So, the situation of genocide of the Baloch has reached to the point where a bill has been tabled in the US which supports the ‘independence’ of Balochistan! Those fighting the Pakistani state for ‘freedom’ are looking forward to a practical response against the bill and waiting for the action in this regard.

This, however, is not a joke – a bill in the US House of Representatives does not immediately give independence to Balochistan – and may have quite severe repercussions on the land of the Baloch.

Pakistani state has always been blamed to protect on permanent basis the Punjabi interests and exploit the southern units of the ‘federation’ – Sindh and Balochistan – and has been fought back by the Sindhi and Baloch nationalists. How the Punjab started grabbing the country’s reigns was such loud that the first person to present the Pakistan Resolution in the Sindh Assembly, Saeen GM Syed, started campaigning against the exploitation of Sindh which, after the massacre of the Benglis in the then-East Pakistan resulting in the independent Bangladesh, turned into a strong movement of independence of Sindh. The slogan of Jeay Sindh turned out to be Jeay Sindhudesh referring to the proposed independent Sindh to be named, Sindhudesh.

However, in response, the Pakistani state’s infamous ISI has been in action and picking up the nationalists in both the lands, who are often found dead in the wilderness­­­ – bullet-riddled and mutilated.

Although this is an everyday story of Balochistan now, Sindh has also been witnessing such ‘kill-and-dump’ cases. Many nationalists have allegedly been abducted by the intelligence agencies of Pakistan and would be suffering in the torture cells.

In Sindh, the Jeay Sindh Muttahida Mahaz (JSMM) has been worst victim of the intelligence agencies in this regard. Although the members of the Jeay Sindh Qaumi Mahaz (JSQM), one of the major Sindhi nationalist parties, Jeay Sindh Tehrik (JST) and other parties have been facing no different situation, it’s worse for JSMM because they, unlike the other parties, openly support an armed movement for the freedom of Sindh.

On such case is of Muzaffar Bhutto (Amnesty International), the vice chairman of the party, who abducted by the intelligence agencies at New Saeedabad (Sindh) while travelling with his wife and brother-in-law from Sukkur to Jamshoro. This was not the first time that Mr. Bhutto was picked up by the agencies; he had been in the agencies’ custody extra-judicially from 2006 to 2009 and suffered torture.

BBC Urdu talked to Saima Bhutto, wife of Mr. Bhutto, on her protest in front of the parliament, Islamabad; here’s the video:

Recently, Mr. Noam Chomsky, the renowned American political analyst and activist, has written a letter regarding the enforced disappearances in Sindh and Balohchistan with a special stress on the case of Mr. Bhutto.

Following is the scanned image of the letter:

Many would question the credibility of the letter since it names the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) in such cases of ‘involuntary disappearance’.

For this, I contacted Mr. Chomsky on the contacts found on http://goo.gl/AjnqZ. I just wanted to make sure if the letter under discussion was ‘genuine’ and that he really felt concerned about the enforced disappearances of the Sindhi and Baloch nationalists. I wrote an email to him:

Respected Sir,

Hope this email finds you in good health- I’m ….

The purpose of writing this letter to you is to ask you for your kind confirmation whether the attached (scanned) letter is actually written by you. Since it involves the sensitive issues pertaining to the intelligence agencies of Pakistan, I need your confirmation before publishing it on my blog. I found it being shared on Facebook by some nationalists (not representatives of any Sindhi nationalist political party, though).

I hope you would be able to get a few moments to respond to the email, sir.

Thanking you in advance,

Me
Karachi, Sindh
Pakistan

(Dated: Feb 17, 2012)

I was prepared not get any response from him since he must be getting loads of emails everyday — but, to my surprise and excitement, he actually did respond to my email. I received a firm, single-line response from him:

The letter is genuine.

Noam Chomsky

(Dated: Feb 17, 2012)

Feeling confident after receiving a response from The Chomsky, I responded informing him about the worst situation of human rights violation in Sindh and Balochistan and how important it was for the world to take notice of such actions. To this, following was his response (opt not to publish my 2nd email here):

Very pleased to hear that the letter may be of some slight help in overcoming these state crimes and tragedies.  It will I’m sure be a hard struggle.

Noam Chomsky

(Dated: Feb 19, 2012)

–

Before this post, I have blogged the scanned images of the letter written by Congressman Dan Burton to the President of Pakistan, Mr. Asif Ali Zardari. Mr. Burton has also expressed his concern over the human rights violation in the form of the enforced disappearances of Sindhi and Baloch nationalists. Read the letter here.

