“Pakistan is pre-programmed to fail.” With those words, my father, an undergraduate student at the University of California, Berkeley, left a thin, gangling fellow-student, Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, in a bad mood.

It was 1950. Bhutto went on to Oxford University to study law before returning to Pakistan. My father, management degree in hand, returned to India to join the family’s manufacturing enterprise.

During his years at Berkeley, Bhutto tried hard to convince other Indian students what a great future his newly-formed country Pakistan had. My father told him why he was wrong: a country founded on theocracy would eventually implode.

Sixty-seven years after that conversation on a northern California campus, those words appear prophetic.

On the 70th anniversary of its founding, Pakistan is in fact imploding. The terrorists it bred to bleed India by a thousand cuts are bleeding Pakistan instead.

Balochistan is in ferment. It is a matter of time before it breaks away from Pakistan. Balochistan was an independent state named Kalat in the British Empire. It was not part of the instruments of accession at Indian Independence and Partition in 1947. In May 1948, the Pakistan Army invaded and annexed it.

The Pakistani daily The Nation published a detailed account on 5 December 2015 of how Pakistan illegally occupied Balochistan, now the centrepiece of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC): “Balochistan accounts for nearly half the land mass of Pakistan and only 3.6 per cent of its total population. The province is immensely rich in natural resources, including oil, gas, copper and gold. Despite these huge deposits of mineral wealth, the area is one of the poorest regions of Pakistan. A vast majority of its population lives in deplorable housing conditions where they don’t have access to electricity or clean drinking water.

“When the Dar-ul-Awam (parliament) of Kalat (Balochistan) met on 21 February 1948, it decided not to accede to Pakistan, but to negotiate a treaty to determine Kalat’s future relations with Pakistan. On 26 March 1948, the Pakistan Army was ordered to move into the Baloch coastal region of Pasni, Jiwani and Turbat. Kalat capitulated on 27 March and it was announced in Karachi that the Khan of Kalat has agreed to merge his state with Pakistan. Jinnah accepted this accession under the gun. It should be noted that the Balochistan Assembly had already rejected any suggestion of forfeiting the independence of Balochistan (Kalat) on any pretext. So even the signature of the Khan of Kalat, taken under the barrel of the gun, was not viable. The Balochistan parliament had rejected the accession. The accession was never mandated by the British Empire either which had given Balochistan independence even before India. The sovereign Baloch state after British withdrawal from India lasted only 227 days. During this time Balochistan had a flag flying in its embassy in Karachi where its ambassador to Pakistan lived.”

Like Balochistan today, Sindh too is in ferment. While lawless Karachi has been partially tamed by the Pakistani Rangers’ concerted action over the past two years, the movement for an independent Sindh remains strong. Running battles between migrant Pashtuns and local activists belonging to the Muttahida Quami Movement (MQM) continue to rage on Karachi’s debris-laden streets. Further north, the restless tribal areas of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, governed by Imran Khan’s Tehreek-e-Insaf, are riven by violence and corruption.