Ethnography at the Frontier: Space, Memory and Society in Southern Balochistan 9783034304221, 2011036663

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635 .P18 F33 2011

Ugo E. M. Fabietti

Ethnography at the Frontier

Middle East, Social and Cultural Studies

This series focuses on encounters, conflicts and transformations from the 15th century to the present and beyond. It invites works from various disciplines of the social sciences and humanities that consider the adoption, development, or reconceptualization of basic social and cultural phenomena in the Middle East, as broadly conceived, at any time from the fifteenth century to the present, particularly in consideration of future implications. The series privileges studies adopting the anthropological and historical approach in order to analyse the symbolic systems and social practices of the various societies of this area of the world.

Directors Wendy Shaw, University of Bern Irene Maffi, University of Lausanne

Editorial Committee Vincent Bisson, Researcher of political geography at the Observatoire des Pays Arabes in Paris Mounia Bennani-Chraibi, Professor of political sciences, University of Lausanne Nancy Um, Associate professor in Art History, University of Binghamton Mauro Van Aken, Assistant professor. University of Milano-Bicocca

Etudes culturelies et sociales sur le Moyen Orient

Cette collection vise ä approfondir la reflexion sur les rencontres, les conflits et les transformations qui ont eu lieu au Moyen-Orient ä partir du XVéme siécle jusqu’au present et meme au-dela. Elle souhaite recevoir des propositions venant des sciences sociales et humaines prenant en consideration 1’adoption, le développement ou la réélaboration de phénoménes sociaux et culturels fondamentaux dans I’aire du Moyen-Orient, conqu dans son acception la plus large, ä n’importe quel moment de 1’histoire entre le XVéme siécle et l’age contemporain avec une attention particuliére ä leurs futures implications. Elle met 1’accent sur l’approche socio-anthropologique et historique dans le but de produire des analyses des systemes symboliques et des pratiques sociales des différentes sociétés de cette region du monde.

Directeurs Wendy Shaw, Université de Berne Irene Maffi, Université de Lausanne

Comité scientifique Vincent Bisson, Chercheur de géographie politique å 1’Observatoire des Pays Arabes ä Paris Mounia Bennani-Chraibi, Professeure de sciences politiques, Université de Lausanne Nancy Um, Professeure associée d’histoire de Part, Université de Binghamton Mauro Van Aken, Professeur assistant d’anthropologie sociale, Université de Milano-Bicocca

PETER LANG Bern ■ Berlin • Bruxelles • Frankfiirt am Main ■ New York • Oxford - Wien

Ugo E. M. Fabietti

Ethnography at the Frontier Space, Memory and Society in Southern Balochistan

PETER LANG Bern • Berlin • Bruxelles • Frankfurt am Main • New York • Oxford - Wien

Bibliographic information published by Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche National-

bibliografie; detailed bibliographic data is available on the Internet at .

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data: A catalogue record for this book is available from The British Library, Great Britain

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Fabietti, Ugo E.M.

Ethnography at the frontier: space, memory and society in southern Balochistan / Ugo E.M. Fabietti. p. cm. - (Middle East, social and cultural studies = Études culturelies et sociales sur le Moyen Orient.)

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Summary: "This book is the result of a field research carried out by the author among a community of agriculturists in what was till recently the uttermost part of Southern Pakistani Balochistan. It deals with themes such as ways of living

and representing spaces, constructing memory, the heritage of a form of social stratifiation which shaped community

relationships in the last three centuries, and, last but not least, the insurgence of nationalism. Furthermore, the book

puts forward some theoretical proposals about the translation of cultural "models", throughout a constant comparison between the author's and his interlocutors', alternating ethno-graphic "descriptions" with reflxive arguments. Notwi­

thstanding its remoteness, Balochistan is today at the conflence of forces which reflet both local and "global" logics, pushing this land, once only visited by few adventurous travelers, in the focus of international interests which could impinge on political evolution of this sensitive area straddling South Asia and Middle East."-Publisher's description.

ISBN 978-3-0343-0422-1 1. Ethnology--Pakistan-Balochistan.2. Balochistan (Pakistan)--Ethnic relations. 3. Balochistan (Pakistan)-Social life and

customs. 4. Balochistan (Pakistan)—Politics and government. I. Title. II. Series: Middle East, social and cultural studies.

GN635.P27F332011 305.80095491'5-dc23

2011036663

Original title: Ugo E.M. Fabietti, Etnografia dellafrontiera. Antropologia e storia in Baluchistan

© 1997 Meltemi Editore, Rome Cover design: Thomas Jaberg, Peter Lang AG ISSN 1663-6384

ISBN 978-3-0343-0422-1

© Peter Lang AG, International Academic Publishers, Bern 2011 Hochfeldstrasse 32, CH-3012 Bern

[email protected], www.peterlang.com,www.peterlang.net

All rights reserved. All parts of this publication are protected by copyright. Any utilisation outside the strict limits of the

copyright law, without the permission of the publisher, is forbidden and liable to prosecution. This applies in particular to reproductions, translations, microfilming, and storage and processing in

electronic retrieval systems. Printed in Switzerland

Table of Contents

Preface...................................................................................................... VII

Introduction..........................................................................................

1

1.

Spaces and Places.............................................................................. 11

2.

Time and Water.................................................................................31

3.

Equality and Hierarchy................................................................. 45

4.

History and Models....................................................................... 71

5.

Blood and Force .............................................................................. 93

6.

Nation and Memory......................................................................107

Bibliography.......................................................................................... 131 Index.......................................................................................................... 135

Illustrations.............................................................................................. Al

Preface

This book basically comes together as the result of an eight-year research, carried out in Balochistan from 1986 to 1994. More than fifteen years have passed since I last saw this region. Since then, the ups and downs affecting this Southern province of Pakistan by the shores of the Arabian Sea, have rarely reached Europe, the West and likely the outer world. The social and political background - an uneasy one, even at the time of the research - got worse over the years. The strain from Paki­ stani government on the one hand and the pressure from Islamic funda­ mentalism on the other, concurred to exacerbate an already politically uncertain, socially conflicting and economically depressed situation. Balochi people, an Iranian-speaking group spread out over Pakistan, Iran and, to a lesser degree, Afghanistan, share some common traits with other so-called “nations without a state”, in the words of the Ital­ ian sociologist Alberto Melucci. Claims for independence and unifica­ tion, come up as an effect of the British colonial rule under whose ide­ ology a nationalistic feeling had taken root among those who came in contact with the colonial establishment, have always been frustrated, ever since the Great Partition in 1947. Sure enough, Balochi nationalis­ tic movement did not originate as a form of imitation; it took a run-up thanks to ideas coming from the outside, which soon met a fertile pre­ existing background within the independence claims of some poten­ tates and proto-states of the region, the most famous and important of which being Kalat Khanate (1638-1955). While such independent political bodies were ruled by tribal élites or landlords, over the past forty years there has been a populariza­ tion of those same autonomist claims, which are now shared by a vast majority of the Baloch. Nowadays, any of the demanding for autonomy arising in the area, is vigorously fought back by the Pakistani government, while Islamic fundamentalism, particularly aggressive in this country, takes on the role of “moralizing” the people of Balochistan, the majority of whom

