a camp for serving military personnel. Notable internees included Tabarak Hussain, the former director-general of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and Major Taher Quddus, who was serving as defence attaché in New Delhi in April 1971.
Survivors recall “twenty men in a room, no beds, no medicine,” as outbreaks of fever and chickenpox swept through the camp. Overcrowding, abysmal sanitary conditions and the dearth of clean clothing contributed to outbreaks of infectious diseases. At least three internees died of chickenpox.
Colonial Fort to Internment Camp:
The Qadirabad camp in Gujranwala, also known as the Mandi Bahauddin Camp, is remembered by internees as being like ‘hell.’ Image: Author
In Balochistan, the colonial-era Sandeman Fort was converted into an internment camp which housed nearly 10,000 Bengali internees. Crammed into unfinished buildings, internees were forced to construct the buildings themselves. Families were squeezed into single rooms, separated only by torn blankets.
Like Shagai Fort, internees were divided by rank, which determined their access to basic needs. While officers received a limited amount of medical care, lower-ranking soldiers and civilians received none. Sepoy Slahadat-Ulla, who received an artificial leg to treat him during his internment, notes that the Pakistani army charged him Rs. 400 for the operation.
Detainees lived under the constant threat of violence. Punishments for trying to escape included beatings. Those who got caught were moved to other camps, including Jamrud Fort and Khajuri Fort in Balochistan and Lyallpur Jail in Punjab. They were put in solitary confinement.
Those who could not endure the conditions of the camp were classified as ‘pagals’ (mad). Ironically, it is these ‘pagal’ soldiers that were repatriated to Bangladesh first in 1973 as a ‘message of goodwill’ from Pakistan.
Other internees attempted to build a community behind the barbed wire of the camps. At Sandeman, parents got together to set up makeshift classrooms for children to ensure they do not miss school.
Bargaining Chips
The omission of the story of interned Bengalis from the 1971 war asks questions about which histories are written and which histories are forgotten in South Asia.
More than 50 years later, official histories ignore the internment of Bengalis in Pakistan. School textbooks make no mention of it. Public commemorations ignore it. Even in Bangladesh, narrations of the liberation struggle have forgotten the Bengalis interned in West Pakistan.
Survivors describe this silence as a second imprisonment.
The detainees were not just prisoners. For Pakistan, they were bargaining chips, which were used as leverage to secure the return of Pakistani POWs in India, avoid war crimes trials, and delay the recognition of Bangladesh.
The Bengali internment camps in West Pakistan remind us how states weaponise bureaucracy and identity. They reveal the ease with which citizenship in South Asia can be revoked, rights stripped, and entire communities erased. For those who endured captivity, remembering is not simply about revisiting the past — it is about warning that citizenship is always under question when belonging is defined by ethnicity and politics.
The internment of Bengalis is an emblematic instance of bureaucratic repression within a postcolony with parallels with the internment of ‘enemy aliens’ in the United States and the United Kingdom during the World Wars. However, the legacies of 1971’s internment of Bengalis in West Pakistan are neither limited to this ethnic group nor restricted to that time. Instead, resonances of internment can be seen in how the contemporary Pakistani state continues to label different social groups as ‘enemies of the state.’
It is not the membership of political community that grants citizenship and inalienable human rights, but the notions of belonging. The Bengali internment confirms that they did not ‘belong to the nation,’ even though they were still citizens of the nation-state of Pakistan.
Forgotten ‘Repatriates’
Bengalis arriving in Dhaka. By mid-1974, almost 120,000 Bengalis had been returned from Pakistan, including individuals who had been held in internment camps, prisons and psychiatric facilities. Image: Dawn Archives
“Interned Bengalis faced a different reality upon their return. Yet homecoming brought stigma, not celebration. Many were branded collaborators, denied promotions, or dismissed from service.”
In August 1973, India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh signed a tripartite agreement which allowed Pakistan’s Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto to secure the release of thousands of prisoners of war.
Bangladesh accepted the return of interned Bengalis, who would now become its citizens. By mid-1974, nearly 120,000 Bengalis had been repatriated from Pakistan, including those held in jails and mental institutions.
However, interned Bengalis faced a different reality upon their return. Yet homecoming brought stigma, not celebration. Many were branded collaborators, denied promotions, or dismissed from service. Some carried a cruel label: ‘bastard repatriates.’
Among them was Shafiul Azam, former chief secretary of East Pakistan, who had spent years in internment camps. Despite his seniority, Azam was ostracized after being accused of being “anti-Bangladesh” for allegedly appearing in a Pakistani propaganda film. Observers say Sheikh Mujibur Rahman himself held a negative opinion of Azam, at one point refusing to hear someone speak his name.
Tabarak Hussain, a senior diplomat, was trapped in Pakistan with his family during the war and interned until 1974. Upon his return to Bangladesh, he was demoted. A British envoy lamented the fall of “an able and honourable public servant … reduced to the status of a political pawn.”
Political tides shifted in Bangladesh for some former detainees. After Mujib’s assassination in 1975, many repatriated officers got important positions. Tabarak Hussain was made Bangladesh’s foreign secretary during the General Ziaur Rahman dictatorship.
The divide between repatriates and freedom fighters went beyond rank or pay. It was rooted in questions of loyalty and sacrifice.
“The psychological scars of internment in Pakistan and suspicions about their loyalties in Bangladesh remain alive. Many survivors conceal their internment and repatriation stories fearing government scrutiny.”
The psychological scars of internment in Pakistan and suspicions about their loyalties in Bangladesh remain alive. Many survivors conceal their internment and repatriation stories fearing government scrutiny. The children of internees continue to grow up under the same shadow. Academic Amena Mohsin, herself aged 14 when she was interned, notes that when she began researching the topic, many survivors asked her not to publish their stories due to the stigma.
The position of Bengali repatriates in South Asia can be described by Haitian anthropologist Michel-Rolph Trouillot phrase: “silences within silences.”
Their story opens up important questions: will Pakistan and Bangladesh ever acknowledge their internments in its official history? Will Pakistan learn from the systemic internment of its own citizens in 1971-1974? Will the voices of the interned Bengalis be heard?
Ilyas Chattha is a Professor of History at the Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS). He is the author of Citizens to Traitors: Bengali Internment in Pakistan, 1971–1974 (Cambridge, 2025); The Punjab Borderland (Cambridge, 2022), Partition and Locality (Oxford, 2012)