British Baluchistan province (1887)

In the previous chapter we saw how the small town of Shal became a major military cantonment within a few years. The cantonment also raised an administrative question: what was the legal status of the territories that had come into British hands? Some had been taken from Afghanistan, some leased from the Khan of Kalat, and some handed over by the tribes themselves. In this chapter we see how a government order of 1 November 1887 created a province named “British Baluchistan”, and how that name in fact covered only a small part of the whole of Baluchistan.

The Treaty of Gandamak: Pishin and Sibi

At the end of the first phase of the Second Afghan War, Amir Yaqub Khan signed the Treaty of Gandamak on 26 May 1879. According to the Quetta-Pishin Gazetteer (1907), Article 6 of the treaty gave the districts of Sibi, Pishin and Kurram to the British government. According to the Baluchistan volume of the Imperial Gazetteer (1908), Pishin, Sibi, Harnai and Thal Chotiali were given on the condition that the revenue left after administrative expenses would go to the Amir.

The treaty did not last long. In the same year the British Resident in Kabul and his guard were killed, and Yaqub Khan was deposed. After the war ended, the Gazetteer says, it was decided to keep these territories at the “strong insistence” of Robert Sandeman. The final orders for retaining Pishin permanently were issued at the end of 1882. According to volume 11 of Aitchison’s collection of treaties, the new Amir, Abdur Rahman Khan, was told that these districts were no longer part of Afghanistan.

The Quetta and Bolan lease (1883)

Quetta was not part of the Treaty of Gandamak; it was a niabat (district) of the Khan of Kalat. According to the Quetta-Pishin Gazetteer, in 1879 the Government of India took over its administration for five years, and the money left after expenses continued to be paid to the Khan. Then, on 8 June 1883, a new agreement was made between Mir Khudadad Khan and Sandeman, which is the fourteenth agreement in Aitchison’s collection. Under it, from 1 April 1883, the whole administration of the “Quetta district and niabat”, including civil and criminal powers, passed to the British government on an annual rent of Rs25,000.

In the same agreement the Khan also gave up his right to levy duty on trade passing through the Bolan Pass in return for Rs30,000 a year, and handed judicial and administrative authority within the pass to the British. The preamble of the agreement gives the reason as the loss the Khan suffered because of the new route through Harnai.

1 November 1887: the province is announced

According to the Imperial Gazetteer, three things happened together in 1887. The rank of the Agent to the Governor-General (AGG) was raised from a second-class Resident to a first-class one. The territories acquired under Gandamak were declared British territory. And the AGG was also appointed Chief Commissioner of these territories.

The administration report of the Baluchistan Agency for 1887-88 gives the number and date of the order: Government of India Resolution No. 2219-E, dated 1 November 1887. According to the report, these territories of the Pishin and Thal Chotiali agencies became a chief commissionership under the name “British Baluchistan”: Pishin, Shorawak, Kach, Kowas, Harnai, Sibi and Thal Chotiali. The same report records that no change was made in the status of Quetta and Bolan; they remained leased territories. On 8 December 1887 the Scheduled Districts Act of 1874 was extended to the new province.

According to the Sibi Gazetteer (1907), after this announcement the post of Political Agent in these territories came to be called Deputy Commissioner. Sandeman’s biographer T. H. Thornton wrote in 1895 that when the province was formed there were two districts: Quetta-Pishin and Thal Chotiali. Thornton also called the new name “British Baluchistan” “somewhat inappropriate”. The province’s own laws, that is, the regulations for civil and criminal justice and the forest law, were made in 1890.

One province, three kinds of land

After 1887 the area called “Baluchistan” remained legally divided into three parts. The division is recorded on the very first page of the Imperial Gazetteer:

• British Baluchistan: 9,476 square miles, the territories obtained under the 1879 treaty. In 1908 it included the tehsils of Shahrig, Sibi, Duki and Pishin with Shorawak, and the Chaman sub-division.
• Agency Territories: 44,345 square miles, the areas leased or brought from time to time under British officers. The Gazetteer itself calls this an “elastic term”. The directly administered part of it was 37,216 square miles, and included the Quetta, Bolan, Nushki and Nasirabad leases, the railway lands, Chagai, and Zhob and Loralai.
• Native States: Kalat and Las Bela, 78,034 square miles in all.

According to the Gazetteer, British Baluchistan and the directly administered Agency Territories together made up 46,692 square miles, roughly the area of Sindh. They had six districts: Quetta-Pishin, Sibi, Loralai, Zhob, Chagai and Bolan. According to the 1901 census their population was 349,187, and the district-wise picture was as follows:

• Zhob: 9,626 square miles, population 69,718
• Loralai: 7,999 square miles, population 67,864
• Quetta-Pishin: 5,127 square miles, population 114,087
• Chagai (including western Sanjrani): 18,892 square miles, population 21,689
• Bolan: 896 square miles, population 1,936
• Sibi: 4,152 square miles, population 73,893

Across the whole province the 1901 census counted 810,746 people. Makran, Kharan and western Sanjrani were left out of the count, so the Gazetteer estimated the total population at about 925,000.

One clarification is needed about the states. The 1908 Gazetteer counts only two states, Kalat and Las Bela, and lists Kharan under Kalat, calling it “semi-independent”. A 1909 document in Aitchison’s volume calls it the “State of Kharan”, and separate agreements with its chief are recorded from 1885. In other words, Kharan’s separate status developed gradually.

Denys Bray, Superintendent of the 1911 census, wrote that in day-to-day work the difference between British Baluchistan and the Agency Territories was “a distinction without a difference”. In his words, the difference only recalled the past: one part had come through the Treaty of Gandamak and the other by lease or at the request of the tribes.

One officer, two posts

At the head of this system there was a single man: the Agent to the Governor-General and Chief Commissioner. According to Aitchison, Major Sandeman was appointed AGG on 21 February 1877 and the headquarters were fixed at Quetta. The Gazetteer lists the permanent AGGs up to 1908 as: Sandeman (1877), General Sir James Browne (1892), Hugh Barnes (1896) and Colonel C. E. Yate (1900).

In British Baluchistan this officer was the ordinary provincial head as Chief Commissioner. In the other areas he was the Political Agent, held judicial powers under the Frontier Crimes Regulation, and was also Inspector General of Police and Levies. The same dual role was repeated at district level: the Political Agent was also Deputy Commissioner for the British part of his district.

The series of leases: Nushki and Nasirabad

After the province was formed, the leasing of land from Kalat continued. On 1 July 1899 the Khan, Mir Mahmud Khan, handed over the Nushki district and niabat to the government “in perpetuity” on Rs9,000 a year. On 17 February 1903 the Nasirabad niabat, which was irrigated by the Sindh canals, was given in the same way in perpetuity from 1 April 1903. Its rent was Rs115,000 a year, and with Rs2,500 for the Manjhuti land the total came to Rs117,500. According to Aitchison, Nushki was added to the Chagai Agency and Nasirabad to Sibi district. According to the Sibi Gazetteer, when the districts were reorganised in October 1903, Nasirabad became a sub-division of Sibi.

In this way, by 1903 the map was complete that remained largely in place until 1947: a small “British” province, surrounded by leased and tribal areas, and alongside them all the state of Kalat.

Next Sunday: Railways in the mountains: Bolan, Harnai and the Khojak tunnel