VIII

Ethnography at the Frontier

is Sunni, yet little inclined to conceal political statements with the lan­ guage of religion. Taken into account the general political climate over­ powering the region - Makran, the Southern end of Balochistan, bor­ ders Iran to the East while Afghanistan lies a little further away to the North - and Machiavellically speaking, the fact that Balochi people refuse to make a parade of religious discourse for their political claims, may turn into the very blind spot of their strategy. Still, this is by no means a book on geopolitics; rather, it deals with anthropology and in particular the aspects of Southern Balochistan society and culture, starting from a village. As a matter of fact, the pre­ sent research does not pertain to the life of a village. As Clifford Geertz put it: “the locus of study is not the object of study...” Within the space of several consecutive years I spent some months in this village with a population of some two thousand people, housed in a totally selfless way with a family whose only wish being the chance to talk to a European, to exchange thoughts and information “on our cultures”, as they would say. Unlike former fieldwork experiences, in Balochistan I’ve always found careful, cooperative and honest interlocutors, whose positive mood could inspire nothing but the same attitude in me. I do not know whether I made it or not, yet there’s still someone who makes a phone call or writes an email every now and then, wishing to bring me up to date (though in a riot of allusions and understatement) about the sit­ uation in their country. This book is for them: for those who are still there and those who are no more. First published in Italian, the book is now issued in English, in the hope of both giving a contribution to the poor bulk of anthropologi­ cal works about this region straddling the Middle East and the Indian Subcontinent, and reaching a wider audience than happened with the Italian publication. Nonetheless, translation proofreading has turned into an occasion to go deeper into some topics, clear up some passages and remove some others. Chapters themselves have been arranged in a slightly different way from the Italian version, so as to make the dis­ play of ethnographic material more consistent. February 2011

Ugo E.M. Fabietti

Introduction

The eastern part of southern Balochistan, Makran, which faces the Arabian Sea, is an arid region furrowed by semi-permanent rivers along which mankind has been settled for at least five thousand years. In oases supplied by water from rivers, and by subterranean chan­ nels from the lower slopes of the nearby mountains, cereals and date palms have been cultivated from time immemorial. Seen from the air, these valleys, the desert and the cultivations, display a sharp contrast between the ashen-yellow of the arid lands and the bright greens of the oases that follow, often in wide bends, the courses of rivers. Gath­ ered into one of these river valleys, the Kech, is the majority of the region’s population. Beyond the oases, desert. Much farther north, beyond the Central Makran Range and north-west towards Afghanistan, Balochistan is the land of large nomadic tribes. But in Makran there is no large-scale nomadism. Small groups of shepherds, families gathered for the period of a season, pasture their goats and their rare dromedaries in the moun­ tains, from which they get their name: Kuh-i-Baloch, the Baloch of the mountains. The local communities are in fact, in Makran, made up of settled farmers and have highly stratified characteristics in social, polit­ ical and economic terms. This stratification has in recent years wit­ nessed significant changes, especially since Makran became a perma­ nent part of the Pakistani state (the process, as I shall be recalling later, took place in two stages, in 1947 and in 1955). A stratified society therefore, in which the relationships of depend­ ency and servitude also extended to a substantial form of slavery. This institution, which included the use of agricultural and domestic labour, was fuelled by trade between the east coasts of the African continent, the Persian Gulf and the Arabian Sea ports, chiefly Gwadar1. Although officially abolished by the British with their entry into the region (at1 1

Gwadar was until 1958 an Omanite enclave.

2

Ethnography at the Frontier

the close of the 19th century), slavery nevertheless left its mark both in terms of social relationships (often transformed into domestic ser­ vice) and in the actual appearance of some of its inhabitants, many of whom have typically “African” somatic features. After an initial rapid tour of this region (1986) I settled, the follow­ ing year, in a village not more than thirty or so kilometres from Turbat, the administrative centre of the Kech District, on the route to the Ira­ nian frontier less than one hundred kilometres away. The practical and ethnographic reasons for this choice were justified. The village - with about two thousand inhabitants in all - could rea­ sonably offer a context neither too broad nor too narrow in which to carry out “anthropological” research. Situated a few hundred metres from that route, the village formed an almost compulsory transit place for all those who, for a great many different reasons, needed to travel from east to west and vice versa, across that wide valley of Kech. Their purposes included work, to be sure, but also commuting with Iranian Balochistan for not always confessable reasons, such as trafficking in petrol, motorcycles, video-recorders and alcoholic drinks, and perhaps also espionage (by Iran and by Pakistan itself). There were also pil­ grims, heading for or on their way back from Turbat, the main provin­ cial town, near which (in a place called Tamba) was the zikri sanctuary (an Islamic congregation of remote Shiite origins and targeted in recent years by non-Balochi integralists), and migrants to the Gulf countries, leaving or returning to their homes in villages all over the surrounding area. Finally, there were traders, politicians engaged in electoral prop­ aganda, government or pro-free Balochistan student protesters, wan­ dering sufis, and immigrants from other parts of Balochistan or from much more distant regions. Despite all this bustle, “modernity” did seem, in some ways, truly a long way off. Outside the main adminis­ trative town, for a radius of hundreds of kilometres, there was no elec­ tricity, only precarious or hopeless communications, and a shortage of drinking water. No hospital, very few schools (with woefully over­ crowded and very highly disciplined classes), a decidedly young pop­ ulation, high infant mortality, and a fairly low life expectancy. The place was also of a certain historical interest. For much of the 19th century and for a few decades of the 20th, it had been the

Introduction

3

headquarters of one of the most powerful “families” in the region. Its members were the descendants of a group which, having arrived three centuries earlier from the east (or so the stories said), had imposed its politico-military supremacy on the peasants of the valley. Having set­ tled along the course of the Kech and in some of its adjacent valleys, the ruling families had divided control of the valley amongst them­ selves by setting up a system of dominion founded, to a large extent, on the use of force. They kept their independence for a long time, before being absorbed by other political formations and, finally, by the Anglo-Indian Empire. The lords of the place I had chosen had lived, up till the mid-20th century, in a castle (kalat) whose remains still dominated the village. By that time irremediably in ruins, that castle nevertheless tended to fasci­ nate anybody approaching the village from the east. Indeed the fascina­ tion issuing from those ruins bathed the whole scene - the bright green of the palms, the contrast between that and the yellow-grey colour of the desert, the (not always) bright blue sky, the iron-coloured hills on the other side of the valley and, naturally, the crumbling tower of the castle itself - in a truly unique atmosphere. Constructed in ghel-o-sang, a mixture of clay, rubble and straw, and never restored during the pre­ vious fifty years, that building seemed to be crumbling like a choco­ late cake exposed to excessive heat. Every now and then I used to go up, incautiously, to its summit to observe the valley, the oasis and the village from above. To carry out research in the shade of those ruins would have given, I thought, a frame, and at the same time a particu­ lar “tone”, to the whole ethnographic undertaking. In reality it was a chance encounter, and the interest shown by a number of locals in what I was planning to do, that prompted me to settle in that village. There I was able for many years to enjoy the cordial, generous, collaborative and naturally “assiduous” - hospitality of a local family. About them, and about other figures whom I met over the years, I have spoken in the various chapters of this book2. I must confess that, at least initially, the interests that urged me to work in Makran were random, complex and not always the fruit 2

Their names have all been changed.

