Should India act like Arjuna, the reluctant warrior, with regard to France-size territory of immense strategic interest Balochistan, where unlike West Punjab - bastion of Pakistan Army - Baloch people highly revere India? Or should it live upto the expectations of the children of Hinglaj Mata - Baloch people of Balochistan, who call the ancient Hindu deity on their homeland Nani Mandir - and openly support their liberation struggle?
In this context a tweet by Indian celebrity attracted the attention of both Indian and Baloch people.
In the tweet, lyricist Javed Akhtar, husband of Shabana Azmi, who commands the Shiv Sena's respect for challenging Muslim fanatics, asked his one point six nine million followers on Twitter: "Since Pak says they will keep in touch with Hurriyat we earn the right to give all the "moral" support to Biloch separatists. Don't we?" By "Biloch" Akhtar meant Baloch.
A day after Akhtar's tweet, Nawab Mehran Marri, a Briton who heads the militant Marri tribe after the death last June of his father Nawab Khair Bakhsh Marri, an icon of the Balochistan freedom struggle, thanked Akhtar by tweeting, "Occupied #Balochistan's latest friend is none other than the one and only @JavedAkhtarJadu. Shukria Waja Javed Sahib! "Shukria" means thank you and "waja" is the Baloch equivalent of "sir." Mehran Marri's father the late Nawab Khair Bakhsh Marri openly defended the Indian support for the Balochistan struggle in response to allegations India was discretely helping the Baloch movement through Afghanistan.
"What is strange about India… Is India such a demon, (that if) India wants to help us we deny it? Because of what we are? We are true Muslims? We are true Pakistanis?" the late Nawab Marri asked during a BBC interview, emphasising, "Neither applies."
Unfortunately, India never openly backed the Balochistan movement like Pakistan invested itself in illegally and immorally claiming Kashmir as its territory. Islamabad could sow terror in Kashmir and get away with it too because of New Delhi's weaknesses; a cursory glance at the bloody history of Kashmir, the Switzerland of the East, since the 1947 Partition holocaust shows the Congress flawed policies continues to wreak havoc to this day.
"When the full-scale invasion (of Kashmir) began on October 22, 1947, the entire Indian nationalist leadership failed to rise to the occasion," Sandhya Jain, a columnist for The Pioneer writes in the public opinion forum Vijayvaani.com. Jain calls the controversial Article 370 that granted special status to Kashmir an "illegitimate brainchild" of then Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru and possibly also then interim governor general Louis Mountbatten; Mountbatten was the chief architect of the 1947 Partition holocaust and had secretly encouraged Kashmir joining Pakistan, but was still made the first governor general of India by the Congress leadership and continued in that post for the first ten crucial months of India's independence.
Numerous reports suggest lady Edwina Mountbatten laid a "honey trap" for Nehru - even though Pamela Hicks, daughter of Mountbatten, insists in her book Daughter of Empire the intimacy between her mother and Nehru was platonic and limited to purely intellectual intercourse. Most Indians do not take such a charitable view of the relationship, while Lord Mountbatten himself called the affair of his wife with Nehru "Operation Seduction."
Pakistan, with less than 70 years of history on the world map - the word Pakistan itself did not exist in any dictionary until Chaudhry Rehmat Elahi, coined this word at the Cambridge University in 1933 in a communalistic pamphlet called: "NOW OR NEVER: Are we to live or perish forever?" But as bad karma would have it, he "perished" in the UK and was buried in Cambridge where he coined the word Pakistan after he was ordered to leave Pakistan and his belongings were confiscated by Premier Nawabzada Liaquat Ali Khan.
Despite Pakistan's claims, Kashmir has been a cradle of the Hindu and Buddhist civilisations for at least 2000 years, if not more. To change history like Muslims invaders of the past, Pakistan Army and its proxies use extreme methods in Kashmir. Arif Jamal in Call for Transnational Jihad: Lashkar-e-Taiba 1985-2014, writes, "The LeT mujahideen carry out the barbaric practice of slitting throats and beheading the Indian soldiers with the consent and support of their Pakistan Army handlers." Jihadi attacks on Kashmiri Pandits, have forced more than 3,00,000 of them to become internally displaced persons in India, missing their homeland like lost children miss their mother. Pakistan generals in the Army headquarters in Rawalpindi, claim not only Kashmir but also Balochistan and Afghanistan, "the fifth province," belongs to Pakistan.
In contrast to Pakistan's open and public support to Kashmir militants, India has remained totally silent about the tragedy that has befallen on Balochistan due to Pakistan's military aggression, just like in Kashmir. Nissar Hoath, a senior Baloch journalist in Abu Dhabi, supported Akhtar's tweet. "I agree with him (Javed Akhtar). Pakistan is creating trouble in India so it is time they talk to us."
While Maulana Abdul Kalam Azad refusal to defend Balochistan against Pakistan during the 1947 Partition tragedy is well documented, according to some Balochistan insiders quite a few powerful Baloch militant leaders who threw the gauntlet at the Pakistan Army in the last decade had desired to go live in exile in India to carry on their struggle in Balochistan, but New Delhi said no to their request, forcing them to go live in Europe.
In contrast Mumbai terrorist and terror don Dawood Ibrahim continues to live the life of a hedonic prince in Karachi, commercial capital of Pakistan, while the likes of Hafiz Saeed are treated like folk heroes. Just like many Gulf countries, there is tremendous goodwill for India among the Baloch public, intelligentsia and political leaders which New Delhi has recklessly ignored for quite too long.
Americans who are friendly to both India and Baloch say New Delhi and Washington should act in tandem and support an independent Balochistan because it would provide a more stabilised Central and South Asia. This line was forwarded by now retired scholar Selig S Harrison, South Asia expert at the Center for International Peace, and is today being supported by Americans on both the left and right of the political spectrum.
Amherst, Massachusetts-based Jane E Weisner, who has been lobbying for a free Balochistan for quite some years now, said, "A secular nation that has natural resources, that can provide economic stability for its people would be a buffer against the growing radical extremist Muslims in the region." She added Balochistan and India have a history together which both Baloch and Indians acknowledge and respect, unlike Pakistan. India could help protect Balochistan as it becomes an economically stable nation, she observed.
Weisner said Pakistan's continued radicalisation is a threat to the security of the region. "Islamabad's ties to the Taliban and possibly with the ISIS threatens the peace and freedom of all peoples of Central Asia and South Asia. India's democratic government stands as a beacon of equality and freedom and its support for free Balochistan would be a wise policy for India's strategic and commercial interests, Weisner said.
"Balochistan is 44 percent of the land mass of present day Pakistan and has almost all of its natural resources. Limiting the land size of Pakistan and shutting off the development of natural resources to sustain its economy will neutralise Pakistan's influence in the region.
"A free Balochistan would neutralise the expanding influence of China." As Pakistan military has given the Gwadar Port to China, to become part of Beijing's "string of pearls" in the Indian Ocean, many Baloch want India to counter balance that. A wave of joy had swept across the Baloch diaspora on the election victory of "chaiwala," the charismatic Narendra Modi - hated by Punjabis and Urdu-speaking mohajirs who came to Pakistan after the 1947 tragedy.
However, to date neither the government of India nor the BJP has made official public statements to support the Balochistan liberation struggle, while Pakistan pokes a thumb in India's eyes on Kashmir. "Only right-wing nationalists like us support greater independent Balochistan. That too the younger generation as the older ones still not agreeing," said. Devendra Sharma, who works for the Hindu Institute of Political Research. On their part, Baloch insist since the Hinglaj Mata is in Balochistan it is India's religious responsibility to help the Baloch.
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