Tagged: Baloch, Balochistan, Enforced Disappearances, Jeay Sindh, JSMM, JSQM, JST, Missing Persons, Muzaffar Bhutto, Nationalism, Nationalist, Noam Chomsky, Sindh, Sindhi

I hope people who support agencies on missing persons issue will either get hidayat or suffer the same in this world to see how it goes.

There were people in Nazi Germany who suppored such acts and supported Hitler’s crimes in the name of nationalism. It is surprising to see our nationalists also claim for Pakistan as “Islam ka Qila” and forget the principles of justice and humanity given in Quran and Sunnah.

Most of these nationalists like fake liberals support these acts due to their sectarian and social class prejudices. The only thing is that they add nationalist flavor to it.

This nationalism and worship of army cannot be associated with any country using the words “Islamic Republic” and I see it as another form of Shirk as teachings of Allah are being sidelined for new Gods like State, Army etc. Iqbal righly said:

In taza khudaon main baRa sab se watan hai
Jo pairhan iss ka hai, woh mazhab ka kafan hai

Yeh bott keh tarasheeda-e-tahzeeb-i-navi hai
Gharat gar-e-khashan-e-deen-i-nabawi hai

Baazu tira tawheed ki quwwat se qawi hai
Islam tira dais he, tu Mustafawi hai!

I often criticize the hypocrisy of fake liberals but today I want to remind those nationalists who consider Pakistan as Islam Ka Qila that Islam doesn’t allow these type of unjust actions and violations of human rights. If some of these missing persons have done some crimes then even in that case army, government and security agencies cannot deny them of their rights including the right to defend themselves in court. If they believe in Islam and consider Pakistan as Islamic Republic then they should know what are the principles of justice in Islam. Islam doesn’t allow injustice with worst enemies of Islam:

“O ye who believe! Be steadfast witnesses for Allah in equity, and let not hatred of any people seduce you that ye deal not justly. Deal justly, that is nearer to your duty. Observe your duty to Allah. Lo! Allah is Informed of what ye do.” [Quran : Al-maeda ,8]

Our Sindhi nationalists are simply not aware of the world trends. They have not idea how powerful and strong the social media has become in today’s world!

In contrast, the Baloch political activists are now quite alert and actively use it to propagate their message to the world through the use of the social media — blogs, social networks, microblogs, etc.

The proof that the world hears them speak is that BBC has now covered the political activists’efforts on Twitter and blogs. According to the reports, in the backdrop of the biased and selective (under-)reporting of the mainstream Pakistani media, it’s the blogs and micro-blogs (Twitter) which have been the source of information for the world on the brutality of the Pakistani state in Balochistan, that is, their kill-and-dump policy against the Baloch nationalists and freedom fighters.

بلوچستان کی حقیقت کون بتائے گا

امریکہ میں بلوچستان پر بحث، پاکستان کو تشویش

Twitter is quite a powerful tool in online activism right now- (who can forget the Arab Spring?) Thanks to Twitter that it’s now possible to ping United Nations (@UN), Barack Obama (@BarackObama), The White House (@whitehouse), Amnesty International (@amnesty), Human Rights Watch (@hrw) — you name it! They are the ones influencing the world affairs.. and they should be contacted frequently.

Or you can also ping Pentagon Press Secretary at @PentagonPresSec. You can even directly pass your comments to Congressman Brad Sherman (@BradSherman), who recently spoke in favor of the US speaking to the Sindhi and Baloch nations (Watch the video).

Although there are some Sindhi nationalists’accounts on Twitter (Like @jssfjsmm, @jssfmediacell, @JssfJsqm, Raja Dahir, Sindhi Xafar but their presence is not quite frequent; whereas, Twitter means continuous pinging the world about your and your issues.

Our Baloch activists have continuously been asking the Sindhi nationalists to be awake and alert on Twitter like them. And I receive tweets like the following frequently:

@AamirRaz Be known, we support you.

—
TheBaloch (@BalaachMarri) January 15, 2012

Amid military operations and sufferings, Baloch pay rich tribute to Saeen GM Syed, icon of Sindhudesh's independence identity.