< ! V^^(tt;0„s and the creation of a nation.” Ernest Renan, “ What is a ation’ ’, >en M and Identities: Classic Readings, edited by Vincent P. Pecora. Oxford, UK, Blackwell 2001.

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Ethnography at the Frontier

as possible. A vague nostalgia for the British lingered among the older generations (the British having left in 1947). When I arrived in Makran, I landed bang in the midst of a fear­ some anti-government demonstration by the BSO, Balochistan Student Organisation, which was secular, “Marxist” and openly anti-American. These were not perhaps yet the times in which anti-Americanism was to coincide with “anti-Westernism”. I recall however a kind of (highly informal) interrogation to which I was subjected by some twenty or so BSO activists regarding my “views on the state of the world”. They were trying, basically, to find out whether I was in the service of the Pakistani government. Alam and Aqil, who had welcomed me a few days earlier into their home (or rather, into the home of their wives) were clearly on my side. They already “believed” in my good faith and so in them, who enjoyed a fairly high reputation locally, I had useful allies. In the end I passed the test. Having thus passed my exams with the activists (amongst whom there may have been a government informer), I was exempted from having to deal with any “problem” that might have upset all my research. But, shortly after I had settled in with Alam and Aqil, I underwent an attempted “suspension” by the supervisor of the archaeological mis­ sion, whose headquarters was several kilometres away from “my vil­ lage . The supervisor is an official from the Ministry of Culture, and keeps watch on the archaeological missions to make sure nothing is removed or improperly used by foreign researchers. Being attached to that archaeological mission, I too therefore came under his scrutiny. With a series of “prudential” lines of argument, the supervisor, a Pun­ jabi and shy little chap, a “family man” separated from his family by more than a thousand kilometres, and who looked upon his experience in Makran as a punishment, told me it was “too dangerous to work in that village”; that all things considered “it was not worth risking my life to study the ‘culture’ (sic!) of those people”, who were “unsavoury subjects, with no faith (he was a Christian!), and hostile to progress and civilisation” (a chorus which many anthropologists must have heard repeated increasingly often in recent years by the authorities of the countries they work in). He told me, in short, that I was should pack

Nation and Memory

109

my bags, leave the savages and their bizarre habits to rejoin the archae­ ological mission, true science (he had not understood what my profes­ sion actually was), and real civilisation. Obviously the first thing I did was to inform my hosts of this embarrassing situation, omitting to mention the supervisor s opinions of them. There was no need to do so. Indeed something unexpected happened. The Baloch of “my” village rebelled, through the local polit­ ical authorities (and probably having arranged for the supervisor to receive one or two "warnings”). They invited him to a council and, in my presence, told him in no uncertain terms that it was inadmissi­ ble that a Punjabi should come and poke his nose into Makran. They said that to oblige the Italian to leave was a ploy to make sure nobody could report what the Balochi really were: proud, noble, honest, vir­ tuous people, etc etc, and not that band of faithless robbers and louts which the government in Islamabad and its servile hangers-on (Pash­ tun, Punjabi and Americans) would have the world believe. Eventu­ ally the poor supervisor had to yield and to leave the village amidst the worst insults expressible in an Indo-European language of the Iranian sub-family. In actual fact, the supervisor, as he himself revealed to me some years afterwards when I ran across him in Islamabad, had been forced to take that line of action after pressure received from two secret service agents. These had asked him to make sure I would not remain in contact with the Baloch. I have recounted this episode because it seems to me significant of the tension which, at the time of my research, characterised the rela­ tions between the inhabitants of Makran and central government, with all that ensued from those relations in terms of the attitudes and dis­ courses adopted by them towards non-Balochi. In this chapter I would like to explain how the Baloch saw the ques­ tion of their “difference” from other Pakistani groups. Naturally this difference was expressed not in “differential” terms but in terms of identity, i.e. with reference to what were, for the Baloch, the historicocultural traits that made them different to the others. Their discourses, crvent and, as I have mentioned in the introduction to this book, full °f incredible geo-historical and geopolitical theories about “closeness and distances” among Indo-European peoples, were part of a much

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wider movement known as Balochi nationalism which, from the late 1960s had taken shape consistently in this frontier region. In the last quarter of the twentieth century the theme of identity, stated c iefly in terms of ethnicity, received particular attention both from anthropologists and historians. In many cases that common attention was coupled with an interest in the reappearance of nationalism which, as a phenomenon by then considered obsolete in its “classic” form, had begun to assume planetwide dimensions (Gingrich and Banks 2006). Since it had not spared even the “old Europe” (where it had been e ieved dead and buried), and due to its appearance in places where it was thought that it could not still, or no longer, manifest itself, this p enomenon led to a convergence of interests on the part of historians an anthropologists. History and anthropology thus found themselves examining the same phenomenon from very close points of view: his­ tory eing enriched by the influences of anthropology (the compara­ tive aspect) and vice versa (attention to the contemporary West). Hence important works of synthesis produced in the last part of the twentiet century and now regarded as classics in each of the two fields, bear evi ent signs of the other discipline (Armstrong 1982; Anderson 1983; Gellner 1983; Smith 1986 and others). ■ Anthropologists and historians agree that nationalism, as an ideo ogica construct and political movement, must be treated as a rela­ tively recent phenomenon with substantially “Western” roots. Whilst however some, like Anderson and Gellner, regard as irrelevant the idea t at it may be linked to a pre-existent identity sentiment, others, like rmstrong and Smith, claim instead that nationalism is the product of a pre existent feeling of identity. In this case the question therefore wou e to ascertain whether cultural elements exist which, in cer­ tain circumstances, may engender collective movements and forms of identity defined as “nationalisms”. Supporters of the first perspective maintain that only precise historica circumstances to be found in the modern West favoured the emergg 1 ea of a national identity. Upholders of the second perspective e leve on the other hand that recent and current nationalisms are the su t, in t eir dynamics and symbolic references, of previous identity

