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New Delhi, 05
May 2003
The Pakistani
case for Kashmir no longer rests on religion; the Bengali rebellion
and secession in 1971 did that argument in. It now rests upon the
more exalted principle of self-determination. That is what their
friends abroad and in India wax eloquent about. The Pakistanis no
longer harp about Indian perfidies in Junagadh and Hyderabad. Free
elections, full integration and the sheer fact of Hindus being the
major community in these two onetime princely states has put paid to
that.
But Kashmir
still dogs us. It is predominantly Muslim and the demand for
self-determination has us confused. Isn’t that what democracy is
all about? But the irony is that Pakistan is the champion of
self-determination when its own people do not enjoy any democratic
rights. The three pillars upon which the Pakistani state rests are
Allah, Army and America. The people of Pakistan do not figure in
this scheme at all. The Pakistani leaders want a diplomatic
engagement with us on Jammu and Kashmir again. Their Prime Minister
has once again donned the cloak of democracy that hangs outside Gen.
Pervez Musharaff’s bunker. But we must not shirk from talking
about self-determination with them. It’s a two edged sword and
cuts both ways. Lets take the case of Baluchistan.
The Pakistani
province of Baluchistan is a mountainous desert area of about 3.5
lakh sq.kms and has a population of over 7.5 million or about as
much as Jammu and Kashmir’s population. It borders Iran,
Afghanistan and its southern boundary is the Arabian Sea with the
strategically important port of Gwadar on the Makran coast
commanding approach to the Straits of Hormuz. Quetta is the capital
of Baluchistan. The population consists mainly of Baluchis and
Pathans. Like the Kurds, the Baluch are also a people ignored by the
makers of modern political geography. There is an Iranian province
of Sistan and Baluchestan spread over an area of 1.82 lakh sq.kms.
and with a population of over 2.5 million. Its capital is Zahedan.
Through most
of their history the Baluch administered themselves as a loose
tribal confederacy. The Baluch are an ancient people. In 325 BC,
after his abortive India campaign, as Alexander made his way back to
Babylon through the Makran Desert, the Greeks suffered greatly at
the hands of marauding Baluchis. The legend has it that they
originally came from near Aleppo in Syria and there is much
linguistic evidence to suggest that they belong to the same
Indo-European sub-group as the Persians and Kurds. They came into
Islam under the shadow of the sword of Muhammed bin Qasim’s
conquering Arab army in 711 AD.
Whatever be
their origins, by 1000 AD they were well settled in their present
homeland. The poet Firdausi records them in the Persian epic, the
Book of Kings, thus: “Heroic Baluches and Kuches we saw/Like
battling rams all determined on war.” As relatively late arrivals
in the region, the Baluchis had to battle earlier occupants of the
lands such as the Brahui tribes who still abound around Kalat. The
Brahui language belongs to the Dravidian family of languages and is
close to Tamil. Quite clearly the Brahui’s are the only Dravidian
survivors in northern India, after the Aryan invasion.
A restless
people, the Baluchis naturally pushed eastwards towards the more
fertile regions watered by the Indus River, but were halted by the
might of the Mughals. But we still have reminders of the many
Baluchi incursions in the names of the towns like Dera Ghazi Khan
and Dera Ismail Khan in the Punjab and NWFP. Unlike the Dravidians
of Mohen-jo-daro and Harappa who disappeared without a trace, the
Brahui’s made one last hurrah when they asserted their power in
Kalat. By the 18th Century Kalat was the dominant power
in Baluchistan and the Khan of Kalat was the ruler of the entire
region. But the Brahui’s paid for it by getting assimilated into
the majority Baluchis. Brahui language still survives in small
pockets but only just. My late father who served in British
India’s Defence Services Staff College at Quetta in the early
1940’s, would often tell me of hearing the local tribesmen serving
in the Staff College speaking a language that sounded remarkably
like Tamil!
The British
first came to the region in 1839 on their way to Kabul when they
sought safe passage. In 1841 they entered into a treaty with Kalat.
In the wake of Lord Auckland’s disastrous invasion of Afghanistan,
the British annexed Sind in a mood, Mountstuart Elphinsone said, was
that “of a bully who had been kicked in the streets and then goes
home to beat the wife in revenge!” The British annexed Sind in
1843 from the Talpur Mirs, a Baluchi dynasty. On June 27, 1839
Ranjit Singh died and within ten years his great prophecy on being
shown a map with British possessions in India in “ek din sab laal
ho jayega!” came to be true. After the formal surrender of the
Sikhs on March 29, 1849 and the annexation of Punjab, the British
now had a long border with the Baluchis. But learning from their
disastrous experience with the Afghans they generally preferred to
keep out of harms way on Baluchi assurances of the inviolability of
their borders.
