ABSTRACT
This chapter introduces the case of the genesis of the Baloch national movement in the post-colonial conditions of Pakistan, links it with other ethno-national movements that have been going on in Pakistan and sets the movement’s theoretical and conceptual specificities apart. Drawing upon Partha Chatterjee’s idea of colonial difference as post-colonial difference, the chapter explains how the Baloch national movement, with its specific building blocks, is different from a typical (ethno-) national movement. At the same time, the chapter shows that this movement is not an exception but an example of a widely occurring ethnic problem in post-colonial diverse ethnic societies, in which power structures remain as exclusionary and restricted as during the colonial period.
