Balochistan’s Imbroglio: A Marxist Gramscian Perspective – III
Saulat Nagi

Aijaz Ahmad observes that Marris and Bugtis often claim Quraysh lineage, while Mengals may be of Mongol origin. Such diverse roots contribute to intra-tribal tensions. Historically, the Baloch were nomadic and politically unorganised. Over time, they expanded and aligned with feudal powers, forming military groups in exchange for land and privilege. Aijaz Ahmad details how tribal leaders accumulated resources, creating class divisions. Baloch society gradually transitioned from nomadic herding to agrarian relations, with division of labour and permanent chieftaincy leading to primitive capital accumulation and class conflict.
This history complicates notions of Baloch ethnic unity. Linguistic divergence is also significant. Many urban Baloch in Karachi and Sindh do not speak Balochi. Zia’s defence minister, Mir Ali Ahmed Talpur, differentiated between 1.4 million Baloch speakers – half in Karachi – and another two million ethnic Baloch who had lost the language. He cited that 13 of 27 members of Sindh’s 1970 Provincial Assembly were Baloch, yet they represented the elite, not the marginalised masses.
Despite brief political power in Balochistan, the National Awami Party did not promote Balochi, accepting Urdu as the provincial language. There was a method in the madness for it blurred distinctions between Baloch, Brahuis and Pashtuns. However, linguistic consciousness is gradually on the rise, differences are likely to become sharper. The process may be slow but nationalist sentiment is contagious and likely to create linguistic cleavages.
Aijaz Ahmad questions how Brahuis – speaking a Dravidian language – are grouped with the Baloch. According to the 2023 census, Balochistan has 14.89 million people: 6.6 million Baloch, 5.5 million Pashtuns, and an estimated 2.2 million Brahuis. While Brahuis identify with the Baloch and are multilingual, a new Brahui middle class emphasises cultural distinctiveness. UNESCO categorises Brahui as a “potentially vulnerable” language.
Lenin emphasised linguistic unity as vital for capitalist development, but this assumes a capitalist, not feudal, society. He says, “Unity and unimpeded development of language are the most important conditions for genuinely free and extensive commerce on a scale commensurate with modern capitalism, for a free and broad grouping of the population in all its various classes and, lastly, for the establishment of a close connection between the market and each and every proprietor, big or little, and between seller and buyer (Lenin: The Right of Nations to Self-Determination). This denotes that Lenin is discussing a capitalist and not a tribal-cum-feudal society.
In Balochistan, Aijaz Ahmed says, “language itself remains specific to each tribal experience, so that what is roughly known as the Balochi language is in fact a conglomeration of very many vocabulary and syntactical patterns, with distinct features of pronunciation specific to different locales, and a standard national language on the scale of Sindhi or Urdu has not emerged.”
The Baloch don’t dominate the social organisation for economic production. At first the British imposed the dominance of a non-Baloch element in the urban economy, which continues even now. Pashtun and Punjabi takeover of the urban and agrarian economy was no coincidence. The British wanted to keep the Baloch backward. A strong, educated, united Balochistan, could have prospered by making relations with the Soviets on one side and Iran on the other. The present day Baloch rightly consider it a plot hatched in Islamabad or Sindh to expropriate them but for Aijaz Ahmed, “it should be seen as a victory of the more developed feudal and entrepreneurial economies of adjacent provinces over the underdeveloped feudalism of Baluchistan, the underdevelopment supervised by the Sardars themselves, which rendered untenable the urban economy where the Sardars were absent as well as the rural economy where they were present. Impoverishment of rural Baluchistan and the dominance of urban Baluchistan by non-Baluchis are parts of an indivisible whole.”
For Aijaz Ahmed the internal divisions and exclusivities complicate the national question even further. The Baloch are divided into 18 major tribes. In the area of production none of them is dependent on the other. The entire history of the economic development of the Baloch indicates “a conglomerate of self-sufficient agrarian communities” neither bound with administrative ties nor having sufficient surplus to exchange with the others. The economic pattern indicated that “in the later stages when transition from clan organisation of productive labour to a semi-feudal pattern of land ownership occurred there was no effective social organisation to supersede clan exclusivities altogether.”
“Tribal differentiations were thus a specific historical consequence of the mode and relations of production, reinforced of course by the availability of large tracts of land which made it possible to obtain a geographical equivalent for what was economic reality already. Secondly, cultural development itself has been predicated upon this fundamental geography and relations of production, and suffers from an inner fragmentation. Precisely because tribal groupings have not altogether succeeded in integrating themselves into a national whole.”
“Finally, a certain perpetuation of tribal exclusivities and rivalries is inherent in the interests of the Sardari system itself. In order to safeguard his status as chief of a definable social group, in order to organise and maintain the unity of his tribe under his own leadership, in order to isolate these subjects from others of their status elsewhere who might then get together to make a common resistant front against all the elite of all tribes, the Sardar who could have otherwise been an agent of modernisation is condemned to preserve and reinforce the tribal feeling of rivalry and exclusion.”
