Baloch National Movement — Constitution and Manifesto

The Baloch nation has always defended the freedom of its homeland and the survival of its nationhood against foreign occupiers, offering the sacrifice of its sons and daughters. To protect its colonial interests in South Asia, including the Indian subcontinent, and to pursue its expansionist imperial ambitions in Afghanistan and Central Asia, Britain turned towards Balochistan and Afghanistan at the end of the third decade of the nineteenth century. On 13 November 1839, in a bloody battle, Britain martyred Mir Mehrab Khan, the Khan of Kalat and ruler of Balochistan, and so succeeded in setting its colonial foot in our region. Thereafter, the great colonial power of its age steadily increased its interference in the internal affairs of Balochistan by force. By the weight of its power and influence, Britain imposed one-sided treaties on the Baloch rulers and divided Balochistan into several parts under different names. This repeated partition of Balochistan at the hands of colonialism gravely damaged Baloch national unity. Britain joined areas of Balochistan of the highest strategic and commercial importance — Sibi, Marri, Bugti and the Khetran areas in 1887, and the leased areas of Shaal and Bolan obtained on lease in 1883 — together with a few areas taken from Afghanistan, to form a new province named British Balochistan, which was formally made part of the Government of India. Taking full advantage of the weakness of the Khan of Kalat, the British obtained from Kalat the niabat of Noshki on 1 July 1899 for an annual payment of ninety-nine thousand rupees, and the niabat of Nasirabad on 7 February 1903 for an annual payment of one hundred and fifteen thousand rupees, and added these too to the province of British Balochistan. The British did not stop there: they also joined important agricultural areas such as Jacobabad to Sindh and swallowed up the Derajat.

The devastation of the First and, above all, the Second World War had gravely weakened Britain, so that it was no longer possible for it to maintain its colonial occupation and rule in South Asia and Balochistan. Yet, in the context of the growing Cold War with the Soviet Union, it also had to protect its interests. It therefore needed a client state in the region to stand guard over those interests, through which it could protect them.

After the Indian War of Independence of 1857, Britain had adopted a policy of “divide and rule”, fanning religious hatred to perpetuate its colonial rule and occupation in India; that same hatred now served this purpose as well. Easily turning this spark of religious hatred into a fire of enmity, Britain partitioned India and, on 14 August 1947, created a client state in the form of Pakistan. Before the cunning of the British colonial rulers, the patriotic Indian leadership became so weak that it made the historic mistake of consenting to the partition of India and the creation of Pakistan — a mistake for which the people of the Indian subcontinent are still paying, in four Pakistan–India wars and in a continuing proxy war, terrorism and Islamic extremism. The devastation of partition did not remain confined to the Indian subcontinent and South Asia: India’s historic neighbours adjoining South Asia, namely Balochistan and Afghanistan, were also caught in its flames. Before the collusion, conspiracies, breaches of faith and aggression of this new, unnatural client state of Pakistan and of its master and creator, Britain, independent Balochistan too lost its freedom in March 1948. This was so even though, on 4 August 1947, a round-table conference had been held under the chairmanship of the Viceroy of India, Lord Mountbatten, attended by the Khan of Kalat with his minister and legal adviser. At that conference the Muslim League leaders Muhammad Ali and Liaquat Ali Khan recognised Balochistan (the State of Kalat) as an independent country separate from India. On that occasion the representatives of Pakistan also signed a Standstill Agreement with the rulers of Balochistan.

Britain wished, by any means, to join the so-called province of British Balochistan — important in strategic, commercial and economic terms — to its proposed client state of Pakistan, so as to make the survival of independent Balochistan difficult, reduce its importance in regional and world politics, and so take away its freedom. This was so even though, under Section 7 of the Indian Independence Act, the leased and other areas that the British had geographically divided under various treaties were, by law, to return to Balochistan after Britain’s departure. But, trampling on the very laws they themselves had made, the British authorities did not hand back to Kalat the areas of Balochistan leased from the State of Kalat, nor did they agree on the McMahon Line and the Goldsmid Line.