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forms. The most convinced supporter of this second perspective is Anthony D. Smith. In what is by now a classic work, The Ethnic Ori­ gins of Nations (1986), he proposed, for the purpose “of retracing the foundations and ethnic roots of modern nations”, a systematic exami­ nation of “cultural forms, sentiments, attitudes and perceptions to the degree in which they are expressed and codified in myths, memories, values and symbols” (Smith 1986: 53-4). For my part, I shall attempt to develop the theme of the connections between nationalism and ethnic identity, in relation to Balochistan. By the very fact of establishing that connection, I therefore accept Smith’s general indication. My intent however is not exactly to develop an “archaeological” perspective on Balochi nationalism in an attempt to spot common values and symbols rooted in a pre-existent “ethnic identity”. Rather, my purpose is to highlight the logic of the national­ ist “discourse”, as developed in Balochistan in the second half of the twentieth century, and traces of which were much in evidence at the time of my stay in Makran. By “discourse” I mean (in line with Foucault 1969) a number of enunciations, representations, images and symbols that tend to pro­ duce coherencies of meaning. And which thereby tend to mould, to give a shape, the objects they refer to. The “discourse” which I pro­ pose to consider is not therefore only the explicit discourse of nation­ alists, consisting of programmatic statements, political appeals and verbal as well as written theorisations; it is also the discourse which consists of opinions, declarations and feelings, expressed by individu­ als not directly engaged in politics but who, albeit only broadly, share the sentiments of the nationalists. The “discourse of Balochi national­ ism is in fact a “field” of resistance, debate and action fuelled by what­ ever it considers useful in creating an image of the Baloch as a people

with a common origin, culture and history. Balochi nationalism is a political, ideological and intellectual move­ ment which arose within one of the largest “stateless nations in South West Asia (estimates of the number of Balochi speakers oscillate between t? and 25 million, including migrants working in the Gulf countries and Africa). The idea of Balochistan as a “nation” was probably first

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mooted in an article published in 1933 in the Karachi weekly Al Baloch, the official organ of the Anjum an-e Ittihad-e Balochistan (Organisa­ tion for the Unity of Balochistan). According to that article, “Greater Balochistan (as it is called even today by the nationalists) should have included (see the map below) in addition to Iranian Balochistan and Indian (now Pakistani) Balochistan, the Sindh, the Bahawalpur region and Dera Ghaza Khan and Ismail Khan areas, considered the point of maximum expansion northwards by the Balochi during the sixteenth century (Inayatullah 1987: 31-32). The idea of a “Greater Balochistan’ was one of the many projects formulated by those who, between 1920 and 1930, had been trying to picture the future of the Indian Subcon­ tinent after a hypothetical departure by the British. The 1930s projects had no sequel, due to the intervention of the British intelligence who silenced the nationalists, and, after the partition of 1947, to the annex­ ation (in two stages) of Balochistan by the new state of Pakistan. The nationalistic spirit survived however in the decades that followed, to regain fresh impetus in the seventies. Balochi nationalism raised its head, therefore, and developed asa political sentiment and movement, in response to the presence first of the British, and later of the Pakistanis in the region. As an intellectual and ideological movement, it resulted from the merging of local identity memories and ideas that had arrived with colonial rule. Also among the ideas brought with colonial dominion, in addition to those connected with the nation-state as developed in Europe during the modern ifj were those filtered through the works of western authors (mainly Brit ish) interested in Balochi history and, more generally, in the history of the populations of the Anglo-Indian empire and its bordering regionsThe distinction between local identity memories and imported idea, is useful. Because, whilst it is true, as Ernest Gellner maintains, that it is nationalism that makes the nation and not the other way roun it is also true that the nationalist issue always refers to values, nW e " stories, world-views and social practices existing prior to nation4 is® All these elements existing prior to nationalism consist of sy® bols and behaviours which enable subjects to perceive themselves, ascription, as belonging to one and the same “group (Barth 19 9 But these values, models, stories, etc, are not always simultaneou,

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active. Indeed, many of them are, so to speak, “dormant” - or to use an expression by Aleida Assmann, “stored” in what she herself calls the “memory-archive”. In her book Erinnerungsräume, on the forms and changes of cultural memory, Aleida Assmann in fact called an “amor­ phous mass” the accumulated unorganised memories which can be “used” only if taken into consideration by a “memory-function” that “retrieves” and bends them, so to speak, to its own purpose (Assmann ’999). So we could say that the discourse of Balochi nationalism is founded on a form of memory-function, which takes elements of the memory­ archive and organises them according to a purpose. This perspective has the advantage, over Anthony Smith’s idea, of not having to con­ nect in a necessary and organic way the nationalistic sentiment with what he calls “cultural forms, sentiments, attitudes and perceptions expressed and coded in myths, memories, values and symbols”, that is to say, in already organised discourses. Within the memory-function, these ideas, values and behaviours retrieved” from the memory archive interact with other elements which, as I was saying, Balochi nationalism had absorbed during and after the colonial era: the idea of a nation, as developed in Europe in the modern age, and the theories of western authors interested in the history of the Baloch and of the peoples of the Anglo-Indian empire. Playing on the interconnection between these elements arising from the memory-archive and ideas more or less recently imported, nation­ alism organises its memory function in such a way as to bestow coher­ ency on its discourse, and fresh meanings which are the peculiarity of its reasoning. In order to make things less abstract, I shall try to show how the memory-archive elements come into the discourse of Balochi nation­ alism. For its part, this discourse is organised in relation to ideas of a European origin and as a result of moulding-shaping, as Foucault says, a new “object of reflection”: the legitimacy of Balochistan as a possi­ ble nation-state. ,a ver/ Seneral sense, it can be said that the Balochi nationalists seek egitimate their claims by referring chiefly to the following points,

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or “fields of discourse”: a) both the popular and the cultivated idea that the Baloch have of their own past history: a theme closely linked to the question of b) the ethnogenesis of the Baloch people c) the territorial question and to a lesser extent, to the d) religious factor. Although the Baloch speak a language of “Indo-European” family related to Farsi (Persian), their roots are traced back, traditionally, to Mir Hamza, paternal uncle of the Prophet Muhammad. The refer­ ence to this mythic ancestor, chosen probably as such at the time of the Islamization of Balochistan by the Arabs (in the eleventh century of the Christian era), therefore sets the origins of the Baloch people at the dawn of Islam. The poems and legends passed down orally tell, in effect, a story of conquerors originating from the North West. These would appear in fact to have initiated the occupation of the area today called Balochistan in the eleventh century, which was then com­ pleted during the fifteenth century under the leadership of the legend­ ary “national” hero Mir Chakar Rind. In the course of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, part of the Sindh and of the Punjab fell, in effect, under the influence of Balochi chiefdoms, thereby boosting the nationalist image of a “Greater Balochistan”. This is an example of how the memory-archive was exploited to foster, in the vision of the early nationalists, the idea of a country whose borders would extend beyond those recognised today. Imagining Balochistan as a region inhabited by peoples whose ances­ tors came from an area situated between Mesopotamia and the region south of the Caspian Sea, theorists of the Balochi nation restated the idea of a conquest, or migration, which is not rare in social cosmologies seeking to explain both the origin of a people and rule by one group over others. The idea of the ethnogenesis of the Baloch tends in fact to reassert both cultural unity and common geographic origin. This idea of population by groups originating from the west is con­ firmed, in the eyes of cultivated nationalists, by the works of western orientalists who, at the end of the nineteenth century tended to pre­ sent the origins of the Balochi people in a “migratory” perspective (Janmahmad 1988: 17, 25; Inayattullah 1987: 33). In their turn, how­ ever, western orientalists based their hypotheses on popular Balochi