—
TheBaloch (@BalaachMarri) January 16, 2012

@AamirRaz Bro our sindhi Brothers must be active like their Baloch brothers in their struggle for freedom in Balochistan, love&success 4us

—
Archen Baloch (@ArchenBaloch) February 10, 2012

@BradSherman is aiming 2 promote both d causes of Sindh, Balochistan. @AamirRaz wud b happy 2 hear that. There's a bipartisan support 2 B&S

—
Ratan (@Rattan888) February 08, 2012

@AamirRaz Adda Sindhi dostan kay twitter join karan laye motivate karo. @RajaDahir

—
فیض بلوچ (@FaizBaluch) January 10, 2012

@AamirRaz Ji koshish karo.Twitter asan laye naimat ka'n wadeek aye. @RajaDahir

—
فیض بلوچ (@FaizBaluch) January 10, 2012

However, this blog is not about teaching you how to use Twitter.. rather, it’s more for forcing you to start using it for your sociopolitical activism. It’s just to motivate the Sindhi nationalists to start using the power of the social media as an effective tool for lobbying in this age and time.

Keep tweeting — the world is listening!

[You can follow me on Twitter at @AamirRaz.]

Tagged: Arab Spring, Facebook, Nationalism, Social Activism, Twitter

The following excerpt has been taken from the the Iqbal’s Allahabad address which is an insight about his thinking about the aspired Muslim state and his concerns about nationalism.

It cannot be denied that Islam, regarded as an ethical ideal plus a certain kind of polity – by which expression I mean a social structure regulated by a legal system and animated by a specific ethical ideal – has been the chief formative factor in the life-history of the Muslims of India. It has furnished those basic emotions and loyalties which gradually unify scattered individuals and groups, and finally transform them into a well-defined people, possessing a moral consciousness of their own. Indeed it is not an exaggeration to say that India is perhaps the only country in the world where Islam, as a people-building force, has worked at its best. In India, as elsewhere, the structure of Islam as a society is almost entirely due to the working of Islam as a culture inspired by a specific ethical ideal. What I mean to say is that Muslim society, with its remarkable homogeneity and inner unity, has grown to be what it is, under the pressure of the laws and institutions associated with the culture of Islam.
The ideas set free by European political thinking, however, are now rapidly changing the outlook of the present generation of Muslims both in India and outside India. Our younger men, inspired by these ideas, are anxious to see them as living forces in their own countries, without any critical appreciation of the facts which have determined their evolution in Europe. In Europe Christianity was understood to be a purely monastic order which gradually developed into a vast church organisation. The protest of Luther was directed against this church organisation, not against any system of polity of a secular nature, for the obvious reason that there was no such polity associated with Christianity. And Luther was perfectly justified in rising in revolt against this organisation; though, I think, he did not realise that in the peculiar conditions which obtained in Europe, his revolt would eventually mean the complete displacement of [the] universal ethics of Jesus by the growth of a plurality of national and hence narrower systems of ethics.
Thus the upshot of the intellectual movement initiated by such men as Rousseau and Luther was the break-up of the one into [the] mutually ill-adjusted many, the transformation of a human into a national outlook, requiring a more realistic foundation, such as the notion of country, and finding expression through varying systems of polity evolved on national lines, i.e. on lines which recognise territory as the only principle of political solidarity. If you begin with the conception of religion as complete other-worldliness, then what has happened to Christianity in Europe is perfectly natural. The universal ethics of Jesus is displaced by national systems of ethics and polity. The conclusion to which Europe is consequently driven is that religion is a private affair of the individual and has nothing to do with what is called man’s temporal life.
Islam does not bifurcate the unity of man into an irreconcilable duality of spirit and matter. In Islam God and the universe, spirit and matter, Church and State, are organic to each other. Man is not the citizen of a profane world to be renounced in the interest of a world of spirit situated elsewhere. To Islam, matter is spirit realising itself in space and time. Europe uncritically accepted the duality of spirit and matter, probably from Manichaean thought. Her best thinkers are realising this initial mistake today, but her statesmen are indirectly forcing the world to accept it as an unquestionable dogma. It is, then, this mistaken separation of spiritual and temporal which has largely influenced European religious and political thought and has resulted practically in the total exclusion of Christianity from the life of European States. The result is a set of mutually ill-adjusted States dominated by interests not human but national. And these mutually ill-adjusted States, after trampling over the moral and religious convictions of Christianity, are today feeling the need of a federated Europe, i.e. the need of a unity which the Christian church organisation originally gave them, but which, instead of reconstructing it in the light of Christ’s vision of human brotherhood, they considered fit to destroy under the inspiration of Luther.
A Luther in the world of Islam, however, is an impossible phenomenon; for here there is no church organisation similar to that of Christianity in the Middle Ages, inviting a destroyer. In the world of Islam we have a universal polity whose fundamentals are believed to have been revealed but whose structure, owing to our legists’ [=legal theorists'] want of contact with the modern world, today stands in need of renewed power by fresh adjustments. I do not know what will be the final fate of the national idea in the world of Islam. Whether Islam will assimilate and transform it, as it has before assimilated and transformed many ideas expressive of a different spirit, or allow a radical transformation of its own structure by the force of this idea, is hard to predict. Professor Wensinck of Leiden (Holland) wrote to me the other day: “It seems to me that Islam is entering upon a crisis through which Christianity has been passing for more than a century. The great difficulty is how to save the foundations of religion when many antiquated notions have to be given up. It seems to me scarcely possible to state what the outcome will be for Christianity, still less what it will be for Islam.” At the present moment the national idea is racialising the outlook of Muslims, and thus materially counteracting the humanizing work of Islam. And the growth of racial consciousness may mean the growth of standards different [from] and even opposed to the standards of Islam.
I hope you will pardon me for this apparently academic discussion. To address this session of the All-India Muslim League you have selected a man who is [=has] not despaired of Islam as a living force for freeing the outlook of man from its geographical limitations, who believes that religion is a power of the utmost importance in the life of individuals as well as States, and finally who believes that Islam is itself Destiny and will not suffer a destiny. Such a man cannot but look at matters from his own point of view. Do not think that the problem I am indicating is a purely theoretical one. It is a very living and practical problem calculated to affect the very fabric of Islam as a system of life and conduct. On a proper solution of it alone depends your future as a distinct cultural unit in India. Never in our history has Islam had to stand a greater trial than the one which confronts it today. It is open to a people to modify, reinterpret or reject the foundational principles of their social structure; but it is absolutely necessary for them to see clearly what they are doing before they undertake to try a fresh experiment. Nor should the way in which I am approaching this important problem lead anybody to think that I intend to quarrel with those who happen to think differently. You are a Muslim assembly and, I suppose, anxious to remain true to the spirit and ideals of Islam. My sole desire, therefore, is to tell you frankly what I honestly believe to be the truth about the present situation. In this way alone it is possible for me to illuminate, according to my light, the avenues of your political action.

