Gul Khan Nasir - Kalat State National Party

Kalat State National Party

After the ban on “Anjuman-e-Islamia Ryasat-e-Kalat”, On 5 February 1937 the Baloch youth once again got together and formed a new political organization by the name of "Kalat State National Party" (KSNP). Mir Abdul Aziz Kurd was elected its President, Mir Gul Khan Nasir the Vice President and Malik Faiz Muhammad Yousafzai became the Secretary General. The Kalat State National Party was affiliated with the Indian National Congress. It played an important role in curbing the power and influence of the Tribal Chieftains or Sardars, abolition of cruel and unusual taxes imposed on the poor by the Sardars and formation of a democratically elected Parliament fashioned after the British Parliament on Kalat State's independence. The KSNP had several ups and downs with the Khan of Kalat. At first most of the top leaders of the party such as Abdul Aziz Kurd, Faiz Muhammad Yoyusafzai, Gul Khan Nasir, Abdul Rahim Khwajakhel etc. were serving as government officials. In 1939, during an annual session of KSNP in which Mir Ghaus Bakhsh Bizenjo was also taking part as a representative of a Karachi-based political party, some thugs sent by the local sardars tried to disrupt the rally by firing at the participants. After that all the members of the Party who had government jobs resigned and were arrested. This was the incident which caused Mir Ghaus Bakhsh Bizenjo to join the KSNP. After some time the Khan reconciled with the KSNP leaders and re-employed them as government officials. Once again tensions rose between the KSNP and the Khan of Kalat and this time the KSNP leadership resigned for good never to work as government servants again. Paul Titus and Nina Swidler in their book "Knights Not Pawns: Ethno-Nationalism and Regional Dynamics In Post-Colonial Balochistan" write:

The Khan attempted to play off nationalist and sardari differences by maintaining his authority as the traditional head of the Balochi tribes while appealing to the leaders of the Balochi nation. This was not always possible, and by 1939 the activities of the nationalists had so antagonized the sardars and British that they pressured the Khan to declare KSNP illegal in Kalat State. The ban on the party was lifted after World War II, though antagonism between the sardars and nationalists remained.In March 1946, for example the Balochi activist poet Gul Khan Nasir was expelled from Kalat State following complaints to the agent to the Governor-General in Balochistan from the Badini, Jamaldini and Zagar Mengal sardars. They claimed that Nasir and other activists had created disturbances in the town of Noshki by making speeches charging that the sardars were appropriating and selling local residents' wheat rations.