Pakistan- the Balochistan Conundrum

by Tilak Devasher

  Hindus

  Hindus have enjoyed a lot of goodwill in traditional Baloch society. They were, in fact, very prominent in the economic life of the province. Historically, a local Hindu invariably headed the finance ministry in Kalat. There were also examples of Hindus serving as governor of a province. When the British laid siege to Kalat in 1839, Finance Minister Dewan Bucha Mull, a Hindu, died defending Kalat. During the communal carnage of the Partition in 1947, it was only in Balochistan that the Hindu community was untouched and continued to live in peace. Under Kalat’s constitution promulgated by the Khan in 1947, five Hindus were elected to the fifty-two-member Lower House—Dar-ul-Awan.50

  In 2003, a HRCP team commented about the tradition of tolerance, noting that the Hindu minority displayed no visible feelings of insecurity. Forced conversions were not an issue. The Hindus considered themselves to be a part of the Baloch struggle for their rights.51 There was a sea change by 2009 when another HRCP team reported that the Hindus seemed to be the worst affected by the actions of both the state and the militants. Hindus were worried about dwindling employment opportunities, kidnapping for ransom and forced conversion of Hindu girls to Islam. For example, in 2009, more than 1,000 Hindus lived in the town of Kalat. They told the HRCP that they no longer felt safe in Kalat’s exclusive Hindu Mohallah.

  There was a lot of pressure on the community to move out and settle in a new locality but they were afraid to do so out of fear for their security. Hindus complained that they could not go out of town even in daytime for reasons of security; they had failed to get an appointment with the Balochistan chief minister and the governor to convey their concerns; for the last five years, the district minority committee had not met, indicating the government’s indifference to their problems. The police rarely took notice of crimes against them; Hindu traders had to pay extortion money amid threats of their shops being bombed unless they made the payment. In short, they felt like second-class citizens. The community was afraid that the tradition of tolerance that was once the hallmark of Baloch society was coming to an end.52

  Although conversion of Hindu girls through marriages was not as widely reported in Balochistan as in Sindh, a few cases of conversion had taken place. In Quetta, some cases were reported in which young Hindu girls were first lured into a relationship and then converted to Islam.53

  There was no improvement in the situation in 2011 when local elders of the Hindu community shared with the HRCP mission their concerns about targeting of members of their community amid increasing lawlessness in Balochistan. A social activist from the Hindu community drew the mission’s attention to growing discrimination against minorities in Balochistan in the last few years. He said more than thirty persons from the Hindu community had been kidnapped for ransom. Those who tried to resist kidnapping attempts were killed. He said that members of the Hindu community were migrating to other countries but that was possible only for the affluent ones.

  Education of the girl child in the minority communities had been seriously impacted as parents feared that they would be kidnapped and forcibly converted to Islam. He cited the conversion and marriage of one such girl, Sapna Kumari, where the Mullah who had kidnapped and forced her to embrace Islam threatened to murder her three brothers and father if she testified in court that she had been converted and married against her will. Kumari was a minor but the court ordered her to go with her ‘husband’. He said that personnel of the intelligence agencies also targeted members of the Hindu community and inquired about their relatives in India and elsewhere.54

  One of the reasons for targeting the Hindu population was their economic prosperity on account of their prominence in trade. They were, therefore, regularly kidnapped for ransom. The Hindu community in Quetta claimed that the house of every single member of their community had been robbed at least once. Their children were not safe and they were living in constant fear. As a result, systematic migration had taken place from areas with substantial concentration of Hindu population. For example, Mastung district had a Hindu population of at least 600 individuals a few years earlier. No more than forty remained in 2013. In fact, by 2013, 40 per cent of the minority population had left the province due to rising intimidation, forced conversions, violence and intolerance.55

  4

  Language

  BALOCHISTAN IS A MULTILINGUAL PROVINCE. Though Balochi/Brahvi and Pashto are the dominant languages, Urdu, Punjabi, Seraiki and Sindhi are also spoken in certain areas.