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tradition itself, and in particular on oral poetry, which began to be translated into western languages towards the middle of the nineteenth century (Dames 1904, 1907). The “migratory thesis” was a product of the historical perspective which in the meantime had developed in the West on the strength of comparative studies of Indo-European lan­ guages (Dames 1904: xiii). That perspective consisted essentially in an idea of how these languages spread as a result of the “fragmentation” of a Proto-Indo-European society, culture and language into derived and interrelated societies, cultures and languages (Renfrew 1987). But it is not only from these cross-references between one tradition and another that cultivated nationalism gets what it needs to “invent” a tradition, at least in the sense in which the term “invention” is under­ stood by Hobsbawm and Ranger in their classic study of 1983. A sort of local “sociology” (deposited in the “memory-archive”) also contrib­ utes to its endorsement. As an example, I recall that during the period of my researches in the south of the country, the morphological char­ acteristics of Balochi society were seen as a proof of past migrations. As we have said in Ch. 1, the dispersion across the territory of pat­ ronymic groups (z rnto what Ulf Hannerz has called geocultural imagination.

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In Hannerz’s words, geocultural imagination would be “a matter of fairly large-scale mapmaking”, a way of referring “to the distribu­ tion of things cultural, somehow cultural, over territories and their human populations” (Hannerz 2007). At the same time the expression “geocultural imagination” is a way of “suggesting that [we are] focus­ ing on the way we think geoculturally, about the world and its parts, and the main features of those parts.” This is not an absolute novelty for anthropology, because the adherents to the German “diffusionist school” and other scholars had already dealt, by now a century ago, with the distribution of cultural traits in the diverse cultura areas of the planet. Yet, continues Hannerz, in those days, a century or so ago, these were mostly activities of the ivory tower, where scholars would argue over matters of conceptualization and cat­ egorization mostly with their peers. In more recent times, it seems [...] that the geocultural imagination has become more volatile, occurring in both aca­ demic and public arenas and also crossing the boundaries between them more readily, and more ambiguously.

In this way geo-cultural representations become significant components in a transnational collective consciousness, a set of

representations of the world which are circulated, received and debated in a world-wide web of social relationships, and which again stimulate further cul­ tural production.

They are representations affecting broad strata of world society, thanks to the spread of literacy and, especially to the medium of television. Geocultural imagination, during the 1990s, had its maximum prop­ agators in a number of “organic intellectuals”: Huntington, Kagan, Fukuyama, to mention only the best-known. Some of them “served in Washington” in one administration or another. Huntington has linked his name to the geocultural image of a “clash of civilizations”, where the reduction of culture to religion is a fundamental pillar of his argu­ ment (Huntington 1996). The image of the cultural dynamic offered by these theorists of geocul­ ture is one of those which Clifford Geertz would readily have defined

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as typical of “politologists in a balloon” (Geertz 1999). In fact, whilst we have to recognise the extraordinary power of persuasion exerted by it in terms of geocultural imagination, we must also underline its poor analytical capacity at an ethnographic level. There is no doubt that when the idea of a “Greater Balochistan” was enounced in 1933, geocultural imagination was already present among the Balochi nationalists themselves. We can, however, also note that the idea of a Greater Balochistan changed according to specific politi­ cal strategies and moments. It is in fact possible to note these changes by comparing the various versions of this idea that have succeeded one another in time. For the nationalists of 1933, “Greater Balochistan” should have embraced, in addition to the Iranian and Anglo-Indian (now Pakistani) Balochistan, the Sindh, the region of Bahawalpur and the Dera Ghaza Khan and Ismail Khan areas. Strangely, Afghan Balo­ chistan was not mentioned (and thus not even indicated on the annexed map). The reason for this omission is that at the time Afghanistan was already a sanctuary and a potential ally of the Balochi nation­ alists, as it was also to have been in the years 1970-80, thanks to the then pro-Soviet and anti-Pakistan government in Kabul. In the mid­ twentieth century on the other hand, the idea of a Greater Balochistan again included Afghan Balochistan, whilst the northern region of Dera Ghazi Khan had disappeared — but only to return in the 1990s as a topic of debate. Set on the north east limits of what is considered the max­ imum point of expansion of the Baloch during the sixteenth century, this area became once again the focus of attention by the nationalists after the possibility of important uranium deposits had been suggested in the neighbourhood. It can thus be noted that geocultural imagination - the representa­ tion of spaces “containing” dominant cultural forms - changed accord­ ing to periods, but also above all to contingent political circumstances. It is largely a mental construction, whose “form” depends on discur­ sive strategies “useful to the purpose” at differing times.

However, as we were saying, these geocultural representations are ana­ lytically ineffective, since they reduce the cultural complexity to a few essential ’ traits. They are in fact promptly belied by practice.

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I mentioned earlier the best-known case of geocultural imagination: that of the reduction of culture to religion, carried out by Hunting­ ton in his celebrated book of 1996. It is interesting therefore to see the place of religion in the Balochi nationalist discourse and in the effec­ tive behaviour of those who share it. Balochi nationalism is in fact a secular movement, having no organic connections with Sunnite reli­ gious circles. The Baloch are for the most part Sunnite Muslims, but a substantial minority are believers in Zikr, a form of worship dating to 16th cen­ tury that has references to Shiite Islam and is particularly widespread in the south of the country as well as among Baloch migrants in Sindh and in the Gulf area (cf. Chapter 5, note 4). Still in the eighteenth century, almost the whole of the population of southern Balochistan was of Zikri faith. Only then did this “con­ fession” begin slowly to decline, so slowly that by the end of the nine­ teenth century the Anglo-British administrator-ethnographers, in recording their high number, were quick to consider them a veritable “tribe” (B.D.G., 1906). The decline of Zikr towards the middle of the eighteenth century was a consequence of military intervention by the Khan of Kalat, which smashed the “separatism” of the lords (hakim) of Kech (who at the time were followers of Zikr) by conducting nothing short of ajihad against them. After the local lords, defeated and deprived of much of their autonomy, had been converted to Sunnite orthodoxy, the Zikri were left free to practise their worship. Although a part of the population with time did abandon Zikr, following the example of their local lords, the presence of this cult nevertheless remained strong in the region. In the mid-1990s the principal Zikri sanctuary, not far from the city of Turbat, was still attracting yearly, at the end of the Muslim month of Ramadan, some thirty thousand pilgrims from all corners of Pakistan. Since the mid-eighteenth century there has been no further major contrast between Zikri and Sunnites. Zikri, as recently as in the I99OS’ still had no difficulty at all in proclaiming their religion and practis" ing it throughout Balochistan. However, from the mid-1980s, Zikri have been the object of attacks, and not only verbal ones, by Sunnite

