Balochistan, Terrorism and the Sardari System

I have been listening to General Ahmed Sharif’s press conference. To be honest, this is perhaps the first time someone has spoken so openly about the affliction caused by Balochistan’s tribal Sardari system.

There can be no doubt that if we sincerely wish to move towards resolving Balochistan’s problems, we must dismantle the colonial Sardari system introduced by the British as an instrument of oppression and coercion. Because of this system, ordinary people remain trapped in invisible social, cultural and economic restraints even today.

In matters of collective importance, people are largely compelled to follow the opinions of Sardars and Nawabs. Whenever a single tribal chief becomes disgruntled with the state, the entire tribe is often drawn into the conflict.

Successive governments also chose the easier path. They treated the appeasement of Sardars and Nawabs as a shortcut to “good governance” and ignored ordinary citizens. The logical consequences of abandoning this basic principle of citizenship are now before us.

The roots of Balochistan’s Sardari system do not lie in Baloch civilisation itself. The British laid the foundations of this system in 1876. When resistance against British rule intensified in Balochistan, the colonial administration introduced the Sardari system, granted positions to loyalists and provided them with armed groups in the form of the Levies so they could suppress rebels.

The children of these Sardars and landlords were educated at institutions ranging from Aitchison College to the Dehradun Military Academy, while ordinary people were deliberately kept away from education.

The colonial arrangement did not stop there. It was also given a “religious touch”, with the claim that a Sardar was a saint of God and that obedience to him was compulsory. False stories of the Sardars’ supernatural powers were circulated. To understand the brutality of the system, the words of Dr Atta Bakhsh Marri are sufficient:

“The Sardar tolerates no equal.”

The British further strengthened the system by setting the blood money for the murder of an ordinary person at 2,000 rupees, while the blood money for the murder of one of their landlords or Nawabs was fixed at 8,000 rupees. In other words, these guardians of the colonial order were considered four times more valuable than an ordinary human being.

Subjugation was imposed so systematically that even today, when we criticise this system, some of our Baloch literary friends condemn only the “establishment-backed Sardar” while defending “their own Sardars”.

They perhaps forget that these “own Sardars” were also imposed by the British. In 1929, Yousaf Aziz Magsi launched a secret resistance movement against these colonial Sardars called the Anjuman-e-Ittehad-e-Baloch-wa-Balochistan.

When the British departed, they left behind not only their bureaucracy but also their landlords, Nawabs, Sardars and feudal elites.

Unfortunately, successive governments continued to follow the same colonial formula. When land reforms were proposed after the creation of Pakistan, religious figures emerged as voluntary defenders of landlords and feudal elites. It was argued that taking away someone’s land would violate Islam’s recognition of the right to property.

Whether this was simplicity on the part of religious scholars or something else, their argument was not valid. Lands obtained from the British as a reward for betrayal did not fall within the Islamic right to private property.

Under Mughal rule, these were state lands, while ultimate ownership belonged to God. The British treated this trust as war booty and distributed it among their loyalists. The Pakistani government had every right to reclaim this trust and distribute the land among the poor, but that did not happen.

Like the colonial bureaucracy, the feudal and Sardari systems were also coercive tools of British rule imposed upon society. Their purpose was the same: to create such an atmosphere of fear and oppression that no individual would dare raise their head.

The historical background of this arrangement was explained by former East India Company chairman Sir Archibald Galloway in his book, Observations on the Law and Constitution and Present Government of India.

He wrote that before British rule, the Mughal system assigned certain individuals administrative responsibilities at the local level. They were temporarily granted lands and estates so that the income from those lands could cover the expenses of performing their duties.

After their death, those estates were not transferred to their children. Instead, they returned to the Mughal ruler’s administration. The ruler would then appoint another individual to the position and transfer the relevant lands and estates to that person.

However, after occupying the region, the British permanently distributed those lands among their loyalists on a hereditary basis. When a father died, the estate passed to his son. As a result, this class remains dominant in Pakistan to this day on the strength of those same estates.

These lands effectively became war booty distributed by the British among their loyalists. Some were granted estates under horse-breeding schemes, while others received land in return for different services involving betrayal of their nation.

From Bengal to Balochistan, the British organised an army of loyalists and imposed these collaborators—or traitors—upon an agricultural society.

Some individuals may already have owned land, but the history of most large estates was the same: they were distributed as rewards for collaboration and betrayal.

When General Fort Sandeman ordered the Sardars to pull his carriage, the Sardars harnessed themselves in place of horses to demonstrate their loyalty.

The point that must be understood is that the state’s primary interlocutors are not Nawabs, landlords and Sardars. The state’s primary interlocutors are its citizens.

This is where successive governments made a fundamental mistake. Whenever an insurgency emerged, governments appeased a handful of Sardars and Nawabs, satisfied their demands and assumed that the problem had been resolved.

Governments never made the ordinary citizens of Balochistan their primary audience. Their attention remained focused on Sardars and Nawabs. This was a serious act of negligence.

As a consequence, a gulf developed between ordinary citizens and the state. Within that gulf, existing problems are now turning into festering wounds.

It is necessary to abolish this colonial arrangement. If its complete abolition is not immediately possible, the state must at least correct its priorities and direction.

The state must go directly to its people, listen to them and resolve their problems. It must do so without relying upon any Nawab or Sardar as an intermediary.

A state is obligated to reach its citizens directly—and to crush terrorism and every form of facilitation provided to it.