  Population by mother tongue in percentage terms as per the 2017 census and its comparison with the 1998 census is as follows:

  Language distribution as per districts in percentage terms in the 1981 census was as follows1:

  Two distinct linguistic streams make up the Baloch—Balochi and Brahvi. Balochi is believed to have originated in a lost language linked with the Parthian or Medean civilizations that flourished in the Caspian and adjacent areas in the pre-Christian era.2 According to Selig Harrison, while Balochi ‘is classified as a member of the western group of the Iranian branch of the Indo-European language family, consisting of Persian, Pashto, Balochi and Kurdish, Balochi is a separate language and is closely related only to one of the members of the Iranian group, Kurdish’. Though it has borrowed from Persian, Sindhi, Arabic and other languages, it has preserved distinctive features of its own.3

  According to Inayatullah Baloch, prior to the nineteenth century, Balochi was an unwritten language, used in conversation in the Baloch court. The official written language was Persian. It was British linguists and historians who introduced Balochi in the Roman script. In the late nineteenth century, the Naksh or Arabic script became popular.4

  Balochi can be divided into two major dialect groups, namely Eastern Balochi and Western Balochi. Eastern Balochi is spoken mainly in the north-eastern areas of Balochistan and in neighbouring areas of the provinces of Punjab and Sindh. Western Balochi is spoken in the western and southern areas of Balochistan as well as in Karachi and other parts of Sindh, the Gulf States, Iran, Afghanistan and Turkmenistan.5

  According to European scholars, ‘Brahvi reveals a clear and unmistakable resemblance to the Dravidian languages of southern India’, especially Tamil. The Brahvi are perhaps the only Dravidian survivors in northern India, after the Aryan invasion. Arguing on linguistic basis, Muhammad Sardar Khan believes that the Brahvis are of Dravidian origin. However, he accepts that most of the Brahvi population, as estimated by him in 1958 ‘less than quarter of a million’, was racially Baloch.6 Noted commentator Mohan Guruswamy writes that he ‘… ran into a bunch of school kids from Kalat at the National Museum in Karachi and they were amused that I knew that uru meant village, arisi meant rice and tanni meant water even to me from distant southern India.’7 Interestingly, Eelam (which means ‘independence’ in Tamil) was the name of a Brahvi-Urdu weekly that started publication in 1960 and had exhorted the government to promote both Brahvi and Balochi.

  Multilingualism is common among the Baloch and Brahvi. Thus, Tariq Rahman notes, ‘The Balochi and Brahvi languages are symbols of the Baloch identity, which is a necessary part of Baloch nationalism.’8 Selig Harrison adds, ‘Despite the isolation of the scattered pastoral communities in Balochistan, the Balochi language and a relatively homogeneous Baloch literary tradition and value system have provided a unifying common denominator for the seventeen major Baloch tribal groupings scattered over the 207,000-square mile area.’9

  Baloch–Brahvi Differences

  An effort has been made to create divisions in the Baloch national movement by projecting Brahvi as a separate ethnic/linguistic group. Pakistani governments, as the British before them, classified the Brahvi as a separate ethnic group in order to weaken Baloch nationalism.10 As Nina Swidler, an anthropologist who studied the Brahvis, notes, ‘Baloch scholars accept past ethnic and tribal divisions, but are reluctant to do so in the present. They point to the cultural similarities between Baloch and Brahvi that far outweigh their differences, and suspect the government
of fanning ethnic differences to undermine a national identity.’11 She did not discover much difference between the Baloch and the Brahvis, apart from the language. Selig Harrison writes, ‘In terms of vocabulary ... Brahvi is merely a variant of Balochi.’12

  Another interesting element, which strengthens the cause of Baloch nationalism is the bilingualism of the Brahvis.13 The majority of the Brahvis regard Balochi as their second language. Prominent Brahvi families, like the royal family of Kalat and the Bizenjo family, speak Balochi as their first language. Moreover, almost all the Brahvi tribes in Iranian Balochistan speak only Balochi.14 It is interesting to note that many founders and prominent members of the Baloch national movement, like Mir Abdul Aziz Kurd, Mir Ghaus Bakhsh Bizenjo and Agha Abdul Karim, are of Brahvi origin.

