Whispers of Sacred Uplands

Introduction

Amidst the undulating plains and vast uplands of Turbat, I encountered Banuk Merbibi. ¹ Banuk Merbibi is a female religious leader in the Zigri ² community, and her home Turbat is the capital city of Makran, Balochistan, a province that is now an annexed and military-occupied region of the Pakistani state. To the outside world, beyond the confines of Kho e Murad and the intricate belief system of the Zigri sect, she may appear as nothing more than an ordinary woman restrained by the conventional chains of womanhood. However, within the embrace of the mountains of Kho e Murad, Banuk Merbibi carved another meaning for herself. Her story is a delicate weave of the ordinary and the remarkable. “I consider myself freer than many women from the most privileged societies,” Banuk told me. “However, this freedom is forged from resilience, faith, and above all, the respect and honor accorded to women by my community and the land I call home.” Her words echoed through my mind. Over time, I saw her life revealing an overlooked truth. Freedom, respect, and honor were not disjointed ideals but interwoven realities marginalized and oppressed women in Balochistan embodied differently than I had been trained to know. The freedom that Banuk spoke of is shaped differently from the freedom depicted to me and many of us by our colonizers. Hers is deeply ingrained in place, culture, and history, in the plains, mountains, sacred shrines, and shared pain and struggle of the marginalized and oppressed against the oppressor. What I may have seen as conventional womanhood is actually a conceptualization of liberty tied to community respect and honor and earned by the collective experiences and struggles of those women and men who historically dwelled in the shadows of occupation.

In this essay I unravel the narratives of Zigri Baloch women in Balochistan, those dwelling in the periphery of the periphery to see the threads of their lives on their terms. I approach this project through women’s everyday lives, charting community rituals and ordinary customs, intimate and intricate experiences marked by intense struggles amidst and against colonial violence, and relentless pursuits of freedom. This quest for freedom reflects the complex interweaving of their identities as members of the marginalized Indigenous Baloch nation, as followers of the minority religious sect Zigri that exists exclusively among the Baloch nation, and as women occupying spaces often relegated to the periphery of power. Their freedom struggle seeks emancipation from the violence enacted on their bodies and community through their complex and overlapping identities.

I distill insights from two years of ethnographic work conducted from 2017 to 2019 as part of my graduate studies. My approach, grounded in narrative interviews and personal reflection as a Zigri Baloch woman, enabled me to immerse myself in the lives of the Zigri community. I was able to understand how their life paths were shaped and deepened by a spiritual reverence for the transcendent, for entities that exist beyond the human realm, and specifically through the veneration of Kho e Murad (what translates to the mountain of wishes) nestled in Turbat. Zigri hold a unique connection to the Ziarat (shrine) of Kho e Murad. They associate it with the presence of Imam Mehdi, the Islamic Messiah and a descendant of the Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) who is prophesied to emerge in times of severe injustice to uphold the cause of justice. ³ Zigri believe that Imam Mehdi graced his presence in Kho e Murad, which is why for them Kho e Murad is more than a sacred site; it embodies a place where spiritual and communal bonds are forged and strengthened through collective worship and reverence. This belief has historically set them apart from other Muslim sects, including Sunnis and Shiites who believe that Imam Mehdi has not yet appeared. The distinct belief of Zigri about Imam Mehdi has rendered the Zigri vulnerable to persecution from both the dominant religious factions and state authorities. This includes their disappearances or abductions by the state-led agencies, ⁴ the killing and dumping of their bodies, ⁵ and the deliberate targeting and bombing of their sanctuaries. ⁶ These relentless persecutions have drastically diminished the Zigri Baloch population in Makran, Balochistan from ninety to thirty percent. ⁷