Pakistan’s forced occupation of Balochistan began even before the creation of Pakistan, on 29 June 1947, when Sardar Muhammad Khan Jogezai, the member nominated from British Balochistan to the Legislative Assembly of India, said at an unofficial gathering, in the presence of a representative sent by the British colonial government, that he would attend the session of the Legislative Assembly of the proposed Pakistan. Acting in bad faith, the British representative made this personal statement of Sardar Jogezai the basis of a report conveying the wish, or decision, of British Balochistan to join Pakistan. Yet, under the law on the partition of India, the future of British Balochistan was to be decided by a referendum at a joint meeting of the members of the Quetta Municipality and the Shahi Jirga on 1 July 1947. Because Britain wished, by any means, to join the so-called province of British Balochistan — important in strategic, commercial and economic terms — to its proposed client state of Pakistan, so as to make the survival of independent Balochistan difficult, reduce its importance in regional and world politics, and take away its freedom, it acted otherwise. Under international law, the Baloch areas of the province of British Balochistan, joined to British India by lease or by other means, should have been returned to Balochistan, and the Pashtun areas taken from Afghanistan to Afghanistan. But the British authorities did not hand back to Kalat the areas of Balochistan leased from the State of Kalat; nor did they even hold the meeting of the members of the Shahi Jirga and the Quetta Municipality, fixed for 1 July 1947, to ascertain by referendum the opinion of the people on the future of the so-called province of British Balochistan.

With the collusion and backing of its masters, the unnatural state of Pakistan was not content with illegally seizing, in 1947, the “so-called British Balochistan” and the Baloch tribal areas against Baloch national unity and interests; it continued its expansionist course of forcibly occupying, step by step, the various regions of Balochistan. At the end of February 1948, when the Pakistani leader Muhammad Ali Jinnah came to Sibi to address the annual spring Sibi Darbar, he went to Dhadar to meet the Khan of Kalat and placed before him the instrument of accession to Pakistan. Mir Ahmad Yar Khan, the Khan of Kalat, informed Jinnah of the constitution of Balochistan in force for centuries, of his own lack of authority under that constitution in the matter of accession, and of the decisions and resolutions of both houses of the Kalat Parliament on this sensitive question. Disappointed, Jinnah returned to Karachi and decided to abandon the policy of persuading and pressing the Khan of Kalat to accede, and instead to commit aggression through the Sandeman policy (the Forward Policy) of winning over sardars and rulers of states with bribes and inducements. Under this new aggressive policy, Pakistan secretly called to Karachi the Nawab of Lasbela, Jam Ghulam Qadir Aliani, the Nawab of Kharan, Habibullah Nausherwani, and the Sardar of Kech in Makran, Bayan Gichki, and on 17 March 1948, at a ceremony held in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, had them sign instruments of accession to Pakistan. This act of Pakistan was an open violation of the sovereignty, freedom and territorial unity of Balochistan and of international law, and an act of aggression, against which the Khan of Kalat and his government, the Gichki sardars of Panjgur and Tump, and the Baloch people expressed strong displeasure and opposition. Ignoring their protest, the Government of Pakistan landed detachments of its army and navy at the ports of Jiwani, Pasni and Ormara on 26 March 1948 and began to advance towards Kech, while the Pakistani army in Quetta Cantonment was ordered to stand ready to attack Kalat, the centre of Balochistan. On 27 March 1948, having made Mir Ahmad Yar Khan, the Khan of Kalat and ruler of Balochistan, sign the instrument of accession at gunpoint, Pakistan forcibly occupied Balochistan. In this way the Baloch nation was deprived of its national freedom, sovereignty, identity and dignity.

Against Pakistan’s forced occupation of Balochistan, on 16 May 1948 the Baloch nation laid the foundation of the freedom movement in the form of armed resistance under the leadership of Prince Abdul Karim Baloch — a movement that, despite rises and falls at different times, continues without interruption to this day. Through its political and armed resistance, the Baloch nation has proved that it rejects Pakistan’s forced occupation of Balochistan and all colonial measures as contrary to its national and territorial unity and freedom, its distinct civilisation and identity, and its interests.

