By Mehrab, sarjov
Pakistan perceives the Baluch struggle in Baluchistan, as a relic of outdated traditionalism and traditional immovable Sardars are obstacles to modernization; Pakistan believes traditionalists in Baluchistan are destined to be overtaken by modernity.
Baluch tribes have had traditional rivalries among themselves. Baluch tribal chiefs have encountered each other during the colonial rule. They have been encountering each other during the Pakistan and Iranian colonial rules. Tribal movements have always been alleged as created and instigated to action by special interests that time and again masked for class privilege.
In the Baluch societies, literacy is confined to a small percentage of the population. Indigenous language is not promoted in the Pakistan and Iranian schools. Those who have educated in Pakistani and Iranian languages are unable to engage in a text free communication.
Some would believe that there would be neither Baluch nor Baluchistan in the future if the Baluch continue to be disunited. The Baluch are subdivided into dialects, regions, traditions and their tribal grievances have never taken a national form. Baluch do not have a high culture; Baluch lack a literate and standard culture backed up by specialists and public education.
Baluch survived pre-modern period because there was no need for nationalism in pre-modern societies. Agrarian and artisan Baluch were ruled by Khan or Sardar or Empire who may or may not had shared culture with the great masses that worked for them on land and paid taxes. The traditional ruler did not have large bureaucracy.
Uncultivated culture characterised in pre-modern societies, which could not survive modernity, they had to be turned into high cultures otherwise they would perish. Nation and nationalism are necessary and functional for modernity. Nations are modern phenomenon nothing before them matter.
Whereas in the modern states language and culture became the cement for the unified societies, one based on uprooted traditionalized individuals who had to be integrated into nation and only acceptable identity is citizenship based upon language and culture.
Therefore nationalism must erode traditional Baluch societies, and take the language and culture as the basis for identity. In modern society we are all citizens and must be mass educated in the standardised public education system by the state.
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The Language would lay the bases for national conscious. The language creates unified field for exchange and communication. Speakers of Baluchi language are finding it difficult sometimes impossible to understand one another.
In the process of a standardising language through modern communication, the people would become aware in millions who use and read the same language, and they can only be connected through the language. The Language would help nationalist to build an image of relic central to the idea of the Baluch nation. *
The Language can varnish the words of Baluch forefathers which are not accessible to contemporary generation through Pakistani or Iranian compact languages. The Literal language creates a possibility for a new form of nationality, based on language and culture and myth.
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The Baluch National identity is defined, by the culture, language, history, tradition, customs, and religion, ethnicity and territory where Baluch have resided for millenniums.
These are the challenges of nationalism today the world order is facing that for example, has brought Pakistan and other artificially designed nation states into disgrace.
The nation in Pakistan has been created out of religion. The population of Pakistan lacks a common language, and history of the past which Pakistan could unite the masses into unified nation.
Pakistan has used a strong force which it inherited from the British colonial epoch to incorporate Baluch, Pashton, sandhi, and others into a single nation, dominated by Punjabi culture and Urdu Language.
Pakistan has employed the process of internal colonialism by which minorities are economically and politically subordinated to Punjabis and Mohijirs.
The Urdu language, Punjabi culture, and religion are the central standards for modernity and the social mobility. The Pakistanis have taken the Mullana Madodi’s doctrine of hate used it against infidel India, Jews and Christines in order to assimilate the population who are part of the demarcated territories.
In contrast, we in Baluchistan believe that, nations must be created from below using cultural resources, history, language, ethnicity, religion, customs, tradition, to mobilise the masses into an active, politicised nation. It has been argued that the nations are basis of the state. Nations provide legitimacy for the modern states. Therefore, Baluch reserve the sentiments, against Iranian and Pakistani state, which already formed the basis of war of independence.
The Baluch nationalism and Baluch state would decline to be part of the imagined universal Umma community.
The Baluch nationalism, I believe, should be directed inward to galvanise and purify the true nation and its members outward against alien oppressors for political power within the limited territory. It is necessary to awaken a healthy nationalism which is to be self-centredness; without it Baluch would not grow into nation. Simply Baluch existence does not entitle the Baluch for independence, Baluch existence must be backed up by unified force.
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Educated Elite:
The rise of nationalism among Baluch masses has brought back the educated elite where they should discover their history and mobilise Baluch people through language and culture. It is still important the celebration and commemoration of the heroic past.
The historical memories and legends are not confined to primitive people. One can find heroic past and legend throughout the modern history among European nations.
Historic recoveries will serve the educated elite to seeking entry into the living past of their revival and their ethnicity in order to mobilise its members for the quest of social status and political power.
