BALOCHISTAN is not Pakistan. It is an independent country. It was never a willing part of Pakistan. It was forcibly annexed by Pakistan decades ago. But now, Balochistan is an ‘independent’ country and the global community must support it. India must recognise its independent existence. At this moment, this may appear to be a poetic narrative of a struggling people of Balochistan. But it has emerged from the think-tank of the struggle for independence of Balochistan. For the past several decades, this struggle has been going on with increasing intensity. This movement has spawned a few militant organisations, too, picking up armed struggle -- that saw literally dozens of armed attacks on Pakistani establishment and its military installations. But equally importantly, this movement has its representatives spread all over the world explaining to the international community the seriousness of the Baloch struggle for independence -- from Pakistan’s illegal occupation of its massive land-mass that is almost as big as the whole of ‘official’ Pakistan.

 

Around the time of Partition of India in 1947, Balochistan was a free, independent entity -- with its own tradition, culture, history, and political signature. As a bandit State, Pakistan took over Balochistan by force and has kept its vice-like grip on it for the past seven-plus decades. Pakistan has milked Balochistan’s rich natural resources without giving it anything in return. When the Baloch people started asking for their legitimate right to be free -- or even legitimate share of Pakistan’s national wealth -- the Pakistanis started a reign of inhuman suppression of the voice of freedom, voice of reason. The Pakistani authorities started just picking up freedom fighters of Balochistan and sending them to oblivion whose address nobody knows.

 

In the past few years, thousands of Baloch people have vanished in this manner. So, the most important demand of the freedom-fighters of Balochistan is that Pakistan tell them the whereabouts of all those people who vanished -- just because they fought for freedom of their country from the evil hands of Pakistan. The international community, too, has realised the truth and substance in that demand and has supported the Baloch people everywhere. And now has come what can be described as ‘declaration of Balochistan’s independence’ from a celebrated representative of the Baloch struggle Mr. Mir Yar Baloch. He has insisted that the people of Balochistan have given their ‘national verdict’ in favour of complete freedom from Pakistan’s occupation. He has also appealed to India to recognise the State of Balochistan and allow the ‘new state’ to open an embassy in New Delhi.

 

Whether any such recognition by India is diplomatically or politically possible or not, is a matter for New Delhi to decide. But the popular desire of the common people of India is that Balochistan should break free from Pakistani clutches and start living an independent existence. For, as common Indian people understand, the demand for Baloch freedom has every justification -- moral, historical, cultural, economic, and political. The world knows that Pakistan has illegally occupied Balochistan, and therefore that country has every right to ask for freedom and get it with whatever effort needed for it. There is no doubt that in due time, the Baloch demand will get a global attention as well as support. True, Pakistan will try to suppress the Baloch freedom struggle with all its might. Yet, it will not be able to keep the demand under wraps for long. Sooner than later, the Balochistan struggle for independence will gain more ground and the world will have to come to terms with that reality. India should read this writing on the wall, no matter its political compulsions and limitations.