It’s time the people of India and Pakistan understood the game their rulers play
HATRED is an invisible fire that consumes an individual, a community, and a nation from within. It ultimately burns us and reduces us to ashes. Our talent, our expertise, our ingenuity, and our creativity, all are destroyed. We are left with nothing to establish our identity. We then are condemned to live the life of a faceless person. The policymakers in Pakistan took it upon themselves from day one, that is, from the time this country was created in 1947, to bring up our generation after generation on hate syndrome. The two-nation theory clearly advocates that the Hindus and the Muslims are two different nations. For that matter, the Christians and the Muslims are two different nations. The Hindus and the Christians are two different nations. It is a debatable definition of nationhood in its narrowest sense. We will discuss it some other time.
Nowhere in the two-nation theory was it implied that in order to justify the theory the Muslims must hate the Hindus. One fails to find out a plausible reason for deviation from the two-nation theory after the creation of Pakistan. Unfortunately, the curriculum heaped on our children smacks of hatred for the Hindus. It should not be forgotten that we, the Muslims, were hand in glove with the British in carving out a piece of Indian soil for the establishment of Pakistan. Therefore, the anger among our neighbours, if any, is understandable.
A calculated cultivation of hatred for India has transformed our youth, male and female both, into split personalities. They dislike India, but they dress up like Shahrukh Khan, Salman Khan, Ashwariya Rai, and Bipasha Basu. In their mannerism, attitude, gestures, and body language our youngsters try their utmost to resemble Indian film stars and Indian television artists. They have become role models for our young men. But, at the back of their minds, our young men nurture dislike for India that is inculcated in their brains through the distorted history devised by the biased policymakers. To say that Indian policymakers too have left no stone unturned in cultivating dislike for Pakistan among their youth is not a logical excuse for distorting our books on history and social studies. There is no sense in committing deliberate blunders in order to counter the blunders of others.
My attention is focussed on the perpetual peace between the two countries, India and Pakistan. I am concerned with the people, and not with the rulers of India and Pakistan. The rulers rise and fall, but the people do not. Between the two, the rulers happen to be impermanent, and people permanent. Because of the faulty policies of the rulers it is the people who suffer. They are uprooted, and devastated. They are thrown to the wind to suffer humiliation and untold miseries. To discuss whether or not Pakistan ought to have been carved out from Indian soil is an exercise in futility. Such discussions instead of defusing the vulnerable situation would result in the eruption of more lava. History is not recorded on a videotape that one can sit back and see in an editing room, and while viewing it delete the unpleasant episodes. In our lives we are left with no option but to accept the deeds and misdeeds committed by us over the years of our existence. History doesn’t record only good events, and omits unsavoury events. The post-World War Two history of the subcontinent is the documentation of nerve-shattering episodes of savagery, bloodbaths, killings, arson, rape, abduction, and destruction of man’s achievements of a millennium. The world has not forgotten the frightening devastation of men, women, and children in the wake of partition of India, and coming into being of Pakistan. It was horrible beyond our imagination. The chapters written in blood can’t be omitted from the history of India and Pakistan.
The rulers of India and Pakistan have ruthlessly exploited their masses, and have pitted them against each other. It has been going on for over half a century. It is long enough a time for the people of the two countries to comprehend the rulers’ game, and refuse to play in their hands. Have people of the two countries objected to the purchase of weapons of mass destruction by their rulers? Who would they eliminate with lethal weapons? The children? Women? Men without arms? Ailing old citizens? The starving multitudes? An unforgettable lesson that the world has learnt from the Second World War is, that in a war combating soldiers die because of their own choice. They are paid salaries and emoluments, and are kept mentally and physically ready to fight in battlefields. But, the civilians, on whom a war is thrust upon, do not die because of their own choice. They are made to die. The bombs and bullets unleashed by professional soldiers disdainfully kill them.
The policymakers in India are definitely wiser than our own policymakers. They have cultivated generations of committed competitors who have left us far behind in education, science, technology, medicine, literature, arts, performing arts, music, theatre, and cinematography.
When we meet next week we will explore possible reasons our leaders had for demanding a piece of India for converting it into Pakistan.
