BALOCHISTAN:THE LAND AND THE PEOPLE

Dealing with topic, the paper has kept in view the opinions of the indigenous as well as the foreign writers, since most of the developments in the Baloch society and politics did happen during the previous one and a quarter century i.e., the British period and onwards. Moreover, in the absence of any industry or urban culture, it was important to look at the natural resources and their exploitation. We have avoided using strong statements about the characteristics of the people but have included what especially the British felt about them in order to see how far these perceptions informed their policies. This paper introduces the various features of the Baloch society, such as area, demography, geographical settings, climate, ethnicity and tribal structure in order to situate the political developments in Balochistan in that perspective where the above-mentioned features interacted not only with the various stages of its development but also were perceived with mixed feelings by the British. The idea is not to make any political statement on the basis of these characteristics but simply to see how they interact with the political developments. Similarly, the brief description of its history is not meant to compress a long history of this area but to highlight only those aspects of its history that remained active during the British administration with particular reference to the way Balochistan acted as a buffer state between the British Empire and its perceived and real rivals i.e., the French, the Russians, the Turks and the Germans.