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mullahs (Ahmed 1987). Having come from regions outside Balochistan and organized expeditions of non-Balochs into the south of the coun­ try, these mullahs, connected with the Quranic schools situated in the northern and eastern regions of Pakistan, attempted to raise the ques­ tion of what they consider to be heresy. Their attempts however did not produce - at least at the time of my stay in Makran - the results expected by the promoters of these “punitive expeditions”. The Sun­ nite Baloch in fact saw these raids led by “fanatical mullahs” (as they call them) as nothing more than one of the numerous plots woven by the government to foment disagreement among the Baloch themselves. I recall perfectly the attitude of many of my hosts towards these epi­ sodes. Alam was among the angriest. He saw religion as a “political fact”, and regularly made fun of the various (including local) mullahs (whenever the bang (the call to prayer) resounded through the vil­ lage air. Unfortunately, at the time of my stay, a number of dramatic events also occurred. Such as when Munir, one of the most conspicuous authorities in the Zikri community, suffered an attempt on his life, in which he and his wife were wounded and some of his guests were killed. During the years of my research (1987-1994), the friction between orthodox non-Balochs on the one hand, and Zikri and Sunnite Balochs on the other, had in fact several times risen to a considerable level of danger, to a point where even those in power locally (and who, accord­ ing to the nationalists, were deeply compromised with central govern­ ment), had openly declared themselves in favour of religious freedom and of the Zikris’ right to practise their beliefs.

But what is the attitude of the nationalists towards the religious ques­ tion? The idea of the mullahs’ raids as the product of destabilization plans by the Islamabad government did not seem at that time to have serious foundations. But if one looks at the reasons given by Paki­ stani governments to justify the annexation of Balochistan, it can be noted that the one adopted most frequently has been that of religious unity i.e. purity” of the country. Pakistan means in fact the Land °f the Pure”. One should not be surprised therefore if nationalism regards incur­ sions of fanatical mullahs as manoeuvres aimed to create a state of

il 124

Ethnography at the Frontier

division and confusion among the Baloch. If religious fundamental­ ism is recognized as an element of anti-Baloch policy, the nationalist argument shows a tolerance in matter of faith, and even a clear incli­ nation towards secularism. And to the point where the jihad waged by the Khan of Kalat against the Zikri in the 18th century, is considered a marginal episode, in keeping with the idea of the Khanate as a polit­ ical precedent of historically largely achieved unity. This is just one example of how, on a practical level, representa­ tions of a culturally homogeneous Balochistan with no internal dif­ ferentiations disappear altogether in terms of geocultural imagination, where again the propagandist element blots out all the others. We must therefore concentrate on the socio-political context within which the nationalist discourse operates.

In the light of the grand historico-cultural visions embraced by the Baloch nationalists, there exist in fact, within the latter, different atti­ tudes to the “Balochi question”. There are not only differing politi­ cal options, depending on one ideological choice rather than another (for example the contrast, in the 1980s, between Marxists and non­ Marxists); there are also differences relating to the social history of the different areas of Balochistan itself. One difference which, from this angle, seems to me very important is that between the north and the rest of Balochistan. The North is by tradition the land of the great tribes and tribal leaders (sardar). The south is on the other hand char­ acterized by the presence of a heavily stratified agricultural society founded on the patron-client relationship. This difference has reper­ cussions on the type of relationship that exists between the Balochi community and the state of Pakistan. The tribes of the north interact with the external powers (now with the Pakistani state) through their traditional leaders. It is true that in the south too, the key exponents of this policy belong to the upper echelons of the hierarchy, but the morphology of local society makes the following of a prominent leader less stable and reliable than in the north. In the north we find a structure of relationships that falls roughly, as I have already said, into the category of “segmentary” societies. Every

Nation and Memory

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large “tribe”, qowm, is composed of a series of lineages”, khel, each with a sardar of its own (Pehrson 1966: 17-18). From one of these khel comes the “tribal” sardar, an office passed down by inheritance within a single lineage, and called, in fact, sardar khel. The lineages making up a “tribe” are thought of as descending from a common ancestor, from whom, however, not all are “equidistant”. Indeed the sardar khel, that is to say the lineage to which the tribal chief belongs, is considered gene­ alogically “closer” (i.e. descending in direct line) to the tribal ancestor. In southern Balochistan on the other hand, the khel system is absent, whilst the patron-client relationship prevails. This constitutes the foun­ dation of a stratified society, in which individuals recognise their sub­ ordination to other individuals. The relationship of dependency that binds many individuals without means to a master (literally “the big­ gest”) is certainly binding but is in some ways less “constrictive” than tribal affiliation. The relationship between client and master is in fact configured as one of dependency which can be interrupted by means of affiliation, by a client, to a new master. The absence of “tribal” bonds therefore makes the following of a master potentially more “unsta­ ble” than that of a sardar and, above all, less “morally” pledged to his service. This could help to explain why the leading figures of Balochi nationalism have been - with rare exceptions — tribal sardars, and why the armed conflict waged in the seventies was mainly provoked by the large tribes of the north bound to their sardar (Harrison 1981; Redaelli I996)The particular position occupied by the sardars, which in the past allowed some of them to present themselves as champions of Balochi independence, is however not without contradictory aspects. There are nationalists sardars who have been accused, both by the nationalists themselves and by the central government, of adopting a conserva­ tive attitude to the Balochi question, allegedly determined by calcula­ tions of personal opportunity. Cases are cited of sardars who allegedly urged their tribes to refuse the building of roads and schools on their territ°ries, with the excuse that too rapid modernization would have ad traumatic effects on the population. This kind of refusal has been interpreted by some nationalists as proof of bad faith on the part of the ^rdars, who, they allege, are afraid of loosing their privileges. These

126

Ethnography at the Frontier

sardars reply to this accusation by upholding the idea of an autono­ mous Balochistan whose population should be entitled to preserve its customs and institutions. To consider the sardars conservatives in bad faith is perhaps a bit too simple (some have paid for their anti-government attitude with prison, exile and even death). However, this situation does testify, on the whole, to the contradiction that exists between aspirations to unity and autonomy on the one hand, and to “tribal particularism” on the other. The ambiguity of the sardars’ attitude seems to be not so much the product of personal calculations as of the position that they occupy in the context of relations between Baloch and Pakistani central gov­ ernment. The sardars occupy a prominent position within a sociopolitically “tribal” structure, seen by a part of nationalist thinking as an obstacle to the realization of its designs. Balochi nationalism thus seems to be marked by a twofold charac­ ter, that of the tribes and that of Balochi “modernist” educated people who consider the so called “tribalism” to be a force contrary to the achievement of the region’s independence in a manner inspired by the idea of a Balochi culture and “national” society. However much one may strive to promote in various ways an image of the Baloch people released from the tribal heritage, for example by affixing to personal documents not “tribal” names but very simply the wording “Baloch’ as a surname” — it is nevertheless true that anti-Pakistan mobiliza­ tion has occurred to date mainly in the light of political choices - and not always clear ones, made by the sardars (Harrison 1981; Titus 1990)'

