Illustration by Abro
Illustration by Abro

One of my favorite places in New York City is an eatery called Haandi. It’s a tiny brasserie owned and operated by a Pakistani-American family. Its main customers are South Asian taxi drivers, mostly Pakistani.

In 2011, during my first visit to Haandi, when I was there for some karak chai, I overheard an intriguing conversation between a Bengali and a Pakistani. Both of them, I am assuming, were taxi drivers. The Bengali was speaking in Urdu to a Pakistani who sounded as if he were Punjabi. I could tell because I am one too.

Anyway, the Bengali was telling the Pakistani that his father was an active member of a separatist Bengali nationalist group in former East Pakistan. According to the Bengali, his father was killed by the Pakistan army during the 1971 civil war there. The Bengali did not use the words ‘civil war’, though. Instead, he called it ‘Bangla azadi ka jang’ (war of liberation).

The Bengali then spoke about the terrible atrocities the Bengalis had suffered at the hands of the Pakistani soldiers. But the thing which really kept me glued to eavesdropping on this monologue was the manner in which the Bengali was differentiating the bad Pakistani soldiers from the kinder ones. He was saying that even though the majority of Pakistani soldiers were brutes (khooni) there were some who were a lot kinder (naram dil). He kept calling the kinder ones Balochi fauji (Baloch soldiers). He described the cruel ones Poonzabi fauji (Punjabi soldiers).


Ethnic, sectarian and religious stereotypes portraying a black and white understanding of what is ‘good’ and what is ‘evil’, has been the core of narratives driving conflicts and wars


Every time he would use these terms, one of my eyebrows would instinctively go slightly northwards because I believe there were no Baloch in the Pakistan army in 1971. And even if there were, their numbers would have been extremely tiny. Nevertheless, that was that and I mostly forgot about the conversation until a year or so later while reading a book by Shariful Haq Dalim, a Bangladeshi military officer involved in his country’s first military coup in 1975. The same coup also resulted in the assassination of the founder of Bangladesh, Sheikh Mujib-ur-Rehman.

In his book Untold Facts, while commenting on the 1971 conflict, the officer too mentions ‘Balochi’ soldiers who were slightly more empathetic than the Punjabi ones. After the creation of Bangladesh, Dalim joined a group of military conspirators who pulled off Bangladesh’s first military coup. He led the assault which killed Mujeeb. Eleven years later Dalim escaped to a foreign country when Mujeeb’s daughter became PM in 1996. He was sentenced to death in absentia.

This time I conducted some research to figure out whether there were any Baloch men in the Pakistan army in 1971. There were none! So what was this Balochi fauji thing all about?

I finally got the answer in a rather explosive book by Indian academic and author, Sharmila Bose. Her tome, Dead Reckoning is a remarkable piece of revisionist history which unabashedly confronts the narrative of the 1971 events constructed by the state and various governments of Bangladesh. This narrative is also often used by non-Bangladeshi writers and commentators.

Bose tracks declassified 1971 communiqués of the US Embassy in Dhaka, and, more importantly, interviews dozens of men and women who were caught in the middle of the bloody conflict. When she compares these narrations with the official Bangladeshi narrative about the war, she concludes that the Pakistani military was not the only guilty party when it came to torturing, maiming and killing opponents. Bengali nationalist militants, backed by India, too were equally active killers. Millions of men, women and children lost their lives in the conflict, but these also included thousands of non-Bengalis slaughtered by Bengali militants.

Bose’s book was vehemently criticiSed by many Indian and Bangladeshi historians who conveniently ignored the fact that Dead Reckoning did not shift the blame of atrocities committed during the 1971 East Pakistan Civil War from the Pakistan Army to Bengali militants. What it did do was that it documented that slice of the conflict which mostly goes missing in discussions about the horrid commotion — the numerous carnages committed by Bengali nationalists against soldiers and non-Bengalis. This is exactly why it was a particularly savage conflict.

But what about the kinder ‘Balochi fauji’? While interviewing those who directly witnessed the war, Bose too kept coming across this term. And she too realised that (most probably) there weren’t any Baloch men serving in the Pakistan army at the time. She thus concluded that since it was largely an ethnic conflict in which the Bengali nationalist narrative explained its position as being against the dominant ethnicity of West Pakistan (Punjabi), the labels, Bengali, ‘Balochi’ and Punjabi became synonyms of oppressed masses, good soldiers and bad soldiers. Indeed, as Bose discovered, the ‘good Balochi fauji’ which her interviewees spoke of were not Baloch at all. They were just some officers and soldiers whom these Bengalis believed were ‘kinder’. The fact is, they were all most likely Punjabi.

What’s more, some of Bose’s interviewees also used the words Sindhi and ‘Pathan’ (Pakhtun) for kinder soldiers (when not using ‘Balochi’). There were many Pakhtun army combatants who were stationed in East Pakistan, but one wonders how many Sindhi officers and soldiers? I believe very few, if not none at all.

Ethnic, sectarian and religious stereotyping has been at the epicentre of narratives weaved by conflicting groups during wars. These stereotypes portray a black and white understanding of what is ‘good’ and what is ‘evil’. During tense conflicts there is no space to determine the truth which largely lies in the vast gray areas between what is described as black and what is understood as white. This is exactly what happened in the 1971 East Pakistan Civil War, and this is exactly what is happening in Syria today.

What’s more, this is still happening in Pakistan as well. Instant stereotypes are used by many to define evil. Terms such as Salafi, Barelvi, Shia, Ahmadi, and, of course, kafir, are often thrown around to browbeat an opponent. This, despite the fact, that the opponent might not be what he is being called. Whereas labels of praise too are bestowed in the same manner upon those who most probably do not belong to the sect, sub-sect or religion they are being associated with. The Balochi-fauji syndrome.

Published in Dawn, Sunday Magazine, January 1st, 2017

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