Biharis are Urdu-speaking, non-Bengalis who emigrated from the state of Bihar and other parts of northern India during the 1947 partition. They are concentrated in the Dhaka and Rangpur areas and number some 300,000. In the 1971 independence war many of them sided with Pakistan, as they stood to lose their positions in the upper levels of society. Hundreds of thousands went to Pakistan and those that remained were interned in refugee camps. Their population declined from about 1 million in 1971 to 600,000 in the late 1980s. Refugees International has called them a "neglected and stateless" people as they are denied citizenship by the governments of Bangladesh and Pakistan. As nearly 40 years has passed, two generations of Biharis have been born in these camps. Biharis were granted Bangladeshi citizenship and voting rights in 2008.