Citizens to Traitors: The Bengali Internment in Pakistan
Key information
- Date
- Time
-
5:15 pm
- Venue
- SOAS, University of London
- Room
- TBC
About this event
Join author Ilyas Chattha for a book talk on the internment of Bengalis in Pakistan after the 1971 war, exploring how citizens were reclassified as suspected traitors.
The 1971 Bangladesh Liberation War is most often remembered for its devastating human toll and the international dispute over Pakistani prisoners of war held in India. Less examined is the internment of thousands of Bengalis in (West) Pakistan between 1971 and 1974. These internees - ranging from senior civil servants and military officers to ordinary civilians—were suddenly reclassified from citizens to suspected traitors. Ilyas Chattha's talk will discuss the making and unmaking of citizenship in the aftermath of the Bangladesh War, explaining how suspicion of treason facilitated processes of denaturalisation and legitimised collective extrajudicial punishment through mass internment.
About the Speaker
Educated at the universities of Warwick and Southampton, Ilyas Chattha is Associate Professor of History at LUMS. He is the author of Citizens to Traitors: The Bengali Internment in Pakistan, 1971-1974 (Cambridge, 2025), The Punjab Borderland (Cambridge, 2022) & Partition and Locality (Oxford, 2012). His upcoming project focuses on the Legacies of the 1965 & 1971 Wars and Enemy Property in South Asia.
Image credit: Shagai Fort, constructed in the 1920s and later used as an internment camp. Photograph by Ilyas Chattha.
Book Cover
