PERVEZ Musharraf's reported suggestion to divide Pakistan into nine provinces is as thoughtless as was his attempt to capture Kargil or dismiss and detain Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry. The consequences of such a proposal, if implemented, would be disastrous.

Interference with the constitutional process and experiments with administration in pursuit of personal ambition or regional interests lie at the root of all of Pakistan's past misfortunes and current uncertainties. Topping the list would be the separation of East Pakistan and insurgency in Balochistan.

A modest and genuine demand for autonomy bloomed into Mujibur Rehman's Six Points when the 1956 constitution was abrogated after Husyen Shaheed Suhrwardy had painstakingly secured the Awami League's agreement for it. Ayub Khan's martial law marked the beginning of the end of united Pakistan.

If the roots of East Pakistan's secession lay in the abrogation of the 1956 constitution, the insurgency in Balochistan is to be traced back to the creation of One Unit in West Pakistan in 1955. The Khan of Kalat for agreeing to accede to Pakistan, under duress though, was officially designated as Khan-i-Azam and made head of the Balochistan States Union. He saw his pre-eminent position threatened after Balochistan lost its provincial status. The defiant Marri, Mengal and Bugti sardars also felt the same way.

All of them joined forces, Sardar Sherbaz Khan Mazari notes in his book A Journey to Disillusionment , “to campaign for the unification of Kalat, other Balochi-speaking parts of Balochistan, Dera Ghazi Khan district of Punjab and Jacobabad district of Sindh into a single province”. Mr Mazari then goes on to add that he himself enthusiastically endorsed the proposal “as I had always felt that the Baloch tribes of Dera Ghazi Khan ought to have been amalgamated with their cousins in Balochistan [being] ethnically, linguistically, culturally and historically one people”.

A stern but artful intervention by President Iskander Mirza, however, drove a wedge between the ranks of the Baloch chieftains. The campaign never took off but attempted secession by the Khan of Kalat was quoted as one of the reasons for the declaration of martial law that came a day after the president's meeting with the Khan and other sardars .

The purpose here in recalling at some length the secession of East Pakistan and the continuing discontent in Balochistan is to underline the need for exercising utmost prudence in amending the constitution to an extent that violates the spirit of the Lahore Resolution of 1940, other covenants made before independence and the guidelines the Quaid gave to the constituent assembly. The same principle should apply to the merger of the existing provinces or creating new ones.

East Pakistan would not have broken away if it had been given the promised autonomy, Urdu was not to be foisted as the official language on its people and, more crucially, religion was not made business of the state as it was through the Objectives Resolution. And the Baloch wouldn't have been up in arms if they had not been deprived of the benefits of their mineral wealth for their territory had no industry and little agriculture. The Baloch sardars and people who are essentially secular in outlook have all along been wary of the sectarian parties and narrow-minded clerics influencing state policies.

Proposals for the creation of new provinces being mindlessly put across may have little support but can lead to trouble at some future date as national parties continue to falter and disintegrate. The local bigwigs, or thugs, would rather control their own affairs than owe allegiance to the corrupt and incompetent ruling the roost in the provincial capitals.

Language could be the most plausible basis for carving out new provinces out of the existing four. Going by that criterion, the creation only of a Baloch province may be justified. But besides the problem of geographical contiguity and securing the consent of the Baloch people living in Sindh and Punjab, the Pakhtuns who constitute nearly 40 per cent of the population surely would also demand a province of their own or merger with Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. Neither would be a practicable proposition.

The Hindko-speaking Hazara and Seraiki Bahawalpur smoothly blend into the surrounding Punjabi areas. It would be hard to demarcate their boundaries. And when we hear talk of nine provinces, perhaps those proposing this have in mind the old revenue divisions, each comprising three or four districts. Such thinking centres on matters administrative rather than the political aspirations of homogenous lingual groups. National and provincial politicians, despite their questionable worth, would oppose such a proposal recalling how they were overshadowed by the nazims in the grass-roots democracy.

Above everything else, the creation of nine provinces would undermine the concept of provincial autonomy. Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa can be autonomous but not Bahawalpur with its vast deserts, nor mountainous Hazara. Questioned about the population of Hazara, one of the elders of the area elected from Karachi, Abdul Qayum of Qayumabad fame, told me when I was deputy commissioner of Karachi some 40 years ago that there were more Hazarawals in Karachi than in Hazara.

When all that has been said, the very thought of hundreds of ministers and legislators in each of the nine provinces strutting around with their retinues in blaring motorcades makes one feel that even the present four constitute too many.

kunwaridris@hotmail.com