Keeping the situation mentioned above in view, Professor Aijaz Ahmed states, “There is no satisfactory answer to the simple question: Who are the Baluchis? Are they a linguistic group or an ethnic group? If Brahuis can be considered Baluchi despite their altogether different language and peoples of Afghan, Arab, Indo-Aryan origins can be considered Baluchi, then what precisely is the premise of this nationalism? Within what is today Baluchistan, there is no separation between the economies of Baluchis and non-Baluchis. If most of the food is grown by Pashtuns domiciled in parts of Baluchistan from time immemorial, it is marketed by a social class which includes practically all ethnic groups of the country. If landless Baluchis have been integrated as cheap labour in the servicing sector, the mining sector imports even cheaper labour from Swat [and from Punjab]. Almost one third of all Baluchi peasantry migrates into areas of Sindh during the winter and returns every summer. Which economy are they a part of? If marginal, marginal to what? These and numerous other factors go to show that what is known as the Baluch ‘nation’ does not have a separate economy either.”
Hence barring territory –albeit some of it still occupied by Pashtuns, Hazara, Punjabis –the Baloch as a nation don’t satisfy the criteria laid down by Stalin. Yet if people living in the area for a long time are repressed and plundered by the state, keeping the life of the oppressed people under constant suppression, such a tyrannical order turns them into a nation, a nation of the oppressed. It helps them to get rid of their linguistic and ethnic differences. Their past history of struggle as Baloch and the memory of their dead become instrumental in turning them into a nation.
Incidentally, akin to the Palestinian diaspora, half the Baloch population lives outside Balochistan. Yet unlike Palestinians, Baloch feudal elites abroad – in Oman, Canada, or even Sindh – show little inclination to return. Oman recruited many Baloch mercenaries, who permanently settled there. During the Dhofar rebellion (1973-1976), the Marxist insurgency was crushed by British-led forces. While some Baloch, like the Baloch Students Organisation (BSO), supported the rebels, others fought for Oman. Hameed Baloch, a BSO activist, was executed for trying to stop Omani recruitment in Pakistan.
Economically, the Baloch are excluded from urban centres and production. British policies and the Sardari system marginalised them, while Punjabis and Pashtuns dominate urban and agrarian sectors. Sandeman’s colonial strategy of empowering Sardars crippled Baloch economic development. However, Aijaz Ahmad interprets this as the triumph of more developed regional economies over Balochistan’s feudal underdevelopment.
Lacking Cultural Hegemony
The Baloch tribes are economically isolated and self-sufficient, lacking interdependence. Tribal exclusivities stem from geographic and economic fragmentation, with no centralised administration or surplus for exchange. As Ahmad writes, “Cultural development is predicated on geography and production, and suffers inner fragmentation.” Sardars reinforce tribal divisions to maintain power, preventing national cohesion.
This raises the core issue: are the Baloch an ethnic or linguistic group? If Brahuis with a different language, and people of diverse origins – Arab, Afghan, Indo-Aryan – are called Baloch, what defines this nationalism? There is no separate Baloch economy. Food is grown by Pashtuns, marketed by multiethnic classes, and the labour force is composed of both Baloch and migrant workers. One-third of the Baloch peasantry migrates seasonally to Sindh.
Stalin’s criteria – language, territory, economic life, culture – are not fully met. Yet sustained repression may forge a “nation of the oppressed”. Common suffering and struggle create solidarity beyond ethnicity or dialect. Taj Mohammad Breseeg echoes the same sentiment: “Nationalism often derives from real or perceived deprivation. The more oppressive a state, the more intense the desire for separation” (Baloch Nationalism, 2017).
Aijaz Ahmad warns, however, that nationalism rooted in tribal or ethnic identity risks detachment from broader working-class movements and fosters reactionary conflict. Israel offers a parallel. It is a patchwork of Jews from different racial, linguistic, and cultural backgrounds – Ashkenazi, Heradi, Sephardic, Mizrahi – with no uniform ethnicity or historical continuity. Hebrew was revived artificially. The idea was to reinforce the myth that prior to the arrival of Jews no other people/nation was living in Palestine. The other factor was to root out the native Jews’ language, Arabic, and their culture from the Palestinians. Most Israeli Jews were once atheists and assimilated in their respective communities were imported into a settler-colonial state under the guise of the safest heaven for the Jews. Yet ethnic and religious inconsistencies remain stark. Israel occupies stolen land, with no historical ethnic unity. It is an ethno-supremacist capitalist entity and strongly anti-socialist by its very nature. 
However there are remarkable differences as well. Unlike the ethno-supremacist Zionist entity, the Baloch possess historical territory, evolving language, shared religion, and culture. This is not a one-dimensional phenomenon. Following the Zionist pattern, the State is also following settler colonialism by encouraging the Pashtuns of different areas to settle in the large swath of Baluchistan to enforce the demographic changes in the province. Such policies are leading to ethnic chaos, insecurity and hatred among the Baloch people.
In conclusion, the Baloch may not meet all classical Marxist or Stalinist criteria of nationhood. However, their prolonged oppression and shared historical memory have generated a collective identity. The question remains open, but the conditions of repression may yet forge the nation that history has so far denied.
(To be continued)