'Balochis will rise again'

As a correspondent in Pakistan I had an insight into Balochistan for the first time in 1960-61. The area was in the news when Western wire services reported rumblings of revolt in Pakistan's largest province.

Luckily for me there was a knowledgeable Balochi lecturer in Rawalpindi where I was stationed. He taught history part-time in the local Gordon College. A young man in his late 20s, he was the source on Balochi developments to many of our Pakistani colleagues but they could not use most of what he told them about the happenings in the area. So they would pass it on to me.

Like Nawab Akbar Khan Bugti, 'Bugti' for short, the lecturer also was from Sui, where massive reserves of natural gas had been discovered in 1952. (There was an abortive agreement for the sale of piped Sui gas to India when Field Marshal Ayub Khan's was president.)

Mind you, although martial law had been lifted, Pakistan remained under 'Field Marshal law', referring to Field Marshal Ayub Khan's dictatorship. Indirect elections under his 'basic democracy' system were still to take place. As the two Indian correspondents in 'Pindi, we were under intense watch.

For a government institution, the Gordon College was an interesting establishment. The geography lecturer would openly say in the classroom that he was not used to drawing the map of a truncated country. That was nearly 15 years after the partition of the subcontinent.

He was in his late 40s and apparently did not mind speaking out his sentiments. But our colleagues - many of them Mohajir migrants from Uttar Pradesh and Bihar struggling to strike roots in Ayub Khan's capital after having shifted from Karachi - were uneasy to be seen in my company.

Archaeological and historical evidence showed that what had come to be known as Balochistan was already inhabited in the Stone Age, 7,000-3,000 B.C. Until overrun by Alexander the Great, it was part of the Persian Empire, with the appellation of "Maka".

Muhammad bin Qasim brought Islam to it in 711 A.D. when he conquered Sind, but the area was too remote to be controlled by any of the later local dynasties.

More significantly, the lecturer and my Pakistani colleagues credited me with kinship with the Balochis because the Brahui language of the tribes occupying the hills around Kalat belonged to the same family as Tamil - Dravidian, which is outside the Indo-European group. (They did not perceive any difference between Tamil and my mother tongue Telugu because we are all "Madrasis"!)

The Brahuis are seen as the last survivors of a Dravidian population, which perhaps helped in the founding of the Indus Valley civilisation.

Another nugget was that Balochistan was not part of Pakistan at its birth in August 1947. It had to be virtually annexed in 1948. The last ruler of Kalat, Mir Ahmad Yar Khan (1902-79), did not sign the merger treaty with the new dominion, taking advantage of loopholes in the state's 1876 treaty with the British.

That led to Kalat's forcible merger with Pakistan along with Balochistan in tow to become Pakistan's largest province. Ten years later, the Sultan of Oman sold the strategic Gwadar port and adjacent area to Pakistan, completing the present territorial shape of Balochistan. The Gwadar area had been gifted to an ancestor of the Sultan of Oman by the then Khan of Kalat.

The current phase of turmoil in Balochistan began in January 2005 when Frontier Corps personnel stationed at Sui reportedly raped a local woman doctor. The victim, Shazia Khalid, was ultimately sent off to Canada but public resentment against "Punjabi atrocities" simmered.

Bugti and his nationalist allies, especially Balaj Marri, the Balochistan Liberation Army leader, made an issue of their demand for an increased share of wealth from natural resources extracted from the province.

Bugti was not a run-of-the-mill rabble-rouser. After graduation from the prestigious Aitchinson College of Lahore, he went to Oxford for higher studies. A polished speaker in Urdu as well as his native Balochi, he was forward looking and creative in his approach to public life.

Although the Pakistani Army and bureaucracy were gunning for him, Ayub Khan found him a potential ally in the nation building. So with the help of the Khan of Kalat, related through his daughter's marriage, he sorted out the trouble amicably. Later, General Zia-ul-Haq also got on famously with Bugti, who was made governor of the province from 1973 to 1977.

But Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, first when he replaced General Yahya Khan as chief martial law administrator and later as prime minister, unleashed terror on Balochistan using helicopter gunships and missiles to maim and kill the tribals.

In the present crisis, General Pervez Musharraf's troops have killed Bugti, his two grandsons and at least a score or so tribal followers of Bugti. The tribals have undoubtedly suffered a setback in the armed struggle. But the psychological aspect of the Balochi struggle continues.

As the president of the Balochistan National Party, Sardar Akhtar Mengal, has poignantly pointed out: "After every 10 years they gift us dead bodies of our leaders... We will not forget this. Bugti's murder shall not go unavenged."

In other words, "the Balochis will rise again".

Article Source: http://www.share.onlypunjab.com

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