It is a stark display of two-faced behavior, a blatant hypocrisy when we talk about our relations with India with India as opposed to those with the Indians. When we got rid of the British raj and found a country for ourselves on the basis of religion, the two-faced-nation theory played the major role. We hated each other’s guts for the religion we followed. However, we notice that when Hindus come here we welcome them graciously, when Hindus are stuck in a problem, case in point the M.V. Suez and the pirates episode, we feel proud of helping them, when we go to India we face a likewise behavior. From the taxi-drivers who refuse to charge fare to the open-heartedness of our ‘Indian brothers’ who force us to live in their homes we see a display of such brotherly feelings that can’t be expressed in words. However, when we think of India as a country we get these strong, equally inexplicable, feelings of such abhorrence that are almost inhuman and this feeling of hatred is matched by the people living across the border.
This makes a lot of people wonder how we are able to manifest such disparate feelings at the same time. Are we ambivalent about our feelings? Or is it merely the fact that we have been led to believe that we should detest each other? is it the presence of political tensions that have been imbued through the international community for their own interests? are we just hypocritical about our feelings? It’s very difficult to identify which one of these is true. I believe that it’s an amalgamation of all these that results in this two-faced exhibit of sentiments.
One other factor to note is that the anti-Hindu sentiments are the one on which most Pakistanis feel unified; other than that, over the past 60 years, we haven’t seen any other major issue that unites us so well. Therefore, it logically follows that we just hate the Indians for the mere sake of hating someone together as a nation. I am, however, of the opinion that these sentiments are never going to get us anywhere, except being a major burden on already thin budget.People on both sides of the border respect each other, and only the so-called political tension that has been instilled in us, the ‘other-ization’, the belief that we can’t live peacefully, is the reason that our relations with India are so taut. We need to respect each other, we need to address other important issues that we are both facing and ideally we should collaborate with each other. Both countries have faced the same humongous problems since the partition like education, health and poverty.
Shouldn’t our aim be to solve these problems? Shouldn’t these problems unite us as nations? Do we actually need the fear of a war to unite us? on the contrary no war ever unites nations for long enough. 60 years of solid hatred, I believe is enough, it’s time to move on and look at the bigger picture and our bigger problems. Our peaceful co-existence would not only stabilize us but also give us the strength to move on and shape a better future for the generations to come.
friends or foes?
This makes a lot of people wonder how we are able to manifest such disparate feelings at the same time. Are we ambivalent about our feelings? Or is it merely the fact that we have been led to believe that we should detest each other? is it the presence of political tensions that have been imbued through the international community for their own interests? are we just hypocritical about our feelings? It’s very difficult to identify which one of these is true. I believe that it’s an amalgamation of all these that results in this two-faced exhibit of sentiments.
One other factor to note is that the anti-Hindu sentiments are the one on which most Pakistanis feel unified; other than that, over the past 60 years, we haven’t seen any other major issue that unites us so well. Therefore, it logically follows that we just hate the Indians for the mere sake of hating someone together as a nation. I am, however, of the opinion that these sentiments are never going to get us anywhere, except being a major burden on already thin budget.People on both sides of the border respect each other, and only the so-called political tension that has been instilled in us, the ‘other-ization’, the belief that we can’t live peacefully, is the reason that our relations with India are so taut. We need to respect each other, we need to address other important issues that we are both facing and ideally we should collaborate with each other. Both countries have faced the same humongous problems since the partition like education, health and poverty.
Shouldn’t our aim be to solve these problems? Shouldn’t these problems unite us as nations? Do we actually need the fear of a war to unite us? on the contrary no war ever unites nations for long enough. 60 years of solid hatred, I believe is enough, it’s time to move on and look at the bigger picture and our bigger problems. Our peaceful co-existence would not only stabilize us but also give us the strength to move on and shape a better future for the generations to come.
friends or foes?
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