  Both Balochi and Brahvi-speaking intellectuals and politicians emphasize unity and similarities rather than the differences while articulating and promoting Baloch nationalism. Both Baloch and Brahvi intellectuals cite Koord Gal Namik, a book written in 1659 by Akhund Saleh Mohammad, a minister in the court of Mir Ahmed Khan I, the Khan of Kalat, as proof that they are one people. The book asserts that the Baloch are Kurds and that the Brahvis, called Brakhuis, are one of the tribes of the Kurds.15 What this shows is the desire as far back as the seventeenth century to emphasize the commonalities between the Brahvi and Baloch tribes. Clearly, it is in the interests of both Baloch and Brahvi speakers to be treated as one people. Hence, Baloch nationalists—both Baloch and Brahvi—reject the idea of there being antagonism in the Brahvi and Baloch language movements.

  Over time, the Baloch language and culture have come to resonate throughout most of the province so that most of the population can be characterized as Baloch. ‘See to our graveyards’, Dawood Khan Ahmadzai, son of the last Khan of Kalat, Mir Ahmad Yar Khan, pointed out, ‘our forefathers are engraved in their gravestones as the Baloch.’ He continued, ‘We follow the same customs from the cradle to the grave.’16

  An interesting example of the Brahvi regarding themselves as part and parcel of the Baloch nation relates to the Khan of Kalat. In 1932, the British External and Political Department prepared a draft speech for the Khan and sent it to him for his approval. The Khan objected to the words ‘Brahvi–Baloch’ and demanded the removal of the word ‘Brahvi’ on the plea that Brahvi are Baloch and not a separate group.17 In 1947, the government of Kalat wrote to the British government that Brahvis are racially and culturally Baloch.18 In his address to the Baloch nation on 15 August 1947, the day of Independence, Khan Ahmad Yar Khan declared: ‘I am proud to address you in Balochi today. Insha Allah, whenever I will address you in future, it will be in Balochi because it is the language of the Baloch nation.’19

  Given the attempts of the state to fan the Baloch–Brahvi differences, Baloch nationalists do not give primacy to identifying language as the only criterion for nationality. They see such attempts as a conspiracy of the anti-Baloch forces, i.e., government of Pakistan or foreign scholars. Since the Brahvis see themselves as Baloch, the supposed element of tension between Brahvi and non-Brahvi Baloch intellectuals is not really relevant. Baloch identity is defined more by a certain cultural similarity, a way of life, rather than giving primacy to language alone. Though language has been an important marker of identity, it has been less important as a symbol of Baloch nationalism than similar movements among the speakers of Bengali, Sindhi, Pashto, Seraiki and Punjabi.

  Growth of the Baloch Language Movement

  There were two trends that sowed the seeds of the language movement as well as Baloch nationalism. The first was the accounts of European writers and travellers in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries which, according to Taj Mohammad Breseeg, enthused Baloch consciousness of modern Baloch nationalism. Such works would include Lt. Henry Pottinger’s Travels in Beloochistan and Sinde (1816) that gave a detailed account of the geography, history and politics (1809-10) of Balochistan. This was followed by the four-volume work of Charles Masson (1842); A.W. Hughes’s (1877) work on Baloch history, geography, topography and ethnology that included a comprehensive map of Balochistan for the first time; the works of Longworth Dames (1904) and (1907), and other British officials and scholars who prepared the Provincial Series of the Imperial Gazetteer of India (1908), that included the Balochistan District Gazetteer. Thus, by the early twentieth century, writes Taj Mohammad Breseeg, ‘… the western methodology for the conceptualization of the Baloch nation was established.’20

  The second trend was the growth of the anti-British intellectual movement started in the 1880s in Balochistan, called the ‘Darkhani movement’. It was inspired and pioneered by Maulana Mohammad Fazil of Darkhan (now called Fazilabad). The Maulana called a gathering of the Ulema in 1883, where it was decided to translate religious books in Persian or Arabic into Balochi and Brahvi to effectively counter missionary propaganda.21 This literary movement produced a fairly large number of books up to the end of the nineteenth century that were published from the Maktaba-e Darkhani (the Darkhani school).22

  The British replaced Persian as the official language with Urdu and English. The deliberate introduction of an Indian language, Urdu, to replace Persian was done to isolate Balochistan from the Iranian Balochistan.23 Pakistan has followed the example of the British. In its attempt to forge a common identity and snuff out provincial sentiments, Pakistan has not allowed Balochi to be the language of instructions in schools even at primary level. In fact, a unique feature of Balochistan is that in the University of Balochistan in Quetta, Balochi language is taught at the master’s level but not in the primary schools or in basic educational institutions.