Many academic works have cast light on the Zigri community as a whole and the challenges they face because of their distinct identity. ⁸ Here, however, I delve into the unique sociopolitical challenges and struggles for freedom faced by Zigri Baloch women. I demonstrate how Zigri Baloch women navigate their daily lives in the intricate landscape of annexed Balochistan. I critically examine the dynamic interplay and clash between the Indigenous framework of the Zigri sect, native to the landscape of Balochistan yet perceived as alien, and the pervasive colonial influences. I explore how these influences impact their lives and belief systems, focusing specifically on the cultural value of honor/respect for both human and other-than-human entities. My analysis threads through three pivotal elements that form the fabric of the Zigri community: the ethos of honor and reverence rooted in religio-culture; the spiritual communion with the other-than-human entities, particularly Kho e Murad; and the relentless pursuit of freedom, a value interlinked with the first two. I weave these threads through a singular focus: Banuk Merbibi.

Before entering her world, I will sketch the broader academic and theoretical framing that shapes this inquiry to clarify its context and elucidate its significance to questions about feminist freedom struggles. The first part of the essay contextualizes Banuk Merbibi in her culture, geography, and geopolitical context. Here I dissect and analyze the concepts of honor, struggle, freedom, and reverence for both humans and other-than-human entities as they pertain to Zigri women. I also contrast Banuk Merbibi with the typical male-centric image of religious leadership. In the narrative portion of the essay I offer a glimpse of my interaction with Banuk Merbibi and her world to illuminate the ideas and theory with life.

Interplay of Honor, Spiritual Beliefs, and Freedom

Banuk Merbibi is an esteemed religious leader, a guiding light within the Zigri community in Turbat. Banuk is an honorific that carries deep significance within the Zigri community. That her name is gracefully prefixed with this term is a testament to the reverence accorded to her. The title acknowledges that she is a woman distinguished by her own spiritual wisdom and the generational legacy that her family has contributed to the Zigri community. It recognizes her as someone who offers both physical solidarity and spiritual guidance through the ebbs and flows of the community’s life. ⁹

Bestowing the title Banuk upon a woman within the Zigri community activates a tension between colonial and Indigenous paradigms. This tension captures a dialectic relationship that is both complex and telling. The title Banuk and the lived experiences of Banuk Merbibi serve as a prism that reflects and dissects the interplay between Zigri culture, values of honor and spiritual reverence, and marginalized women’s existences in postcolonial society. In the Zigri context Banuk Merbibi is elevated to a higher communal role that transcends conventional gender roles and societal expectations, while the South Asian colonial framework conceptualizes her status and cultural value through a simplistic binary framework of honor versus shame and restrictive definitions of female piety. ¹⁰ Whereas colonial conceptions of religious leadership are male-centric, imagining a distant, all-knowing, loved and feared male leader, Banuk Merbibi is not regarded by her community with distant adoration. Instead, the community regards her through something akin to an informal client-patron partnership. ¹¹ The quality of this relationship, specifically and generally for Zigri spiritual leaders, has been vital for the survival of the sect, especially during violent oppression by dominant religious groups and state entities. Amidst such adversity, the bond forged between religious leaders and community members, akin to the familial affection and guidance often shared between elder and younger siblings in South Asian culture, seeds resilience. ¹²

Further, this study reveals the complexities of Zigri conceptions of honor, which may be difficult to perceive when liberal and colonial frameworks obscure our understanding. Honor is not an attribute exclusively reserved for women but holds equal significance for men, thus challenging and expanding the conventional colonial discourse. It is also intricately woven with a multifaceted understanding of freedom that profoundly enriches the fabrics of life for Zigri women in a military-occupied landscape. While liberal frameworks offer valuable methods to analyze freedom, covering economic, social, and political dimensions, valuing emancipation from inequitable structures like patriarchy, these frameworks restrict understanding of indigenous Zigri concepts like “freedom through honor.” One of the earliest works in the field of Western anthropology on the concepts of purdah, honor, and shame among Baloch is the work of Carroll McC. Pastner (1972). ¹³ Her study, while rigorous, showcases this limited understanding of honor and purdah practices. For instance, she explains that honor shapes socio-structural norms for Baloch women especially through purdah which forces conformity with male expectations and isolates them. ¹⁴ Her analysis misses the fact that Baloch women’s honor also involves community leadership and spiritual roles. Here I seek a more expansive concept of honor that recognizes Zigri values on their own terms and accounts for Zigri Baloch women’s agency. ¹⁵