As in all phenomena definable as “nationalism”, the appearance of national unity and identity in Balochistan is not simply the effect of a demand from within local society. Rather, it is the result of an inner sentiment prompted by external forces. This forces coincide with a large number of factors. Firstly, the presence of the Pakistani state which tends, like any state, to impose its authority on the territories under its jurisdiction. Then, there are the other states in the region, and the non-Asian powers that have at times exerted dramatic pres­ sure on Balochistan. It would however be reductive to maintain that

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colonization or violence on the part of an outside power can, as such, spark a form of reaction self-proclaimed as nationalist. Balochistan had been subjected for centuries, if not for thousands of years, to the pres­ sure of foreign powers, but of course this fact had never until recently been the origin of anything that might be qualified as “nationalism”. I know this idea would not be shared by many nationalist intellectu­ als who, as I have mentioned, overvalue the function of the Kalat in the process of constructing a Balochi national identity. This can be noted also from Internet sites2 in which the Baloch claim their auton­ omy and the right to the existence of an internationally recognized Baloch community. With British and subsequently Pakistani rule, something however did change. Education reached Balochistan and schools, though over­ crowded and with often ill-prepared teachers, were opened, with a University in Quetta, the capital of Balochistan. As a consequence, thousands of young people have had access to information and pro­ fessional qualifications that do not fit a society of pastoral herders and date palm growers. It is no coincidence that the two students’ organi­ zations, the Balochistan Student Organization and a dissident part of it, have several thousand members and that, still more significantly, they represent the two most active political movements in Balochistan. It is true that some nationalists see the development of educational facilities and services by the Pakistan authorities as an attempt to favour certain classes and thus to break up the solidarity of the Baloch to the advan­ tage of the government, besides being a quite insufficient remedy for the growth of the region. But this development of educational struc­ tures has produced an entirely new situation. In it young Baloch aspire to find a place for themselves in a world quite different to that of the past generations. However they are frustrated in these aspirations, by a state that is unable to guarantee access to new conditions of life to all the official “ethnic groups” living on its territory. This is all the more true in the case of conditions which the presence of the state has contributed to create. The presence of a state as such today, tends in ?ee /or example http://balochhouse.blogspot.com/2o1o/o2/across-covetedhnds.html.

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fact to set the condition for a greater mobility of individuals and for increased communication between the different sectors of society. In this sense those, like Gellner (1983), who consider nationalism to be a product of “modernity”, are right. So it seems that nationalism emerges where, with the widening of a situation of difference perceived at the ethnic and cultural level, a gap arises between the system of expecta­ tions and the possibility of actually fulfilling those expectations. What seems very important to me is that the higher cultural level reached among the younger population has created, above all, the conditions for the memory-archive of the “amorphous mass” to be retrieved by a “memory function” at the service of a political project. Any reflection on a cultural otherness brings into play what Roy Wagner (1982) qualified as a reinvention of its own culture. Those observing others and reflecting on others make use of analogies and metaphors inferred from their own cultural codes. Thus they end up, in a way, by “objectifying” their own culture, so as to make it appear in a different light to that in which it had been presented to them pre­ viously: they “reinvent” it. But this does not concern only the ethnog­ rapher. For his or her interlocutors, too, must understand the people they are dealing with, and to do that they too must resort to models and metaphors inferred from their own cultural repertoire. They too, like the ethnographer, arrive at an objectification of their own culture, hence its reinvention. In this kind of “primary scene” presented to us by Wagner - the eth­ nographic encounter - the objectification of one’s own culture is trans­ lated into the “incorporation” of concepts and meanings of other peo­ ple s cultures into one’s own. This is what happens on a reduced scale, and on an inter-subjective level, in the ethnographic encounter. But it is also what happens in the “contact between cultures”, in a period in which history seems to “accelerate”, in which the transfer of tech­ nologies, the adoption of a language of exchange (as for example Eng­ lish), the circulation of information, the market and the media, enable peoples to communicate” with one another. There is nothing ‘ opti­ mistic in this way of considering things. Nor il there anything in the least pessimistic about it. It is a fact. Like that whereby, in taking up themes of western scientific thinking, and ideologies originating from

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the same cultural source, the discourse on Balochi nationalism man­ ages, by dipping into the local memory-archive, to reinvent tradition, and hence to invent a new one. But this process does not occur within an “equal” situation. The cir­ culation of meanings, this kind of “traffic of cultures”, never happens in a “neutral space” characterised by equality of the interlocutors, but rather within a general picture characterised by specific relationships offeree. As Talal Asad (1986) pointed out years ago, these relationships of force can also be translated, besides everything that we know very well, into hegemony of “languages” by one culture over another. Serv­ ing the “reinvention” of an identity being formed, and as such threat­ ened, as is in fact that of the Baloch, the western languages of political science, linguistics and historiography, like certain influences of Euro­ pean nationalist tradition exercise, in the context examined, an action of dominion (in the University of Balochistan, to my great surprise, I came across a historian interested in the Italian “Risorgimento”). This does not mean that the resumption and adoption, by Balochi nationalists, of European-sourced ideas, should be construed as an example of the direct dominion of western culture over the local one. Rather, it means that local culture is learning to think itself also through those ideas and those representations. From this point of view, the themes of Balochi nationalism, and the modes of their articula­ tion into a discourse with claims to coherency, constitute an exam­ ple of what can be intended, today, by “specific historical relations of ominance and dialogue”3 between different cultures; in a period in which, to borrow an expression used by Christopher Hann, “history accelerates”4.

’ See Clifford 1987:2a. 4 Hann 1994.

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tv

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Index

A Ma (water measure) 37,43 Agha Khan 105 agriculture 32 Al Baloch (nationalist journal) 112 Al-Qaeda 107 Anderson, Benedict no Anjuman-e Ittihad-e Balochistan (Organisation for the Unity of

Balochistan) 112 Appadurai, Arjun 25 Arab Peninsula 119 asabiyya 74,77 Asad, Talal 129 Assmann, Aleida 113

B

bagha (male prostitute) 24 baba (blood) 93 ff. Bahawalpur 112,121 Moch 26,48,52,53,54, 65, 75, 78, 86 Baloch 95,98,103,104, 107,109 Balochi nationalism no Balochistan Student Organisation (BSO) 108 Baloch of the mountains (Kuh-e-Baloch) 1 bamprosh (water system) 37, 40 tang (call to prayer) 123 Barth, Fredrick 46 bazaar 17,19,23 Berque, Jacques 27 tatefe (guest’s room) 25, 32