  In 1990, the Balochistan Assembly passed a bill called the The Balochistan Mother Tongue Use Bill, No. 6 of 1990 that sought to make Balochi, Brahvi and Pashto compulsory medium of instruction at the primary level in rural schools. However, on 8 November 1992, during the chief ministership of Taj Mohammad Jamali who headed the Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz) (PML-N) government, a cabinet decision was taken to discontinue the experiment. The textbooks board was asked not to produce any more books nor were teachers imparted any further training. Most writers called this decision a conspiracy of the Punjabi bureaucracy that did not favour the development of a Baloch identity.24

  Despite these constraints, Balochi language has been an important unifying factor among the Baloch. It has made an important contribution in making the people conscious of their separate identity. As Brian Spooner wrote, ‘Baloch identity in Balochistan has been closely tied to the use of the Balochi language in inter-tribal relations.’25 At the same time, the Baloch nationalists realize that their language requires standardization and modernization as well as the creation of new terms to express modern knowledge.

  In 1927, the Baloch nationalists, Abdul Aziz Kurd and Master Pir Bakhsh, also known as Nasim Talwi, together started publishing a newspaper called Balochistan in Delhi.26 By the 1930s, the first modern Baloch political groups were organized and newspapers began to appear. Abdul Aziz Kurd’s Ajnuman-e-Balochistan (Organisation for the Unity of Balochistan) published Al-Baloch, a weekly from Karachi, which demanded an independent state comprising the Kalat State, British Balochistan, Dera Ghazi Khan and Iranian Balochistan. From the inception of the Baloch literary movement, themes of nationalism and ethnic identity were popular and many Baloch writers were involved in nationalist political struggles.27 Their concerns were secular: identity, freedom, control over resources, jobs, power and so on, and were expressed in the idiom of political debate.

  Role of Electronic and Social Media

  The growth of the electronic and especially social media has been embraced by the Baloch to maintain contact with the Baloch diaspora. According to Taj Mohammad Breseeg, the Baloch have established online magazines, newsgroups, human rights organizations, student groups, academic organizations and book publishers for a trans-national community. Some of these informative and insightful English media include: Balochistan TV, balochwarna news, radiobalochi.org, bal
ochvoice.com, balochunity.org, balochinews.com, zrombesh.org, baloch2000.org, etc. Based out of the country, they have significantly contributed to the development of the Baloch identity.28

  The social media, especially Facebook, has brought about a silent revolution to change the way Balochi language is written. The script in which Balochi is written is Arabic. The move to change the script to Roman, according to Táj Balóc (formerly Taj Baloch), was because, ‘The Arabic script is a major factor in the underdevelopment of the Balochi language. Native Balochi speakers can easily read Urdu, also written in the Arabic script, but they find it hard to read their own language in the same script. The reason is that Balochi is a vowel-sensitive language and the Arabic script supports only consonant-sensitive languages.’29

  As a result, many times the Arabic script confuses the Baloch in writing. For example, three different words for three different things—lion, milk, poetry—have three unique vowel sounds in Balochi. But when they are written in the Arabic script, they look the same. In the Arabic script, vowels are usually dropped. Only in religious texts, consonants are regularly accompanied by vowels in order to avoid any rare confusion. ‘Also, there are only six vowels in Arabic. Balochi has ten. How do you write the additional Balochi vowels in this script?’ Táj Balóc asks.30

  The strongest argument against changing the script is of course religious. The very first drafts of written Balochi, which came from British officers during the colonial rule, were written in Roman. But later, the Arabic script was chosen for religious reasons, as an overwhelming majority of the Baloch followed Islam. But, argues Balóc, ‘Turks are also Muslims. Does it affect their faith when they use the [Roman] script? It’s a totally linguistic issue. Why make it religious?’ Apparently, the man who standardized the current Arabic script for Balochi in the 1950s, Syed Hashmi, was convinced that Balochi was better off with the Roman script. However, he was forced to follow the Arabic script for religious reasons.31