For the Zigri community, honor is not an abstract ideal. Where survival is closely tied to navigating the military’s profound and distinctly masculine control over Balochistan’s sacred landscapes and highlands, the concept of honor counters the psychic and material insecurities Zigri face and transforms them into an enduring spirit for resistance. ¹⁶ In this milieu, Banuk Merbibi and figures like her represent the tangible embodiment of the community’s collective honor, while Kho e Murad represent an other-than-human spiritual guide that embodies collective honor. ¹⁷

Zigri’s orientation to collective honor and their reverence for religious leaders and other-than-human spiritual guides challenges colonial categorizations with rigid binaries–human/nonhuman, civilized/uncivilized, valued/valueless, useful/useless, honored/shameful, productive/unproductive, efficient/inefficient–the very dichotomies that cast Third World and Indigenous women as “homogenous others” and exoticized others. ¹⁸ These frameworks that paint the Baloch nation, among others, as uncivilized and in need of civilization legitimize state-sanctioned aggression as means to achieve an ultimate good. ¹⁹ The deployment of binary logic in discourse and politics victimizes the oppressed and further reinforces colonial categorizations and divisions, making them seem natural and self-evident. ²⁰ It is in this context that the nuanced synergy between honor, reverence, and the spiritual recognition of other-than-human entities emerges as a pivotal force in the Indigenous Zigri struggle against colonialism.

Breaking from the simplistic binary of honor versus shame is necessary to understand how honor is understood and practiced in the unique sociocultural and political context of Zigri Baloch women. My perspective takes inspiration from Clarinda Still whose insightful work on Dalit women discusses the framework of “paruvu-pratishta-gowravam” (prestige-honor-respect). ²¹ According to Still, honor plays a significant role in defining the social position of Dalit women, which in turn shapes their daily actions and aspirations. Dalit women resist the caste oppression that deems them uncivilized and devoid of culture by adopting the symbolic practices and values that the mainstream (upper caste) associate with civilization. However, according to Still, Dalit women are not just conforming to their oppressor’s norms, they are challenging and redefining these norms to craft new narratives of paruvu-pratishta-gowravam.

Similar dynamics are evident in the struggles of the Zigri Baloch in Pakistan. They have faced violence and oppression on dual axes: as Baloch who have resisted the occupation of Balochistan since 1948 and as Zigri who are perceived as anti-Islamic because of their distinct interpretations of Islam that differ from those of Sunnis and other dominant groups. The dual struggle for cultural autonomy and religious freedom has become central to their quest for liberation. Just as Still characterizes honor as a “powerful organizing principle” among Dalits, for Zigri Baloch women honor is the cornerstone of their freedom and survival. ²²

The failure to comprehend concepts like honor and freedom in the lives of marginalized communities marks a missed opportunity to deconstruct how and why some lives are perceived as worthy of survival and others perceived as disposable. Under the colonial framework only the strong and powerful are deemed worthy of survival. Any vulnerability or marginalization of the oppressed explains and justifies disposability. This perspective neglects the ways that minority communities, even when small in number, survive, thrive, and create life through profound togetherness. This togetherness is not just a defensive survival mechanism. It is a mode of honoring shared beliefs and shared struggles. For the Zigri community inhabiting a shared physical and cultural landscape, living in a close-knit, supportive community, and facing marginalization and violence from a military occupier, all shared experiences, lead to a sense of communal respect and honor. Togetherness offers a path to freedom and liberation. By transcending individual experience and belonging to the collective, honor becomes a mode of creating community and enacting solidarity in struggles for justice and liberation in the face of systemic oppression. In other words, honor is a strength.

