The History of Baloch and Balochistan: A Critical Appraisal

Abstract

IntroductionTracing the actual history of the is although a daunting task, as the mention of the people is rare in ancient and historical literature, but writers like, Dasthi (2012), Spooper, (1983), Sahlins, (1968), Dames (1907), among others believe that the history of modern day people goes back to around three Millenniums when a myriad tribes left their original abodes in Central Asia and traveled towards the northwest, the west and the east. After decades or perhaps centuries of hardships and pains they settled in northwestern Iranian plateau, a region then called of Balashakan. They were the Aryans tribes with pastoralist nomadic characteristics. However, the settlements of these tribes or Balashchik were short-lived as they were forced to migrate from Balashakan. After centuries of wanderings with enduring suffering and torments these nomads eventually settled down in southeastern edges of Iranian Plateau, and changed from being Balashchik to Baloch and their new settlement where they ultimately became the inhabitants of, was Balochistan, the land of the people. With them they brought their indigenous culture and native language that they imposed and spread around the entire region, and created an autonomous Confederacy of the Tribes ranging from the Indus River to the east, modern day Afghanistan to the north, Iran and Persian gulf to the west and southwest. After undergoing through various ups and downs during its existence, the state came to a final end when it gave up its sovereignty to the British Raj in 1839 (Janmahmad, 1989).It is hard to construct a chronological history of the using the ancient historical accounts, as the mention of the Baloch, its sociology, history and way of living is random, sporadic and abstract in form, context and content. The old historical records are almost hushed up in describing any aspects of life. Whereas it is difficult to ascribe any solid reasons of this sheer silence of ancient historians concerning the and its history, yet one may argue that the nomadic and tribal structure with pastoralist economy without any formidable and direct impact to the political and economic developments of the time could probably be a reason for not getting any attention of historians of the time. Like many other pastoralist nomads of primordial Iran that descended on Iranian plateau from Central Asia, the historical documents rarely mentioned the Baloch. Nevertheless, the difference of to the other identical groups is that many of these ethnic groups vanished and ceased to exist as separate ethnic entity, whereas the emerged as a distinct linguistic and cultural entity during the medieval era (Sahlins, 1968, Spooper, 1983).Given the scarcity or even the absence of detail historical literature and accurate anthropological data on the origin of the and the exact location of their initial homeland in Iranian edge from where they probably migrated to Balochistan, led to rise contrasting theories and opinions by the academics and historians. For instance, earlier researchers on the origin of the deliberated on various theories and tried to align them with different racial entities of the region. Speculations were mainly focused on the lines that whether belonged to Aryan, Semitic, or Turanian group of tribes. Pottinger (1816, 1972) believed that the had Turkmen ethnic origins, while Rawlinson (1873) was in favour of a Chaldean (Semitic) origin of the Baloch, Bellew (1874) aligned them with the Indian Rajput tribes, and Dames (1904) considered them as from the Aryan groups of tribes. This paper however will argue that, whatever the origination of the as a nation may be, it is neither a primordialist nor the current theories of nation and nationhood can explain the nation. Instead it is the ethno-symbolists theories that offer the best possible understanding of the nation, and nationalism is best understood through modernist theories given its reactionary behaviour to foreign/occupation forces. …