136

Ethnography at the Frontier

bilateral descent 27 bir (vendetta) 23 Black, Max 73,90 blacksmiths 52 blood (see baba) boundaries 22 Brahui 118, 119 Brahui (language) 86 Buleidi 95, too, 101 bunjui (water system) 37, 38, 41, 42 Bu Said 95, too

C casta. (Portuguese) 51 caste (English) 51 commissioner 65 Conrad, Joseph 7

D Dari (language) 95 darzada (social category) 53, 64 Dasht 85 dawa (force) 9, 93 ff. dependency 1 Dera Ghaza Khan 112,121 domestic servants 53 Durkheim, Emile 70

E emigration 57 equality 9, 46, 116 essadar (water’s owner) 33, 34, 36, 37, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44 ethnographic representations 73, 91 ethnography of the contemporary 5, 6

Index

137

exchange 40 extended families 24

F Fabian, Johannes 5 Farghana Valley (Afghanistan) 99 Farsi (language) 95 faujdar (military governorsin XVII c. India) 80 force see dawa Foucault, Michel. 93, in, 113 frontier 4,5,6,73, 82, 107 Fukuyama, Francis 120 G Geertz, Clifford VIII, 120 Gellner, Ernest no, 112,128 ghel-o-sang (building materials) 3, 23 geocultural imagination 119,120 ghulam (slave) 49 Gichkis 52,79,83, 84, 85, 86, 87, 89, 95, 96, 97, 98, 99, IOO>I01’ I02’ 103,104,106 lök (a small humped ox) 13 Greater Balochistan 112,114, 121 Great Game 8 Gwadar 105

H hakim (ruler) 18,19, 26, 48, 52, 53, 63, 65, 74, 75, 77, 78, 84> kangam (water measure) 36, 37,4°, 41 Hann, Christopher 129 Hannerz, Ulf 119,120 tapt (water system) 37, 39ft., 40 taptag (week) 32, 36 heredity 35

140

Ethnography at the Frontier

marriages 67 marriage strategies 69 Mar Singh 95 Marxism 124 master (“big man”) 61, 62, 125 med (fishermen) 52 Melucci, Alberto VII memory 9, 93, 104, 107 ff. migrations 28 Mirat-i-Ahmadi 80 Mir Chakar Rind 114,116 Mir Hamza 114, 119 model 6, 9, 13, 63, 71 ff., 83, 112, 128. - of behaviour 63 monetization of the economy 56, 57 Mughals 79, 80, 81 mulk (litt. Property. “Oasis“) 17, 20, 23, 30 mullah (man of religion) 26

N nakib (servants) 75 Nation 9, 107 ff. nationalism 119, 129 nationalist intelligentsia 117 Nausherwani 79, 81, 83 nawab (muslim prince) 80, 96,117 nazim (muslim prince) 80 Nearchus (Alexander’s admiral) 4 nomadic pastoralists 52, 77

O oasis 13, 15, 16, 17

Index

P Pakistan 123 Panjgur 94, 95, 101,103 Pashtu (language) 107 patrilineal descent 26 patron-client relations 56, 60, 69 patronymic groups 116 Persian Shah 79 places 8, 11 ff. practical life 12 prayer 123 Prophet Muhammad 114 public space 23 Punjabi 109

Q qanat (canal in Iran) 63 qowm (“tribe”, Northern Balochistan) 125

R raja (hindu prince) 117 Rajaput 81,95,96,104 Ranger, Terence 115 razm-e-baloch (balochi customs) 47,98 residence patterns 23

S Salzman, Philip 77, 78, 79 sardar (“tribal chief”) 49, 75, 105, 124, 125, 126 sareshta (a canal’s “supervisor”) 33, 34, 35 servile relations 60 shahri (villagers) 74, 75, 77, 78 shi’ia (religious denomination) 98 Sindh 112

141

142

Ethnography at the Frontier

slavery 2 Smith, Anthony 111,113 smuggling 59,61 social dependence 60 social mobility 60 Soviet Army 107 Soviet Union 79 space 8,11 ff. Spooner, Brian 74, 75 sren bandi (“girding up the loins”, the followers of a leader) 61 story-tellers 53 Sunnite 122 supi (sufi) 26 synchronous (synchrony/asynchrony) 43, 44

T tallar (water system) 37, 38 Talpur (rulers of Sindh) 79 Tamba 2, 99 tas (water measure) 37,43 tassu (water measure) 37, 43 time 9, 31 ff. Toynbee, Arnold 85 translation 50, 51 transvestites see bagha tribalism 126 Turbat 2, 99

U Urdu (language) 106

V vendetta 23 village 16 ff.

Index

W Wagner, Roy 128 wakil (councillor) 65, 84, 98 water 9, 11 ff.

Z Zahari (a nomadic tribe in Balochistan) 95 zamindar (landlord) 80 zat 26 ff. 49, 50 ff. 64 ff. 115 - as a ‘patronymic group’ 51 - theories of the fragmentation of 27 zikri (religious denomination) 2, 98, 99, 100, 122 ff.

143

Illustration 1: Oases and villages of the Kech river valley. A view from the top of the hills

Illustrations

Illustration 2: Maitag and its kalat

Illustration 3: The village from the kalat’s tower

Illustrations

Ethnography at the Frontier

Illustration 5: Crossing a mulk

Illustrations

A-8

Ethnography at the Frontier Illustration 8: Digging a kariz

Illu stratio n 9: W ater barrage in a ka riz

Illustrations

A-9

A-12

Illustration 12: A goldsmith in Maitag

Ethnography at the Frontier

Illustrations Illustration 13: Balochi woman in full attire

I

A-13

Map 1: Makran

Map 2: Reconstruction of the first map of “Greater Balochistan” (1933) by Mir Abdul Aziz Kurd, the General Secretary of the Anjuman-e Ittihad-e Balochistan (From Inayatullah 1987).

This book is the result of a field research carried out by the author among a

community of agriculturists in what was till recently the uttermost part of Southern Pakistani Balochistan. It deals with themes such as ways of living and representing spaces, constructing

memory, the heritage of a form of social stratification which shaped community relationships in the last three centuries, and, last but not least, the insurgence

of nationalism.

Furthermore, the book puts forward some theoretical proposals about the translation of cultural “models”, throughout a constant comparison between the author’s and his interlocutors’, alternating ethnographic “descriptions”

with reflexive arguments. Notwithstanding its remoteness, Balochistan is today at the confluence of forces which reflect both local and “global” logics, pushing this land, once only

visited by few adventurous travelers, in the focus of international interests which could impinge on political evolution of this sensitive area straddling South Asia and Middle East.

Ugo E. M. Fabietti is Professor of Anthropology at the University of Milan Bicocca and Director of the PhD. Programme in Anthropology. He carried out research in Arabia (1979-1980) and Pakistani Balochistan (1986-1994),

and is the author, among other articles and books, of Antropologia culturale.

L’esperienza e I’interpretazione (Rome, 1999) which focuses on the main epis­ temological topics of anthropology.

ISBN 978-3-0343-0422-1

9 783034 304221 www.peterlang.com