Dialogues of Honor and Freedom with Banuk Merbibi ²³

Thanks to my cousin Rehman I met Banuk Merbibi. Rehman is my senior by many years and a fervent believer in the transformative power of Zigr, the act of praying and chanting the name of Allah. I was in the final month of my data collection journey when Rehman approached me with enthusiasm verging on fervor. “How can you consider your research complete if you didn’t converse with Banuk Merbibi?” he asked me. “I walk her path. I live by her teachings. She is steeped in the profound wisdom of Islamic learnings. You have to talk to her. It is through her that I find strength to endure, and even to flourish, despite the violent and tumultuous sea of our existence. Otherwise we are overshadowed by fear, trauma, and the sinister mirth of those in power who revel in our suffering. . .”

Rehman’s voice, though adamant, was heavy with despair. On the one hand, I could hear the reverence he held for Banuk, and on the other hand, I heard his pain. His world was haunted by everyday disappearances and killings, the dumping of Baloch men in expansive landscapes of Balochistan and the heinous violations and tortures inflicted upon Baloch women, the disappearances, the rape. ²⁴

When Rehman brought up Banuk Merbibi, he insisted I meet with her right away. There was urgency in his message. He said I had to meet her before Maghrib (late evening). Late evenings and nights were reserved moments, periods regarded as private and, he told me, dangerous. Meetings such as mine with Banuk Merbibi should be scheduled under the sanctuary of daylight, which was safer against the backdrop of Turbat’s militarized terrain where nocturnal hours heightened surveillance activities and violence. Every step, every decision was a battle on the tightrope of prudence and necessity and a precarious equilibrium maintained in the shadows of an ever-watchful presence.

Rehman had his way. We were to meet Banuk Merbibi in the early evening and leave her in time for dinner.

We arrived at Banuk’s residence just as the early evening began to drape its beauty around us. It felt as if we had reached our destination at the most fortuitous time: the heavens above adorning themselves in hues of blush and amber, the soft breeze like a gentle story murmured in a whisper, a feminine caress on the world below. Yet I cringe at my own perception. I long for a view unmarred by the binaries that govern norms of beauty: feminine, masculine. I yearn for a vision that transcends these inflexible dichotomies to apprehend beauty in its truly expansive form.

I followed Rehman toward Banuk’s dwelling. The architecture of her residence was similar to many Balochi homes in the area. There were no concrete gates defining the boundary but the space outside the structural embrace of the home, the Chapra, was communal. As I crossed the threshold onto Banuk’s premises, I saw many people—men, women, children of all ages—basking in the Chapra, savoring their tea and the harmonious evening breeze. I felt these breezes were not just whispers of the winds but harbingers of renewal. Gracing our faces and bodies, the winds cleansed the remnants of daytime apprehensions and imbued us with courage and fortitude to greet the coming night. I felt myself absorbed in a ritual of communal resilience. Could I have witnessed the whispering dance of the fresh breeze in such a profound manner had I not been an Indigenous Baloch?

A pair of young children hurried toward us. Moments later, we were guided into Banuk Merbibi’s house.

The children led us into her living room where we sat on the carpeted floor, as is the tradition in Balochistan.

We were only there for a moment when another girl, someone new, offered us glasses of water. Before I had a chance to take it all in—the room, the girl, the glass she was handing to me—Banuk entered. Her husband walked beside her. They settled on a carpet before us. As is culturally expected, we exchanged greetings and asked about each other’s well-being and that of our families and close relatives. Then Rehman introduced me to Banuk. I listened to how he described me: a Zigri Baloch woman engaged in research about the experiences and challenges of Zigri women as part of my academic pursuits.

Banuk smiled. Her eyes, brown, shimmered. The vibrant yellow of her dochi, a traditional attire with Balochi embroidery, seemed to cast a glow around her. With a tranquil countenance, she invited me to ask any questions I harbored. I felt welcome and understood.

I began by asking the basic questions: What was her full name, her age, her occupation? At that point I only knew her as Banuk.

“Banuk Merbibi,” she told me. She was in her late thirties. Beyond her role as a spiritual guide she holds the sacred responsibility of being a Munjar, gatekeeper, of Kho e Murad. Her words flowed gently.