In 1876, the
British however forced another treaty on the Baluchis and forced the
Khan of Kalat to lease salubrious Quetta to them. The Khan’s writ
still ran over Baluchistan, but now under the watchful but benign
eye of a British minister. That the Khan of Kalat was not considered
another insignificant prince was in the fact that he was accorded a
19-gun salute. With security assured and largely unfettered domestic
power the Khan led lavish and often eccentric lifestyles. One Khan
collected shoes, and to ensure the safety of his collection had all
the left shoes locked in a deep dungeon of his fort in Kalat!
Whatever the
whimsicalities of the Khans of Kalat, like the rulers of Hyderabad
and Kashmir, they enjoyed the greatest degree of autonomy possible
under the system established by the British as long as whimsy was
within reason and not inimical to British interests. This
arrangement prevailed till 1947. The urge to be independent rulers
burned equally bright in all three of them. The Khan of Kalat, Mir
Ahmad Yar Khan, went further than Hari Singh of Kashmir and Osman
Ali Khan of Hyderabad. He declared independence, while the other two
dithered and allowed events to overtake them. Unlike in Hyderabad,
it was apparent that the population largely supported the Khan. The
Baluchis like the Pathans of NWFP were not too enthused with the
idea of Pakistan. In the NWFP the separatist Muslim League led by
Mohammed Ali Jinnah was actually rejected in elections. Yet eight
months after the Khan’s assertion of independence the Pakistanis
forcibly annexed Baluchistan. But Baluchi aspirations for an
independent state were not quelled completely. In 1973 a war of
independence broke out in Baluchistan.
For five long
years there was total war. At its peak the Baluchis raised a force
of 55,000 combatants. Nearly six Pakistan Army divisions were
deployed to fight them. The Pakistan Air Force was also deployed and
its Mirage and Sabre fighter jets carried out strikes all over rural
Baluchistan. Widespread use of napalm has also been documented by
scholars like Robert Wirsing of the University of Texas and Selig
Harrison. Iran too joined in the military action and Huey Cobra
helicopter gunships of its Army Aviation were widely used. By the
time the last pitched battle was fought in 1978 5,000 Baluchi
fighters and 3,000 Pakistani soldiers had died. Civilian casualties
were many times that. The Baluchi war for independence was crushed,
but the aspirations still flicker.
Speaking at
the 57th session of the Commission of Human Rights at
Geneva between March 9–April 27, 2001, Mehran Baluch, a prominent
Baluch leader said: “Our tragedy began in 1947, immediately after
the creation of Pakistan. The colonialist army of Pakistani Punjab
forcibly occupied Kalat at gunpoint.” Even now a struggle
continues in Baluchistan. Leading Baluchi leaders like Sardar
Attaullah Mengal, Sardar Mahmood Khan Achakzai and Nawab Khair Baksh
Marri, heads of the three great Baluch clans, have been leading
protests over the economic exploitation of the regions great natural
resources to the exclusion of the local people. Marri and hundreds
of his supporters are under arrest.
Till 1977 the
Indira Gandhi government actively worked for the democratic
aspirations of the Baluchis and Pathans. Baluchi fighters were
trained in the deserts of Rajasthan. We also provided them with
financial and diplomatic assistance. With Bangladesh free, Indira
Gandhi reckoned that Sind, Baluchistan and Pakhtunistan should
follow.
After her
electoral defeat in 1977, Vajpayee as the Janata government’s
Foreign Minister made his first misguided and woolly-headed attempt
to normalize relations with Pakistan. We now remember Lahore as his
first, but that is not correct. Indian support to the various
movements struggling for self-determination in Punjabi dominated
Pakistan was withdrawn. LK Advani was as much a comrade in arms then
as he is now for he did not protest even when the Jiye Sind
movement of GM Syed was betrayed. He was quite pleased with being
able to go to his hometown of Karachi and visit his old school.
Vajpayee’s
assurances to Zia, the man who initiated the policy of “death by a
thousand cuts” to destroy India, ensured that the Baluchis were
forced to leave their camps in Rajasthan and all financial, military
and diplomatic assistance was cut. Even though the Janata regime did
not last very long, the damage was done.
Now
the Pakistanis want to talk to us about self-determination!
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