The ‘troubles’ of Pahalgam made a startled Indian acquaintance message me that “when will this madness end. I could not sleep all night.” My response was: “Same here.” The troubles started by India claiming many times more lives than the incident itself.

My mind wandered back to my school days on the 6th of September 1965 as we were rushed out of school when the war started. My father, then the Editor of the C&MG Lahore, led us brothers to his office. As we reached the Regal Crossing, jet fighter aircrafts appeared overhead. A ‘dog fight’ was on. One was shot and headed smoking towards the city’s western side. Everyone clapped, not knowing whose aircraft was hit. That incident saw the emergence of a patriotic fervour we had never before experienced.

My English mother, who had worked in the British War Office in the Second World War, immediately collected my elder sister and a son and rushed to the Lahore Red Cross office on Queen’s Road, where Begum Noon was the chief. They organised a blood donation service, plus food, clothes and other dry items for the soldiers on the front. The donor lines for blood, food, clothes and all odds and sorts ran in the hundreds. Lahore was alive like never before. Probably never since.

The duty assigned to me was to check out blood donors who were repeatedly giving blood. The doctors warned on the radio that giving blood more than once was dangerous. But one ‘pehlwan’ pushed me aside claiming he would give ‘10 bottles.’ I informed him that he would die without blood. He refused to listen and was removed by the police. In the office donations were just too much to handle. Unbelievable truckloads. Such was the spirit of 1965.

At home the spirit was the same. The famous newspaper photographer FE Chaudhary turned up on his Quickly motorcycle and strut into the sitting room. He proudly declared: “My son Cecil shot down that Indian aircraft, so I am the father of a Sitara-e-Jura’at.”

One evening a collection of poets and intellectuals gathered for the usual things. Prof Eric Cyprian joked: “If there is a siren of an attack, rush to the airport because they will surely miss their targets.” That was the spirit of 1965.

Come 1971 and by that time I was an apprentice sub-editor in ‘The Pakistan Times’ of Lahore. As I could handle the old-type radio sets well, my duty was as a ‘Radio Monitor’. I would listen to several radio stations, like the BBC, Radio Moscow, Voice of America, as also All India Radio and, naturally Radio Pakistan. All these five stations had their own angle depending on the words used to describe the same event.

I would type out the different versions on the old typewriter and hand the Chief Sub Editor a copy. When Pakistan was defeated and surrendered, the news desk refused to believe my report. Word got around the office and people collected to beat me up. I managed to escape and did not go to the office for two days. Everyone on the streets was crying.

To be honest every Pakistani still desires that East Pakistan returns once again. But given the ‘exploitative’ structure of our ‘exploitative feudal’ leadership, let alone the feelings of the people of Bangladesh, that seems unlikely. Probably, impossible is a better word.

The positive aspect of the 1971 disaster was that a democratic dispensation came about. But then a struggle started between the ‘feudal origin’ of our politicians and the ‘armed’ establishment. As a journalist I covered the Lahore trial of ZA Bhutto. Being the only one at the courts when the death sentence was announced at four in the morning, he emerged, smiled at me and sat in a police van. That was the last time I saw him. Guns have prevailed ever since in civil and military form. That is Pakistan’s real tragedy.

My experience of the evils of war kept coming to me yet again. After I fled the wrath of the whippings of Gen. Zia, I landed a job in a British newspaper in Birmingham. As luck would have it, the Falklands War broke out. Being the foreign editor my boss announced at a meeting: “As Majid is the foreign editor, and he is a foreigner, and as no one else wants to go there, so he is assigned to accompany the Gorkhas”.

So it was that I ended up ‘jogging’ in cold mud slush with these tough soldiers. The Argentine force were boys aged 16 to 18 and they started crying on seeing the fierce Gorkhas. It was a sudden surrender. My report said so, which my editor thought “lacked the action”.

But now that a ‘conflict’ with India has broken out yet again, or as a friend claims a ‘managed conflict’ has emerged, it makes sense to see just what has happened. Let us look at the actual Pahalgam incident. The ground – a plateau - is just next to a huge Indian Army garrison. When this incident happened all the soldiers disappeared. Four armed men appeared from four sides and shot dead 26 tourists. India claims they all escaped via South India. Strange! Very strange to say the least.

Then within an hour India announced a series of steps starting from blocking Pakistan’s agreed waters. Then all Pakistanis were expelled from India, and the Indian media fell to a low ‘sick’ level never seen before. The biggest loser was the ‘truth’. As events unfolded it emerged that five Indian aircrafts had been downed. Now that is big news. The shooting down of a high-tech Rafale is bigger news in France than in India.

As events unfold there is also a very strong ‘peace’ movement on its way. It is ‘anti-war’ and thousands are signing on to it - in Pakistan and India. That is the path every sensible person should advocate. But then an announcement is spread that an explosion in Lahore was an ‘exercise’. But a Walton Road school teacher reports a drone near their school. India announced 25 drones thrown our way. The whole truth invariably suffers.

By the time this is printed, it is likely that many more such incidents will have taken place. No matter how hard the extremist ‘Nazi-like’ Indian communal leadership try to make Pakistan respond in a massive way, the people will wish for peace. But then what is the extreme possibility – surely not an atomic attack. The smallest such bomb is 1,000 times stronger than the Hiroshima tragedy. No thinking person would wish such an event on their worst enemy. Indian attrition might backfire yet.

That Pakistan is holding back is a positive, and the world should appreciate it. We are, for starters, a communal country. India has become one now. It is time to return to rational scientific ways of governing. Peace is all one needs.

Published in Dawn, May 11th, 2025