“What does Kho e Murad signify to you?” I asked her.

Her expression was one of serene contemplation and profound wisdom. As I waited for her to answer, I felt as if she was preparing to unfold the layers of that wisdom to reveal its meaning to me. “Kho means mountain,” she said in a whisper, “and Murad means wishes. We, Zigri, are often maligned for our beliefs in the mountains.”

Her eyes lit with a spark and her voice grew stronger. “The undulating contours of the mountains that envelop us are more than mere topography. They are enshrined relics of our identity. These mountains symbolize the connection not only of the Baloch but also of Zigri with them. It is here, within these towering sentinels, that we believe Imam Mehdi once graced us with his presence. It is here, where he weaved the threads of sacred knowledge and taught us the path of Zigr [prayer].”

Her words painted a tableau of the tangible and the spiritual. Her voice seemed like a sweet melody whispering tales of lands where mountains spoke and winds whispered secrets.

“It is through these prayers that we commune not just for our beings but for our community, it is a cascade of gratitude flowing towards Allah for his creations,” she continued.

As she spun her tales of the mountains, my thoughts wandered over to the essence of entities beyond human comprehension, like the uplands, the silent guardians of our tales and the unspoken relics of our traditions that shape our cultures and our characters. As she described Kho e Murad, she was not speaking of geological formations alone but entities imbued with life, the keepers of memory and civilization, whispering the stories of civilizations risen and fallen, cultures evolved and merged. The mountains, therefore, witnessed the divine dance of creation and destruction of human beings and their civilizations. Ahh!

What agony to exist in stoic silence and harbor the secrets of the cosmos in their rocky hearts!

“The revered Imam,” she continued, “sought refuge amid these whispering solemn giants of stone and earth.”

My hand danced across the paper recording her eloquence. I felt her defiance against the overpowering structures of capitalism, against the neoliberal and colonial paradigms that tried to shrink individual spirits and cultures into the shadows of conformity and repression. She was deconstructing the foundations of a system that viewed existence through utilitarian value and relegated Indigenous people and cultures to the dustbin of ancient history. Her voice magnified the whispers of Indigenous souls from every corner of the world.

“These mountains are the veins and marrow of our doctrines. It is for this reason that when we traverse the holy sands of Kho e Murad, we take off our shoes and bare our feet to pay a humble homage to the sanctity of the land and vast uplands. It is an offering of respect, a whisper of thankfulness to the land that sheltered the Imam, our spiritual beacon.”

Then, as if a shadow had passed over her spirit, her voice softened, dropping again to a whisper laden with sorrows. “Many brand us as heretics. They assume we have forsaken the tenets of Islam, but this is a false judgement. We are devout in our faith. We adhere to all the principles of Islam. Foremost, we honor the belief that the Prophet [PBUH] was the final messenger of divine wisdom, and we also recognize Imam Mehdi as a figure foretold by the Quran itself, who is destined to appear in epochs shadowed by severe injustice.”

A stark silence enveloped us. For that moment it felt as if we entered a realm of communal remembrance. A strange and heavy air settled over us. I thought with anguish of the losses suffered by the Baloch and Zigri and of the Kho e Murad.

Including Rehman, there were two men in the room. One, who had introduced me to Banuk, sat beside me, and the other, Banuk’s husband, sat beside her. Both maintained a quiet vigil. When I glanced at Banuk’s husband, his eyes were distant, almost devoid of expression, as if a mirror to our unspoken pains. And suddenly it felt ironic. Wasn’t I expected to see the weakness and oppression of women? Hadn’t this been the rule ingrained in me through my education and echoes of ubiquitous phrases like “dismantle the patriarchy”? Through portrayals of women as oppressed absorbed from my earliest childhood memories? Yet I was witnessing a space where men seemed as voiceless and powerless as their female counterparts, if not more.

