Indians, Baloch paying high price for Nehru romance; will Modi correct blunder?

PM narendra Modi addressing his nation from the Red Fort, August 15, 2016

A Baloch folkloric expert and historian has said Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru did whatever he could, even starving the nascent Kalat state (Balochistan) so as to deny the Baloch people statehood during the 1947 Parition Holocaust.

Taking part in a WhatsApp discussion forum that brings together Baloch and international supporters of Balochistan, Professor Sabir Badalkhan, who now lives in Italy, said Nehru "behaved very shortsighted. And both the Baloch and India are paying the price."

The professor said not only the British but also India stabbed Balochistan in the back adding both New Delhi and London had royally betrayed Balochistan ruler Mir Ahmadyar Khan. "The Khan avoided the merger till his very last. He feared Pakistan and was afraid of any armed conflicts with Pakistan as he knew about his power," he said. "India had warned that she would not accept the independence of Balochistan at any cost. 

Professor Badalkhan said during the last days of Kalat statehood, "the Khan was abandoned by his Prime Minister, by the Chief of the Army Staff, while his Foreign Minister was conspiring with Pakistan to keep his position if he convinced the Khan to merge with Pakistan and so on." 

He said Pakistan illegally merged the bordering vassal states of Kalat, Mekran, Lasbella and Kharan and the Khan's Kalat state that was the center of a historic Balohc confederacy was left landlocked but even then he didn't sign the merger and protested the merger of these. 

He said those interested in know more about the last tumultuous days of the Kalat state should read the Memoir of Douglas Fell, the Foreign Minister, Defence Mnister and Prime minister of Kalat state; and the the dispatches of Sylvia Matheson, then the BBC correspondence but a serving captain of American Army and an agent of British MI5. the late Matheson later wrote, Tigers of Balochistan on the Bugti tribe.

"It is very clear that the Khan, when he was abandoned by all - even by the majority of the pro-Congress Kalat State National Party - he didn't abandon the dream of keeping his country independent. "The rest is known to everyone," Professor Badalkhan said.

To a question, Professor Badalkhan said it was true that the Khan of Kalat nominate Jinnah as his lawyer and Jinnah pleaded his case brilliantly. "Jinnah recognized Kalat as an independent country with a status like Nepal and had agreed to talk on the leased areas of British Balochistan but the British forced him to  de-recognizing Kalat's independent status."

One of the main founders of modern Baloch nationalism, former Balochistan governor Mir Ghous Bakhsh Bizenjo, who used to stay at this writer's family home in Karachi, confirmed to him that the Congress leadership under Maulana abul Kalam Azad had refused to support a free Balochistan.

Nehru's love affair with Lady Edwina Mountbatten, wife of India’s last viceroy Lord Louis Mountbatten. The question that remains to be answered is whether the British intelligence used Edwina as honey trap to make Nehru surrender Balochistan and even one third of Kashmir to Pakistan for long term British interests.

Will Modi Ji Act?

Today the question is 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 celebritytwo years ago  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 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.

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 Nehruvian flawed policies continue to wreak havoc even to this day as many bureaucrats in India are Nehruvians in spite of a BJP government."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."

On the other hand Pakistan launched the Operation Gul Marg that sliced off one-third of Kahmir from India just one week after the Partition Holocaust, while a Briton, General Sir Frank Messervy, headed Pakistan army.

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 civilizations for thousands of years. 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 500,000 of them to become internally displaced persons in India, missing their homeland like lost children miss their mother. At the same time, Pakistan generals in the Army headquarters in Rawalpindi, claim not only Kashmir but also Balochistan and Afghanistan, "the fifth province," belongs to Pakistan. The unending daily terror in Afghanistan unleashed by Pakistan-backed Taliban and Pakistan's secret dirty war in balochistan are ample proof of Islamabad's designs.

In contrast to Pakistan's open and public support to Kashmir militants, India stance on Balochistan has been rather soft. Nissar Hoath, a former senior Baloch journalist in Abu Dhabi who now lives in Canada, says Pakistan is creating trouble in India so it is time India fully supports Balochistan. While the Congress party and Maulana Abdul Kalam Azad refusal to defend Balochistan against Pakistan during the 1947 Partition tragedy is well documented, quite a fewl Baloch militant leaders had desired to go live in exile in India to carry on their struggle in Balochistan, but New Delhi said no to them. 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 respect for India and Indians in many Gulf countries, there is tremendous goodwill for India among the Baloch public, intelligentsia and political leaders of Balochistan which New Delhi has never fully capitalized, much to the chagrin of these Baloch Indophiles.

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 deceased scholar Selig S Harrison, who was a leading 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. 

For instance, Amherst, Massachusetts-based Jane E Weisner, who has been lobbying for a free Balochistan for quite some years now, said, "Free Balochistan, 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 open 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. "As a result, a free Balochistan would also neutralize 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 the Pakistan Deep State. Premier Modi did raise hopes for the people of Balochistan in his August 15, 2016 speech from the historic Red Fort just two days after this writer had said "Har, har Modi" during a live interview with Arnab Goswami, who was then with the Times Now. 

However, Indian embassies did not seem to pursue Modi's statement as a public policy even to this day. to support the Balochistan liberation struggle, while Pakistan pokes a thumb in India's eyes on Kashmir. "Only right-wing nationalists like us support an independent Balochistan. That too the younger generation as the older ones are 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 people. I hope India will listen to the wails of the children of Hinglaj Mata.