Author: M.V.Kamath
Publication: Free Press Journal
Date: July 31, 2009
The Baluchis need no help from India; they
are fully capable of fighting their own battles as they have shown in the
past. What that shows, irrespective of Gilani's charges against India, is
that in the matter of the Two Nation Theory based on which Pakistan was created,
it has no leg to stand on.
Tv here has been a lot of controersy over
the Joint Statement issued on July 17 in Sharm-el-Sheikh, following the talks
between Prime Minister of India and Pakistan's Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani,
in which a reference was made to India's alleged interference in Baluchistan.
That reference was entirely uncalled for and by including it in a Joint Statement
India has not only self-incriminated itself but has unconsciously admitted
to the charge that Baluchis are getting India's support, even indirectly.
The Baluchis need no help from India; they
are fully capable of fighting their own battles as they have shown in the
past. What that shows, irrespective of Gilani's charges against India, is
that in the matter of the Two Nation Theory based on which Pakistan was created,
it has no leg to stand on.
Islam is by no means a unifying factor as
first Bangladesh has shown and prior to it, both the North West Frontier Province
and Baluchistan have shown. The very concept of Pakistan is under challenge
and the Baluchis have long been proving it. Baluchistan constitutes 42 per
cent of Pakistan's land mass and if Baluchistan secedes, Pakistan has no ground
to claim a separate identity. That is why it is so anxious to hold on to Baluchistan
no matter at what cost. And Baluchistan has paid heavily for Pakistan's aggressiveness.
Since partition there have been four mini-wars between the Baluch and Pakistan
forces in none of which was India even vaguely involved.
The first war was in 1948 when the then nascent
Pakistan Army forced Mir Ahmed Yar Khan to abdicate. It was by any reckoning
a conquest. Mir Ahmed Yar Khan was compelled to sign an accession agreement
ending Kalat's de facto independence. It was left to his brother, Prince Abdul
Karim Khan to carry on the freedom struggle. Basing himself in Afghanistan,
he conducted guerilla warfare against the Pakistan Army. The Prince invited
leading members of nationalist political parties like the Kalat State Nationalist
Party, the Baloch League and the Baloch National Workers Party to join him
in the struggle for the creation of an independent Greater Baluchistan. India,
then, was nowhere in the picture.
The second conflict (1958-59) was led by Nawab
Nowroze Khan who took up arms. He and his followers were charged with treason
and arrested and confined in Hyderabad (Sind) jail. Five of his family members
(sons and nephews) were subsequently hanged and the Nawab himself died in
captivity.
The third conflict (1963-69) was led by Sher
Mohammad Bijarani Marri. What had happened was that after the second conflict
the Pakistan Government had built strong armed forces bases in Baluchistan
to contain separatism. Marri inaugrated a counter-force which bombed railway
tracts and ambushed Pakistan armed convoys. The insurgency spread to over
45,000 sq miles. But the rebellion failed, considering Baluchistan, a tribal
nation, has hardly a middle class to sustain it.
The fourth conflict (1973-77) was led by Nawab
Khair Baksh Marri but this was mercilessly crushed by the Zulfikar Bhutto
regime which launched a full-scale military operation. The army and para-military
forces numbering more than 80,000 was re-inforced by helicopters, gunships
and armoured vehicles. Despite that the forces suffered 3,300 casualties but
some 7,000 Balochis had to take refuge in Afghanistan. Another 8,000 were
killed.
The fifth conflict from 2004 to the present
led by Nawab Akhtar Khan Bugti almost ended when the Nawab was killed in fighting
the Pakistan Army, in August 2006.
In April 2009 Baloch National Movement President
Ghulam Mohammad Bloch and two other Nationalist leaders (Lala Munir and Sher
Muhammad) were seized from their office "handcuffed, blindfolded and
hustled into a waiting pick-up truck, right in front of their lawyer and neighbouring
shopkeepers. Five days later their bodies "riddled with bullets"
were found in the countryside sparking "rioting and weeks of strikes,
demonstrations and civil resistance in cities and towns in Baluchistan".
Where can India possibly come in the picture?
Baluchistan has every right to be independent. It is kept down by sheer force
and downright brutality, when it could have been happily a part of Muslim
Pakistan. If a cent per cent Muslim state refuses to be part of Pakistan,
by what logic can Islamabad claim to speak for Jammu and Kashmir? Which, on
its own, acceded to India? Pakistan has been misbehaving like a spoilt child,
it has been playing havoc in Kashmir.
Pakistani terrorists mostly Army men have
been infiltrating into Jammu and Kashmir. Can Pakistan, hand on heart, say
that Hindu jihadis are operating in Baluchistan? On what Pakistani jihadis
have been doing to Jammu & Kashmir, India can do to Baluchistan which,
on principled grounds, India has desisted from doing. India does not believe
in an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. Unlike Pakistan, India functions
on principles.
Pakistan should remain grateful to India for
resisting the temptation to pay it back in the same coin. Its leaders don't
understand decency. Pakistan is adept at destroying demographic equilibria
whereas India has never tried to flood the Kashmir vale with nonKashmiris.
But consider what has happened to Karachi. According to Stephen Cohen a South
India expert, Karachi now has a population of 5.5 million Urdu and Gujarati
speaking Mohajirs, 2 million Punjabis, 1.5 million Pushtuns reducing the local
Sindhis a minority in their own city with a population of less than a million.
Altaf Hussain, head of the Muttahida Quami
Movement (MQM) has said on several occasions that the creation of Pakistan
was a mistake. It was and continues to be. It should understand Indian high-mindedness
in accept it for what it is.
As Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, our Indian
saint, said, India does not want even a square inch of Pakistani territory.
India wants peace. It should have talks, but with whom? Zardari? Gilani? In
Pakistan what matters is the Army and the ISI. For peace in the subcontinent
what is needed is defanging the Pak Army. The people of Pakistan can do that.
Can they? The United States can do that. But would it? And a war can accomplish
it. Dr Singh is right, but does Pakistan want a war? The issue is not a matter
of trusting Pakistan's civilian leaders who don't matter. What is needed is
psychiatric treatment of Pakistan's Generals whose mind is set in the era
of the Ghoris and Ghaznis, and who are beyond all redemption.
One doesn't talk to thugs to get them around.
The Prime Minister should read up on Lord Bentinck.
He must also remember that his American friends
won't be of any help. They are specialists in running with the hare and bunting
with the bounds. With a saint as a Prime Minister India does not require softies.
