- And why beating war drums and jingoism peaks and falls sporadically
When in trouble, escalate. When things at home seem bleak, escalate. When a distraction is desperately needed, escalate. When stuff goes south, escalate. Escalations at the borders have come to serve many purposes for both India and Pakistan. On the one hand it seems to endanger the lives of billions, on the other it serves to deflate the tensions at home.
And the sordid saga continues.
The places change, the aftermath does not. The body count goes up and down, the suffering refuses to subside. The strength, or lack thereof, of Pakistan and India’s relationship can be gauged by the fact that all it takes is a single suicide bomber to bring lives of more than a billion people under the pall of fear and hatred.
The irony of Pakistan and India relationship is that columns, stories, editorials written decades back need a little tweaking here and there and they are good to go to the press again. There is an abysmal theatre of the Indo-Pak relationship, where 1.5 billion actors live to stage the same show with little variation in an old script. Things go right only to take a horribly wrong twist. What both Pakistan and India fail to realise and refuse to acknowledge is that in their bid of erecting empires of hatred they’ve reduced themselves to brats bragging about the bully they’ve befriended, China in former and USA in latter’s case.
USA, once Pakistan’s mentor and foremost ally, has been won over by Modi sarkar. Sensing the winds of change, America abandoned, rather betrayed Pakistan forcing the latter to find comfort, solace, support and economic promise in the mighty Chinese Dragon. For many it is an omen of prosperity, for others a mere change of lap. The promise of CPEC has blinded the country and its rulers to adverse effects that will soon prop up.
Kashmir, that daughter of Eve both Cain and Abel are willing to do anything for. Be it Akhand Bharat or ‘Kashmir banay gaa Pakistan’, the solution lies not in slogans yelled with all the might of our lungs
India, once famed for not aligning itself in shackles of alliances has recently found bonhomie in America. The former founding member of Non-Aligned Movement has finally realised that in our bad world it is always good to have a hyper power, although having waning influence, on one’s side. Never having been comfortable with and around both China and Pakistan, India has made pals across the seven seas and it has military presence in almost all of them. Considering Pakistan a permanent nuisance and China as a competitor to reckon with, India aims to draw Afghanistan, the so-called graveyard of civilisations, and Iran, the flag bearer of one of the most ancient civilisation, nearer. Bangladesh, the old East Pakistan is definitely not a friend that Pakistan presently has in the region.
We, Pakistanis have brother China, our neighbour has shri America. May the Almighty let the puppets practice the illusion of choice in hopes of eyeballing each other to perdition.
Regardless of the fact that many of us share the fate of our beloved motherlands we have to put up with misery in all its gory forms because the ‘husbands’ (read leaders) of our land are either posing as mythic Titans or busy in one-upmanship. All of this should better end as we have too many ‘weary’ generations before us. Pakistan and India have barely lost any opportunity to teach each other ‘lessons’. The recent Pulwama attack is just another episode in the endless saga of the Indo-Pak soap opera.
Both neighbours revel in a schadenfreude that was cultivated over time and has become so extreme that it’ll take years before Pakistanis and Indians think of each other as regular human beings, capable of basic human emotions for in their bid to loathe, they’ve dehumanised each other. They have lost empathy, because it has been ages that an ordinary lad from Islamabad sat with a young bloke from Delhi and discussed the hidden frustrations and shared fantasies that describe the youth of either country.
And what is the main bone of contention? No prize for guessing. It is Kashmir. Kashmir, that daughter of Eve both Cain and Abel are willing to do anything for. Be it Akhand Bharat or ‘Kashmir banay gaa Pakistan’, the solution lies not in slogans yelled with all the might of our lungs. Rather than playing to the local and international galleries for empty applause and/or pat on the back both, Cain and Abe need to talk about Eve on a negotiation table. As by force none will have her or retain her. Moral of the story: It is better to behave like good neighbours rather than archetypal characters from scriptures of yore.
While paying heed to the unshakeable realities, both India and Pakistan share more than borders. They share languages that sound familiar even if they don’t understand one jot of them, they share common heritage that is engulfed in haze, they share echoes that go unheard in minarets, temples and mosques, they share nightmares that came to be known as ‘slices from history’, they share idols they no longer believe in and gods who have forsaken them when they needed them the most.
The story of Midnight’s Children is far from over.
