While many Pakistanis are said to be apprehensive of Hindu nationalist and Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi’s projected win in the 2014 general election, there’s an inconspicuous village called Pakistan in India which will gladly welcome his victory, said a report published in The Times of India.
Over 250 inhabitants, including more than 100 voters of the village called Pakistan, located in Bihar’s Purnea district are set to vote on April 24 for the Gujarat chief minister who has promised a tougher stance against Pakistan if he wins the election.
"We want Narendra Modi to become PM," said Hira Hembrum, a middle-aged villager.
Steeped in poverty and deprived of basic facilities, other residents of the village echo her view. Another villager Haldu Mumu was quoted in the local media as saying that “people in Pakistan are keen to vote for BJP to see Modi as PM”.
He said they wanted to see Modi in power in order to oppose what he said were neighbouring country Pakistan’s efforts to derail peace, adding that only this candidate could do it.
Government documents have recorded the name of the village as Pakistan.
Elderly people in the village said it was named soon after the Partition.
An elderly villager said Muslims, who lived in the village earlier, chose to relocate to Bangladesh after its secession from Pakistan, following which they decided to name the village in their memory. Notwithstanding the poverty and low literacy rate in Purnea, anti-Pakistan sentiment runs deep in the village. Mumu was recounted as saying that in the wake of 26/11, the inhabitants of the village had considered changing its name.
Villagers were in a celebratory mood – distributing sweets, singing songs and dancing – after the sentencing of Ajmal Kasab, the lone Pakistani survivor of the Mumbai 2008 attacks, he added.
Interestingly, in 2012, Chief Minister Nitish Kumar had informed a visiting Pakistani delegation in India that there was a village named after their country.
The astounded delegates told Kumar that they were unaware of this village, upon which he showed the map of Purnea and explained that when Muslim residents relocated to Bangladesh, the villagers had decided to name it “Pakistan” as a tribute to their memory.
