The Urdu-speaking ethnic group was stateless for many years after the partition of India – and even now remain marginalised, living in cramped settlement camps and struggling to find formal work
On his first day at high school, Khalid Hussain was accused of being the son of a war criminal. “A group of Bengali kids surrounded us and made it clear that we were not welcome. The incident still shocks me to this day,” says Hussain, who was 12 at the time. “But we just wanted to learn.”
It was not the last time Hussain, now a lawyer at the Council of Minorities, a human rights organisation he founded in 2013, experienced discrimination in his native Bangladesh.
