APROPOS the article ‘Baloch nationalism’ (July 20). The inclusion of Karachi in the Baloch confederacy is not factually correct. There’s no reference that Karachi ever remained a part of the Khan of Kalat’s domains. Instead, some Baloch leaders tried to lay claim on a part of the territory under the rule of the Samma Dynasty from Karachi to Gwadar in the west and Khuzdar in the north.

In 1962, the Sindhi-speaking area of Lasbela was detached from Kalat and merged with the former Federal Capital Territory to form the Karachi-Bela division. When Balochistan province was created in 1970, Lasbela became part of the new Balochistan province while it should have been merged in Sindh.

The writer says: “it was only after accession to Pakistan that Jacobabad was transferred [from Balochistan] to Sindh”. According to the Imperial Gazetteer of India, Volume 24, page 277, Upper Sindh Frontier District (old name of Jacobabad) was a district of the Bombay Presidency during British rule and the northernmost portion of Sindh.

Jacobabad was a part of the Bombay Presidency, also known as the Bombay and Sindh Presidency from 1843 to 1936. When Sindh was made a separate province from the Bombay Presidency in 1936, USFD, was named Jacobabad and became a district of Sindh. At the time of partition the entire district was a part of Sindh. So the question of its transfer from Balochistan to Sindh doesn’t arise.

Before the British occupied Sindh, the entire territory from Jacobabad to the Bolan Pass remained under Sindh’s Kalhora rulers. In 1731, the Khan of Kalat, Mir Abdullah Khan Baloch, attacked Katchhi plains and occupied it. To counter the Baloch attack Mian Noor Mohammad Kalhoro, then Sindh’s ruler, marched against him and encamped at Ládkanah. He dispatched some chiefs to do battle with the Khan of Kalat.

The battle took place at Jandehar, where the Kalat forces prevailed upon the Kalhoras but the Khan of Kalat was killed in the battle. Since then the territory of Sindh from Jacobabad up to the Bolan Pass has remained under occupation of Kalat and was eventually merged into present Balochistan province.

M. Ahmed

Karachi

Published in Dawn, July 25th, 2020