The distance in Banuk’s husband’s eyes brought my awareness to the unseen dimensions of suffering, how men, too, are shackled by chains of helplessness and despair. Their silence was loud but louder were the scars on their bodies, glimpsed on their arms and faces where a long war was waged against them as enemies of the occupation, as the perceived protectors of their women. And because of this unyielding social construct, the military has driven many Baloch men into the gaping jaws of disappearance and death every day.

I thought about these seen and unseen battles and the unspoken sacrifices men made in the name of protection and honor. I saw a widening portrait of pain and resistance, shared sorrow and collective resilience.

A voice pierced the silence. “Look,” Banuk said, her head lowered. “We work here on consent. I would refrain from all pursuits, including ascending to national politics, if my husband or the male members of my family and I did not share unified perspective.”

I found myself wrestling with this commentary on the agency of Zigri Baloch women in a region of political unrest. I wondered if she meant to suggest that every action by a woman like herself was inherently political, irrespective of its alignment with liberal conceptions of political activism or agency. In this perspective consent is not just a choice but an act of emancipation. At once it liberates and it serves as a bond, unifying the Zigri community together.

“Our existence as Zigri Baloch women is not tethered. We are azad [free], autonomous, able to navigate our destinies. I, who am clothed in the mantle of religious leadership, with souls seeking my counsel and valuing my words, consider myself to be in possession of freedom. I consider myself freer than many women from the most privileged societies. However, this freedom is forged from resilience, faith, and the respect and honor accorded to women by my community and the land I call home. It is the same respect and reverence that prompts us to remove our shoes before entering the Kho e Murad.”

As an ordinary Zigri Baloch woman I felt a deep resonance with Banuk’s words. Immediately I thought of Zigrana, the place designated for Zigri Baloch women to worship, mirroring those for men. ²⁵ Here were geographical, architectural, and spiritual domains exclusively controlled and managed by women where women were free to address their sociopolitical issues with each other. Here was a place that represented the power, honor, and respect afforded to women in Zigri religio-culture.

“Yet,” Banuk said, “there is a layer to this respect that transcends customary norms, especially for someone like me, a Zigri Baloch woman. I bear an equal responsibility with the men in our society to be the custodians of our identity, to preserve the essence of who we are. My challenges and journeys as a Zigri Baloch woman are nuanced. They are intertwined with the roots of our traditions. The conceptualization of respect and honor, the fervor in my beliefs, they are not just principles but the threads of my freedom and the freedom of women like me.”

“You need to understand,” she said. A zeal appeared in her eyes. “For me or women like me, being free does not stand in opposition to our traditions but is interwoven with the profound respect and honor inherent in our ways of life. Our dilemmas and struggles are different. They are entangled with the very notion of respect and honor that define our existence. To believe fervently in my convictions is not a limitation but a manifestation of my freedom.”

As I wrestled these remarks, I thought I saw fatigue shade her countenance and decided not to probe any further.

I left feeling beseeched, as someone from the newer generation enamored with liberal philosophies, to rise above our critiques of traditional values and look differently at honor and the mountains that cradle our lands. We, the supposedly enlightened generation, were never trained to perceive the diverse realities that shape lives in places like the militarized zone of Balochistan. Instead, the ideas imbued in us leave us brimming with resentment towards every man and dispensing exclusive sympathy to every woman. I took Banuk’s words as a subtle mockery of our naivete. I could see that we are the novices, thinking we could encapsulate the struggles of a marginalized and religious minority through the prism of Western freedom. We neglected the true essence of what freedom means to the marginalized.

After I bid Banuk farewell I said little. Rehman and I made the journey home in near silence. We let the quiet that had circled the room with Banuk embrace us now. As we drove in Rehman’s car and the mantle of night descended over the landscape, I saw light. The peaks of the mountains blinked. There the military was stationed. But where we were headed, the city of Turbat, where there were few essential facilities and too many unmet needs, there was darkness.