The Baloch have nourished this movement with their blood to make it strong. Since its foundation, the BNM, as a national party, has played a prominent role in the freedom movement. In the course of the struggle, about a dozen central and district leaders of the BNM have been martyred at the hands of the Pakistani army and intelligence agencies, among them the founding Chairman of the BNM, Waja Ghulam Muhammad Baloch; Lala Munir Baloch; Rasool Bakhsh Mengal, Central Senior Joint Secretary elected in 2008; the Central Finance Secretary, Haji Razzaq Sarbazi; Razzaq Gul; Shaheed Dr Mannan Baloch, Secretary General elected in 2014; and the members of the Central Committee Waja Naseer Kamalan, Ustad Ali Jan Bizenjo, Abdul Samad Tagrani, Naseer Rind, Nako Khair Bakhsh Imrani, Imdad Bijjar, Suleman Baloch, Master Barkatullah Baloch and Sajid Baloch (Jiwani). Hundreds of workers, including the Central Committee members Dr Deen Muhammad Baloch and Ghafoor Baloch, have for years been enduring torture in Pakistan’s secret torture cells. Owing to these sacrifices and to the day-and-night struggle of the BNM’s revolutionary workers, the BNM has built its standing and credibility in the Baloch national freedom movement and is playing its part as an active and strong national party. The caravan of the BNM is moving on, with high spirits, resolve and conscious action, towards its destination: freedom.

On 24 December 1987, former cadres of the BSO founded the Balochistan National Youth Movement (BNYM). Dr Abdul Hayee was elected the first Convener of the BNYM, and the Central Organising Committee included Shaheed Fida Ahmed Baloch, Ayub Jattak, Dr Abdul Malik Baloch, Manzoor Gichki, Kahda Akram Baloch, Bahram Khan Baloch, Asadullah Baloch, Mola Bakhsh Dashti and Dr Wazir Baloch.

The first convention of the BNYM was held in 1989 at the Shaheed Nawab Nauroz Khan Stadium in Shaal, at which the name of the party was changed from the Balochistan National Youth Movement (BNYM) to the Balochistan National Movement (BNM). The BNM soon fell into disagreements and split into the BNM Hayee Group and the BNM Mengal Group. The Mengal Group soon merged with Habib Jalib Baloch’s Progressive National Movement. Then, in 1996, the BNM Mengal merged with the remnants of Ghaus Bakhsh Bizenjo’s PNP to form the BNP, while the BNM Hayee Group continued under the same name.

In October 2003, the Balochistan National Movement (Hayee) merged with the newly formed Balochistan National Democratic Party (BNDP) of Hasil Bizenjo and Sardar Sanaullah Zehri, who had split from the BNP (Awami), to form the “National Party”. The founding and programme of this new Pakistan-level party were a clear deviation from the Baloch national freedom movement. To undo and reduce the effects of this attack on the Baloch national movement and the BNM, and to defeat the aims and designs of the former deviating leadership, Shaheed Ghulam Muhammad Baloch and the other nationalist leaders, cadres and workers in the party decided without delay to maintain the Balochistan National Movement with its founding programme and purpose, and announced this decision at a press conference on Wednesday, 8 October 2003. They made clear that the Balochistan National Movement (BNM) remained in being and that they rejected the merger with the Balochistan National Democratic Party as a deviation from the Baloch national movement. They also announced a twelve-member interim Organising Committee to run and organise the party. Shaheed Ghulam Muhammad was chosen as Central Organiser of the Central Organising Committee and Lala Munir Ahmed Baloch as Deputy Central Organiser, while Fazal Bugti, Abdul Qadir Samalani, Hassan Dost Jamaldini, Haji Naseer Ahmed Rind, Asa Zafar, Haji Akbar, Naseer Saleh, Sakhi Dad Baloch, Jahangir Jamaldini Advocate (under the code name Chakar) and A. S. Ahmed were chosen as members of this organising body.

When, on 24 December 1987, political leaders who had graduated from the BSO founded the BNYM (renamed the Balochistan National Movement in 1989), it was ostensibly declared a continuation of the BSO’s long struggle, and its declared aim was to fill the vacuum of a political platform in the Baloch national freedom movement and to free Balochistan from Pakistan’s forced occupation and the Baloch nation from subjugation to, and excesses by, Punjab. To this end a strategy of uncompromising struggle had been prepared under the wise leadership of Fida Ahmed Baloch. However, after the martyrdom of Fida Ahmed Baloch on 2 May 1988, those who became the heirs of his political caravan deviated in 1988 from the aims, objectives and strategy of the new party and took part in the general Pakistani parliamentary elections. Deceiving the Baloch nation, the BSO and nationalist political workers, they justified this deviation by saying that parliamentary politics would be used as a tactic and, if it did not succeed, would be abandoned. On the contrary, this group in practice made a few seats in the assembly its very goal through parliamentary politics and, to meet the standards of the Pakistani establishment and win the favour of Punjab, began to advocate the federal parliamentary system and the Constitution of 1973, which the Baloch nation had rejected.