Last week, Newt Gingrich said the following about Palestinian nationalism:

Remember, there was no Palestine as a state — (it was) part of the Ottoman Empire. I think we have an invented Palestinian people who are in fact Arabs and historically part of the Arab community and they had the chance to go many places.

For this, Gingrich has been roundly criticized from a variety of angles. The thing to note, however, is that strictly speaking, he is right — if by “invented” we mean “socially and politically constructed”. The fact of the matter is that all “nations” are invented. It’s just a question of when and how.

The point to be made is that nationalism, as a general political force, arose out of discrete events and processes in the post-medieval age. The invention of the printing press, the spread of vernaculars, the rise of commercial capitalism, the imposition of administrative boundaries by colonial states, the rise of centralizing state — each of these meant that national identities congealed in ways that were simply absent before.

That last word is crucial: before. Whichever national identity you care to choose — French or Filipino, whatever — I can find a point in time when that national identity did not exist, either at all or in particularly stark terms. Creating nations takes effort. Some of it is by accident. Some of it is deliberate — by changing school textbooks, by changing what students read, by changing which languages of instruction are employed,  by changing which language is deemed to be “official” or the court’s language, by imposing conscription, by creating flags and national anthems, by ethnically cleansing certain territories to purify them, and so on.

The problem with Gingrich’s statement was not his assertion of the contingency of Palestinian national identity. Hell, even Rashid Khalidi would agree with him on that. No, the problem with his statement was the implicit supposition that there exist other national identities that are more primordial in nature. That is, while the Palestinians were invented, the French or the Americans or the Arabs were not. I’m afraid that belief is simply incorrect. They were just “invented” at different times in different ways.

As Eugen Weber says in reference to nationalism in late nineteenth-century France, “A lot of Frenchmen did not know they belonged together until the long didactic campaigns of the later nineteenth century told them they did, and their own experience as conditions changed told them that this made sense…France is a deliberate political construction for whose creation the central power has never ceased to fight.” Indeed, we see manifestations of that very same process ongoing today; to wit, the fact that the census in France, unlike most Western democracies, has no provision for marking one’s race or ethnicity. Is the French nation any less “invented” than the Palestinians?

Moreover, when one sees that Gingrich’s “defense” of his original statement is “Somebody ought to have the courage to tell the truth. These people are terrorists. It’s fundamentally time for somebody to have the guts to stand up and say, ‘Enough lying about the Middle East,’” it becomes clear that discovering the antecedent institutional conditions that gave rise to Palestinian group identity is probably not the object of his grand historicizing.

This guy has a PhD in history?