ENDNOTES

1. Names of participants in this research have been changed for confidentiality.[↑]
2. As a member of the Zigri community, I use the term “Zigr/Zigri” throughout this essay instead of “Zikr/Zikri” because this is how our community refers to and identifies itself. The term “Zigr/Zikr” originates from the Arabic word “dhikr,” which means prayer/worship to Allah. Although we sometimes need to explain this term to non-Zigri Baloch speakers by using the word “Zikr/Zikri,” in this essay I have deliberately chosen to use “Zigr/Zigri” to honor the authentic pronunciation of our community’s name.[↑]
3. Nasir Ahmed, Tafsir zikr-i-wahdat (exegesis of Zikri belief) (All Pakistan Muslim Zikri Anjuman, 2003).[↑]
4. Zahid Ali Baloch, “Balochistan’s Zikri Community in Grave Danger,” Sharnoff’s Global Views, November 24, 2014; Shala Ashraf, Ikram Badshah, and Usman Khan, “The Role of Women’s Political Activism against Enforced Disappearances in Balochistan: A Study of the Baluch Missing Persons,” Inter-Asia Cultural Studies 24, no. 6 (2023): 979–93.[↑]
5. Abid Hussain, “‘Kill and Dump Policy:’ Baloch Protest Man’s Custodial Murder in Pakistan,” Al Jazeera, January 9, 2024. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/1/9/kill-and-dump-policy-baloch-protest-mans-custodial-murder-in-pakistan.[↑]
6. Muhammad Akbar Notezai, “Who Are the Zikris of Baluchistan?” New Age Islam, September 29, 2016.[↑]
7. Notezai, “Who Are the Zikris of Baluchistan?”[↑]
8. Syed Minhaj ul Hassan, “Zikris of Baluchistan: Muslims but Different?” Journal of the Research Society of Pakistan 58, no. 2 (2021): 122; Sabir Badalkhan, “Zikri Dilemmas: Origins, Religious Practices and Political Constraints,” The Baloch and Others: Linguistic, Historical and Socio-Political Perspectives on Pluralism in Balochistan, 2008, 197–224; Mubarak Ayub and Safi Ullah Khan Marwat, “State and Society under the Zikris in Makran: A Historical Account,” Global Social Sciences Review VIII, no. II (June 30, 2023): 108–18.[↑]
9. The male counterpart to Banuk is Waja, a figure of equal stature and responsibility in the Zigri community. Badalkhan, Zikri dilemmas: Origins, religious practices, and political constraints.[↑]
10. Elizabeth Faier, “Domestic Matters: Feminism and Activism among Palestinian Women in Israel,” in Ethnography in Unstable Places, ed. Carol J. Greenhouse, Elizabeth Mertz, and Kay B. Warren (Duke University Press, 2020), 178–209; Partha Chatterjee, “Colonialism, Nationalism, and Colonialized Women: The Contest in India,” American Ethnologist 16, no. 4 (1989): 622–33; Saba Mahmood, “Feminist Theory, Embodiment, and the Docile Agent: Some Reflections on the Egyptian Islamic Revival,” Cultural Anthropology 16, no. 2 (2001): 202–36.[↑]
11. Paul Brian Titus, Marginality and Modernity: Ethnicity and Change in Post-Colonial Balochistan (Oxford University Press, 1996).[↑]
12. In South Asian culture it is common for elder siblings to bear more responsibilities and freedom to nurture their kin.[↑]
13. Carroll McC. Pastner, “A Social Structural and Historical Analysis of Honor, Shame and Purdah,” Anthropological Quarterly 45, no. 4 (1972): 248–61.[↑]
14. Pastner, “A social structural and historical analysis,” 408-411.[↑]
15. For a critical analysis of Muslim women’s agency see Lila Abu-Lughod, Do Muslim Women Need Saving? (Harvard University Press, 2013) and Saba Mahmood, “Feminist Theory, Embodiment, and the Docile Agent: Some Reflections on the Egyptian Islamic Revival,” Cultural Anthropology 16, no. 2 (2001): 202–36.[↑]
16. For a deeper analysis on how military control inherently embodies masculine characteristics, see Shenila Khoja-Moolji, Sovereign Attachments: Masculinity, Muslimness, and Affective Politics in Pakistan (University of California Press, 2021); and Bonnie Mann, Sovereign Masculinity: Gender Lessons from the War on Terror (Oxford University Press, 2014).[↑]