After the decision to maintain the BNM, the party was organised, and from 30 April to 2 May 2004 the BNM Organising Committee held the party’s Central Convention. Rejecting the argument put forward by the deviating leadership in the past to justify taking part in Pakistani parliamentary elections, and abandoning that policy, the BNM began a new journey with the position of national freedom. At this session the name of the party was also changed from the Balochistan National Movement to the Baloch National Movement. Shaheed Waja Ghulam Muhammad Baloch was elected President; Shaheed Lala Munir Ahmed Baloch, Vice President; Rahim Baloch Advocate, Secretary General; Shaheed Anwar Baloch Advocate, Deputy Secretary General; Hassan Dost Jamaldini, Labour and Peasants Secretary; Haji Naseer Rind, Finance Secretary; and Younus Gangu, Press Secretary. Comrade Mola Dad, Dr Deen Muhammad Baloch, Jahangir Jamaldini Advocate, Naz Bibi, A. S. Ahmed, Imam Bakhsh, Shah Zaman Marri, Major Muhammad Ali, Rehmatullah Shohaz, Ismat Baloch, Sheikh Qadir Advocate and Qadir Samalani were elected members of the Central Committee. The Chairman of the party’s Election Committee, Waja Muhammad Hussain, administered the oath to the newly elected cabinet.

On 2 May 2004, the sixteenth anniversary of the martyrdom of Shaheed Fida Ahmed Baloch, the party’s oath-taking ceremony was held at a public rally in Shaal, addressed by the party President Shaheed Ghulam Muhammad, Vice President Lala Munir and Secretary General Rahim Advocate, together with the leaders of the Jamhoori Watan Party Humayun Marri and Amanullah Kanrani Advocate, Shafi Danish and Shakeela Baloch of the BSO, and others.

In the past, instead of openly demanding the freedom of Balochistan, the term “right of self-determination” was used in order to avoid state repression and restrictions. Within the party, however, it was understood to mean freedom, and, outwardly at least, there was no ambiguity about freedom in anyone’s mind, from the leadership to the workers and the Baloch people. The deviating leadership took advantage of this to conceal its deviation from the freedom movement. Therefore, to make the party programme clearer, the “right of secession” was added to the “right of self-determination” at the 2004 Convention. Then, at the 2008 Convention, to make the party programme entirely clear, the term “right of self-determination” was abandoned and replaced by the plain and unambiguous demand for “the freedom of Balochistan”, so that no ambiguity would remain, among the Baloch nation at large or in the minds of the world, about the aims and objectives of the BNM and the Baloch national movement.

Likewise, in the past, owing to the ideological influence of the Left on the BNM and on Baloch national politics, the party’s aims and objectives were somewhat heavily coloured by a class agenda. At its National Convention of 2004, however, the BNM brought the party programme into line with the needs of the Baloch freedom movement and declared national freedom, rather than class demands, to be the axis of its struggle.

On this subject Shaheed Waja Ghulam Muhammad used to say: Baloch political workers should certainly study all the political thought of the world, but their field of action is Balochistan; they have to change the thinking of the Baloch nation and draw it towards national politics. Our political workers must therefore first understand the needs of the Baloch national movement, our national psychology, our problems and our history. No physician in the world can cure a patient by feeling someone else’s pulse. Our hand, too, must be on the pulse of the Baloch nation.

Under the leadership of the leader of the Baloch National Movement, Shaheed Waja Ghulam Muhammad Baloch, for the first time in the history of Balochistan, the workers of the BNM came out into the field on the political front with great courage and a clear position, and began to carry the message of freedom to every corner of Balochistan and to Baloch throughout the world.