Educated elite with their secular education will return to reconstruct ethno history. The educated elite will reverse the history through the process of vernacular mobilisation that Baluch culture is no longer passive and object of foreign domination, but it is appropriated by the intellectual and endorsed into high culture.
People become the subject of history under the slogan of popular sovereignty, at the same time their individual cultural thoughts will give the rise of the community which will also turn into a nation.
The sense of community comes into being by virtue of common political identity, social experiences which are highly valued by the masses as symbols of the destruction of colonialism, and the story of those events take the place of the legends of primitive peoples.
With return of educated elite is to create the new modes of national communication and socialisation in which ethnic values myths and memories become the basis of a political nation and a politically mobilised community.
Under the sponsorship of different kinds of educated elite in combination with certain classes, a new and distinctly national identity is created, which fuses a reconstructed ethnic folk culture to all classes of the community, that identity has its civic elements.
Members become legal citizens of the political ethno-nation, and they begin to define themselves in territorial terms as well. But the basis of their kind of national identity remains true to the domestic roots; the national identity created by intellectual and educated elite strives to stay close to it assumed ethnic cultural and boundaries. The outlook of the modern nation should be constructed from common cultural identity.
The educated elites should play the detribalising role, by furthering their interest as well as by invoking support for those who are struggling for national liberation. Indeed, Baluch elites and middle classes have unique interest that related to the benefits of modernity.
The Baluch elites and middle classes have to realise that Pakistan failed to create a homogeneous language and culture to assimilate the rest of population into that culture and language, and unable to divide the population of state into the stratum.
Educated elites stand to gain from the creation of new opportunities in independent Baluchistan. Independent Baluchistan will exclude Punjabi, Mahijir from their senior positions. Independence will create new positions for educated elite and reduces pool of competitors.
It takes little to convince Baluch that a new colonialism has arrived. The army the police, the judiciary and commerce in Baluchistan are all in non Baluch hands. Civil servants have been appointed by the outsiders to administer Baluchistan, with slightest regard for local authorities.
Baluchistan has been ours for thousands of years; Baluchistan must remain ours and therefore, we must protect it.
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Success of Baluch nationalism hangs of the shape and meaning of national identity. The identity stems from the process of language mobilisation and cultural politicisation that are the hallmark of the rate by which Baluch would be transferred into modern nation.
The national identity that Baluch generate would be different from the territorial civic identities; and it poses radical challenge to the fundamentalist nature of Pakistan state, which is based on universal Umma and Jihad.
The Baluch struggle to succeed therefore they have to reveal the kinship of the various tribes and their common cultural foundation, into common Baluch culture bases. The educated elites should create a high culture for the Baluch community where it is weak.
The educated elites have to form a culturally homogenous nation, and secure the homeland where it is not recognised, turning inactive tribes into active political communities as a subject of history. Where that history is uncertain, it would have to be reconstructed.
It is important to be selective to forget part as to remember others. Baluch nationalist should not be interested in inquiring into their past for its own sake, but throughout the process of language mobilisation of a passive tribe and the politicization of its cultural heritage will occur through the cultivation of its lyrical space and the commemoration of its golden ages.
Cultivation means identifying a scared territory that belongs historically to the Baluch community thereby it becomes holly by the association. That a scared homeland holds within its domains a collective historical memory, where heroes fought a battle and won it and command respect in order to inspire their followers. From these scared historical centres the light of Baluch identity shine onward.
Conclusion
People preserve their identity, and it gives them a sense of security, they preserve their language because of their capacity to extract goods from it, and satisfy their demands. Ethnicity is the collective will to exist.
A smallest nation on the earth will never know of their members; however, within the minds of each community lives the image of their distant community. The nations are sovereign because enlightenment and revolution have destroyed the legitimacy of religious, hierarchical dynastic realm. The global order is based on a balance of competing states, principle of nationality provide the acceptable legitimacy and focus of popular mobilisation.
Baluch have national customs and national language, history; therefore, they have taken their existence as a nation. The Baluch will elect its own head of state who lives among the Baluch themselves and rules only for the Baluch. Baluch will free themselves from the yoke of occupiers; Baluch are discontent with Iran and Pakistan where Punjabi and Persian are dominant groups. Baluch are belonging together in a coherent and stable community.
Pakistan in effect is a failed state. The Secular democratic Baluchistan will become the source of stability in south Asia; without independent Baluchistan there will not be a stable south Asia. Baluch and Baluchistan are too important to be ignored in the international affairs. Baluch has to be independent player in the South Asia.
Mehrab Sarjov is a London based political activist can be contacted at
Sarjov@hotmail.com
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