Pakistan Rulers view Balchistan as areal estate just as they had viewed East Pakistan earlier
Satish Kumar
24-4-2011
Real estate and fossilised mindsets —Mir Mohammad Ali Talpur
I was shocked to read in Dr Abdul Qadeer Khan’s speech in an Okara
school last week that, “the Indian nuclear explosion in 1974 was even
a greater shock for the nation than the fall of Dhaka in 1971”. This
exposed the extremely delinquent, infantile and fossilised mindset
that pervades the establishment.
The sheer inhumanness, insensitivity and callousness of his avowal
stunned me because it expediently overlooked the extreme mental,
physical and spiritual sufferings and anguish of the entire Bengali
nation during the storming of East Pakistan. All Bangladeshis
suffered, directly or indirectly, as thousands upon thousands were
killed, raped, looted, displaced, dislocated, traumatised and
terrorised by the army and its cohorts singularly obsessed with
protecting the shaky Pakistani ideology, writ of the government and
territorial integrity. The entire population there lived amid fear and
terror until the well deserved humiliating surrender of General Niazi
out of utter hopelessness; had the situation not been so desperate for
the army, the Bengalis would have suffered even more and for longer.
As the impact of the statement’s initial shock receded, I understood
that this statement had not come out of the blue but has its basis in
the fact that the people who lived in then East Pakistan counted not a
whit for the West Pakistani elite, establishment and army.
Rabindranath Tagore, Kazi Nazrul Islam, the rich language, the music,
the dances, their history and their culture meant nothing to those in
authority here and their supporters who continually demanded more and
more severe actions against the ‘Indian agents’, the ‘enemies of
Islam’ and the ‘traitors to Pakistani ideology’.
It dawned upon me that for the elite, establishment and the army,
Bangladesh was never more than a piece of ‘real estate’. Consequently,
I realised why, even after 40 years, no apology has been forthcoming
for the war crimes and atrocities perpetrated against the Bengalis.
You do not apologise to a piece of real estate that somehow is lost
from your list of possessions. With this mindset being predominant,
apology and remorse over what the army and its mercenaries did there
can be ruled out forever.
The Bengalis then had demanded no more than their inborn right to
govern their own destiny and manage their own affairs but were offered
paltry palliative measures instead; they demurred and the offended
establishment decided to teach them a lesson. The Baloch too are
demanding their rights now and are suffering.
The belief, notion and attitude that Dr Abdul Qadeer and others in the
elite, establishment and leadership display towards these issues do
not form in a vacuum or void but have a basis in their warped sense of
pride and even more perverted sense of self-importance and imaginary
‘tryst with destiny’.
This fatal flaw makes them give more importance to real estate in
comparison to the people, be it Balochistan, Bengal or Sindh, and
therefore, naturally, to the weapons and institutions necessary to
maintain a stranglehold over all this real estate. This is the
pervasive and the predominant conviction and belief within the elite
and establishment and it is for this reason that the Pakistani state
is only concerned with seeking profits from real estate, spends rashly
on defence, and is a ‘national security’-obsessed state.
Since the state is interested only in profits from and not the people
residing in the real estate, the health and education sectors have
gone from bad to worse. The physical infrastructure has crumbled and
there is continuous and permanent electric and gas load shedding. A
majority of the people does not have clean drinking water, the
irrigation system is in shambles and roads, apart from the showcased
ones, are ragged and potholed. Law and order is non-existent; all this
is making life miserable for the people. Moreover, the state is
unprepared and unbothered about apparently hypothetical social and
natural disaster scenarios but when these do become a reality, as in
the 2005 earthquake and 2010 floods, they abandon the people to fend
for themselves.
The attitude of the rulers, establishment and the army since 1947 has
been to consider the units falling to the share of the new state as
real estate awaiting exploitation. It was on this basis that lands in
Sindh were illegally and wantonly allotted and gifted to people and
institutions under different excuses and, because of that, today Sindh
is a demographic nightmare for the indigenous people who have become
increasingly marginalised and are slowly being pushed into pockets
that may become large scale ghettoes in the not too distant a future.
As if not content with the already decreasing space for indigenous
Sindhis, the present rulers, like the crafty ‘au fiat’ property
dealers, realising the huge earning potential of the land and building
industry, have criminally designated the hitherto virgin areas of
Thatta and adjoining areas as ‘Zulfiqarabad’ for hammering in the last
nail into the coffin of indigenous rights. Mind you, had the Baloch
not taken to the mountains by now, Balochistan would have been picked
clean and laid waste beyond recognition.
Balochistan has suffered since 1947 because it too is considered real
estate, albeit a prime one. The more lucrative and bountiful the real
estate, the more staunchly it will be ensured that it remains so even
if that entails and requires genocide. The regular turning up of the
dead bodies of kidnapped youths and the constant fear that the Baloch
population lives in is the result of the attempts to subdue and cow
down the ‘Indian agents’, the ‘enemies of Islam’ and the ‘traitors to
Pakistan’s ideology’ as had been done in Bangladesh.
As Baloch demands for rights and resources gain support, we see the
ever increasing involvement of the army in projects and
responsibilities that are the politicians’ and civilian authorities’
domain; this speaks volumes about the pathetic failure of the civilian
government and the profound anxiety prevailing in the military
establishment about the increasing support for the militants among the
masses.
It should be understood that in Balochistan opening technical and
military colleges and incentives for more recruitment in the army is
certainly not going to soothe the wounds inflicted and the callousness
and insensitivity demonstrated for the last 64 years. The people see
the relentless and remorseless daily dumping of the bodies of Baloch
youth and increasing number of missing persons as the true face of the
state. It will take some convincing to make them see the state as a
benign entity.
The writer has an association with the Baloch rights movement going
back to the early 1970s. He can be contacted at mmat...@gmail.com
http://dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=2011\04\24\story_24-4-2011_pg3_2
