“Sir, these are books,” echoes in the air around everywhere on social media when a student, held by the police along with the books, saying the statement repeatedly.
Firstly, it was Gowader, then Naseerabad, and Uthal, and Turbat – the innocent books chanted for their release, too, like the Baloch who are abducted and arrested unconstitutionally. Perhaps, they are termed as horrifying items when they are in the hands of the Baloch.
Baloch Students Actions Committed (BSAC) has been conducting a series of books stalls under the banner of Balochistan Kitab Karwan in diverse Baloch regions for the purpose of marking the new year as the year of knowledge and consciousness. However, instead of getting warm welcomes and hospitality, they are getting mentions in First Information Report as alleged offenders. In fact, students and books have faced imprisonment, as a result of a desire to spread education and Knowledge.
The individuals who come to take the credit of selling 28 lakhs of books in Gowader also remain the same men to imprison the identical books in the same city few days ago. This is, keep in mind, called a colonial game in which people are supposed not to read the books related to their struggling icons, history, land and freedom. When people are deprived of knowledge about their history and literature, they, undoubtedly, can be destroyed easily as soon as possible – looks like, such is a state aim.
In Balochistan, the situations remained the same in each era when it comes to books. A decade ago, people buried and burnt their books in fear because of unannounced state crackdowns. After a decade, the form of crackdown has changed while everything else remains constant. Though the books are brought from Lahore, Islamabad and Karachi, they are banned when they enter the Baloch regions.
Only in the recent week (on February 20), students were refrained from entering the varsity premise with books. “Those students without books can enter, while rest with the books are not permitted” were the words of security guard, dictated by the administration. How could a student enter an educational institution without books? The same university once restricted a Balochistan University professor and a syndicate member of the same Turbat University, Manzoor Baloch. Its series of anti-educational policies are enhancing without any accountability. Or perhaps they would be accountable if they do not practice anti-educational policies for the Baloch.
Undeniably, the oppressors never attack you as you think; but they have strategies which might encourage the oppressed for a short time, but betray them for a longer one. They might make the oppressed satisfied by providing some so-called funds and other gadgets, but that too to instill beggary-behavior of the oppressed.
Look at the hypocrisy here: one one hand, book stalls are continuously raided by district and institutional administrations, and on the other hand, the same people in the same towns are lecturing the masses on the significance of the same books. What would a person with common prudence grasp amidst such circumstances? Just the washout of minds and consciousness!
They conduct festivals just after the raid of a book stall or a concerned event so as to make the oppressed forget the other side. The oppressed, in situations as such, need to understand that not every war appears similar, and not every war is fought with weapons. There are different wars and diverse strategies: of all, the raid on books is also a tactic of war to kill the natural and long-standing consciousness of Baloch.
As once Akbar Barakzai, a revolutionary poet, beautifully expressed his feelings through one of his poems:
“Who can snuff out the sun?
Who can suppress the light?”
The poem reflects the same for Baloch consciousness because they can be deprived of books, but not of thinking and creativity. They have the thirst for knowledge, and thirst never dies, but grows constantly.
In actuality, it has been a prolonged colonial war in Balochistan. The first and foremost aim of the colonizers is to attack the minds and knowledge of the oppressed so that they cannot speak, raise, and become conscious of the forms of exploitations. If it is done successfully, then they know they can invade their land, exploit their resources, and defeat them easily. They attack the books just to make them deprived of not merely books, but consciousness.
There are plentiful books on different topics about war and rebellion, which have been published without interference across the country. When the same books appear in book stalls in Balochistan, they are banned and imprisoned.
Above all, when police raided and seized hundreds of copies of books in the Indian-held Kashmir, Pakistan’s foreign minister condemned it in the harshest terms stating that it was a latest series of measures to crush dissents and intimidate the local people. The question is: why do not the raids on Balochistan’s book stalls have similar sentiments? Is it a sense of deprivation of the federation?
“How painful and weird it looks when we catch police putting the books in the car to imprison them,” says Dr Farooq Baloch, a renowned Baloch historian condemning the crackdowns of police on book fairs of BSAC in his social media massage. “This is certainly a way of abstaining the knowledge from spreading among Baloch. This is utterly a human rights violation which is condemned everywhere in the world.”
As a whole, the oppressed (Baloch) are rationally being denied the essence of their national identity which represents them. The oppressors aim to suppress them by diverting their minds. When there are no books, there remains no survival for them because books are the foremost part of survival and essence. Let it be clear that books are not to be imprisoned in Balochistan, but for the living people to thrive and explore all the realities.
