Baloch cast history

The veteran Baloch nationalist leader, Nawab Khair Bu Marri, dubbed by many as the “Father of Balochistan”, who died on Tuesday night in a Karachi hospital, remained a galvanizing force for the past six decades in the politics of Balochistan.

He was one of those tribal leaders who were tagged as “trouble makers” by the governing elite of the country. But for many others in his home province he remained a symbol of aspiration towards complete provincial autonomy in the early seventies, and then ultimate freedom from the mid-seventies onward.

Born in February 1928 in Balochistan’s district Kohlu, he was educated at Lahore’s colonial-era institution, Aitichison College.

Three years after the partition of the Indian sub continent and the coerced annexation of the Baloch state of Kalat into Pakistan, Nawab Marri became chieftain of his tribe, the Marri, one of the most powerful and fiercely independent tribes of the Baloch.

The young Nawab is reportedly said to have been indifferent to p