Immediately after the party Convention of 2004, the forces of the state moved against the BNM. The BNM’s Central Finance Secretary, Haji Naseer, was abducted from his shop in Mand by the paramilitary Frontier Corps (FC) and forcibly disappeared. On 3 December 2006, the party’s Central President, Waja Ghulam Muhammad Baloch, was arrested during a demonstration in Karachi and then forcibly disappeared. After the enforced disappearance of the Chairman, in view of the state repression and force used against the party, the Central Secretary General Rahim Baloch Advocate, the Central Senior Joint Secretary Muhammad Anwar Baloch Advocate, the Central Peasants and Labour Secretary Hassan Dost Jamaldini, and the Central Committee members Ghulam Qadir Sheikh Advocate and Jahangir Jamaldini Advocate went underground so that the struggle could continue. After being tortured for several months in secret torture cells, the party President Waja Ghulam Muhammad Baloch was shown as arrested at the Khuzdar police station on 20 September 2007. He was then transferred, on 21 September 2007, to the Turbat City police station, from where he was released on bail on 10 October 2007. During the enforced disappearance of Shaheed Ghulam Muhammad Baloch, the young cadres of the party — Dr Mannan Baloch, Dr Deen Muhammad Baloch, Dr Khuda Bakhsh, Dr Naseem Baloch (Chairman) and Khalil Baloch (Chairman) — played a key role in reorganising the party.

When, several months after his first enforced disappearance, Shaheed Ghulam Muhammad Baloch was brought back into public view, many false cases were brought against him; but, paying no heed to these baseless cases, he immediately resumed his political activities. In Karachi as well as in Balochistan, he mobilised the Baloch people for the freedom movement under the programme of the BNM.

In 2008, under the leadership of Shaheed Waja Ghulam Muhammad, the party’s Eighth National Council Session was held in Malir, Karachi, after which the party came out into the field once more with new resolve and spirit.

False cases were brought against Shaheed Ghulam Muhammad simultaneously in Turbat, Karachi and Shaal. During his short political journey, Shaheed Ghulam Muhammad Baloch spent most of his time travelling between Kech, Shaal and Karachi to appear in hearings of false cases pending in Pakistani courts. The purpose of these false cases, too, was to restrict the activities of Shaheed Waja Ghulam Muhammad; yet his courage and his passion for freedom did not diminish in the least, which increased public trust in the BNM, and people began to join the ranks of the BNM in great numbers.

On 3 April 2009, Shaheed Waja Ghulam Muhammad Baloch, Shaheed Lala Munir Ahmed Baloch and the BRP leader Shaheed Sher Muhammad Baloch were seized by state forces from the office of their lawyer in Turbat, in an arrest amounting to abduction, and forcibly disappeared; on 9 April 2009 the mutilated bodies of all three leaders were found at Murgap, on the outskirts of Turbat. Some time before the martyrdom of Waja Ghulam Muhammad Baloch, the party’s Senior Vice President, Dr Imdad Baloch, resigned from the BNM, after which the Junior Vice President, Asa Zafar, took over the presidency; some time later he too resigned owing to disagreements. After the martyrdom of Chairman Ghulam Muhammad Baloch, some disagreements arose within the ranks of the party, as a result of which a faction led by the veteran leader Comrade Mola Dad broke away; but the party’s cadres, workers and supporters, without falling into any confusion, soon succeeded in reorganising, activating and mobilising the BNM once again.

Initially, the motto of the BNM was “Baloch Land, Baloch Freedom and Baloch Resources”. This motto was devised to cover the programme of the BNM; but as the party moved forward, the vision of its workers and leadership became clearer. Therefore, at the 2010 Session, on the proposal of Shaheed Dr Mannan Baloch, it was changed to “Equality, Justice and Freedom”.

Shaheed Dr Mannan used to say that Balochistan is dear to us not only because of its resources and its geography; Balochistan is dear to us because it is our homeland. Whether it has resources or not, its importance to us will not diminish in the slightest. It was this thinking that led to the change of the motto.

At the 2014 Session, by setting out an ideological line, the BNM stated its vision and outline for a free Balochistan: that “the BNM seeks the freedom of Balochistan on a humanitarian basis” — that is, a complete freedom in which every form of oppression is entirely ended, and in which the Baloch people, without distinction of sex, colour, race, language, religion or class, enjoy equality, justice and freedom.

At the 2022 Session too, in keeping with the needs of the time, several notable changes were made to the party’s Constitution, and emphasis was placed on establishing regular institutions in all departments of the party.