17. This essay acknowledges insights into the autonomy of women religious leaders in Islamic states offered by Mahmood in Feminist Theory, Embodiment, and the Docile Agent: Some Reflections on the Egyptian Islamic Revival. Mahmood’s work highlights how cultural traditions in the context of women religious leaders often value submission to a higher will, indirectly reinforcing masculine authority. In the case of Zigri Baloch women, the higher will translates to continued masculine dominance where political and cultural realms are deeply entwined with historical patterns of militarized masculine authority. But it’s important to note that while men in Balochistan may dominate discourses of authority, Zigri Baloch women wield influence over other discourses integral to their daily lives, such as honor, mutual trust among themselves, belief in Banuk’s leadership, and the determination to uphold their identity. All of these are crucial to Zigri women’s agency and freedom. See Mahmood, Feminist Theory, 204.[↑]
18. Maile Arvin, Eve Tuck, and Angie Morrill, “Decolonizing Feminism: Challenging Connections between Settler Colonialism and Heteropatriarchy,” Feminist Formations 25, no. 1 (2013): 8–34; Lila Abu-Lughod, “The Romance of Resistance: Tracing Transformations of Power Through Bedouin Women,” American Ethnologist 17, no. 1 (1990): 41–55; Andrew Curley, “Resources Is Just Another Word for Colonialism,” in The Routledge Handbook of Critical Resource Geography (Routledge, 2022), 79–90; Marisol De La Cadena, “Indigenous Cosmopolitics In The Andes: Conceptual Reflections beyond ‘Politics,’” Cultural Anthropology 25, no. 2 (2010): 334–70; Zoe Todd, “An Indigenous Feminist’s Take On The Ontological Turn: ‘Ontology’ Is Just Another Word For Colonialism,” Journal of Historical Sociology 29, no. 1 (2016): 4–22; Sandy Grande, “Aging, Precarity, and the Struggle for Indigenous Elsewheres,” International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education 31, no. 3 (2018): 168–76;  Chandra Mohanty, “Under Western Eyes: Feminist Scholarship and Colonial Discourses,” Feminist Review 30, no. 1 (1988): 61;  Uma Narayan, “Restoring History and Politics to ‘Third-World Traditions’: Contrasting the Colonialist Stance and Contemporary Contestations of Sati,” in Dislocating Cultures (Routledge, 1997), 102.[↑]
19. Salman Rafi Sheikh, The Genesis of Baloch Nationalism: Politics and Ethnicity in Pakistan, 1947–1977 (Routledge India, 2018).[↑]
20. Kimberle Crenshaw, “Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence against Women of Color,” Stanford Law Review 43, no. 6 (1991): 1241–99.[↑]
21. Clarinda Still, Dalit Women: Honour and Patriarchy in South India (Routledge, 2017), 3.[↑]
22. Still, Dalit Women: Honour and Patriarchy in South India, 12.[↑]
23. The dialogues presented here are drawn from the unstructured interview I conducted with Banuk Merbibi in Turbat, Balochistan.[↑]
24. See Amnesty International, “Pakistan: The Disappeared of Balochistan,” Amnesty International, November 12, 2020; Francesca Marino, Balochistan: Bruised, Battered and Bloodied (Bloomsbury, 2020); Asad Ismi, “China’s Transport Project Meets Stiff Resistance in Balochistan,” The Monitor, March 3, 2022, https://monitormag.ca/articles/chinas-transport-project-meets-stiff-resistance-in-balochistana/;  Shamil Shams, “Mass Murder in Balochistan,” DW.Com, January 28, 2014, https://www.dw.com/en/activists-wants-un-inquiry-into-pakistan-mass-graves/a-17392230.[↑]
25. On Zigranas and their structure, see Badalkhan, Zikri Dilemmas: Origins, Religious Practices and Political Constraints.[↑]