Why The Hell Are We Fighting!

Faisal K

Writers often take in all sensory inputs from their surroundings and then mix it up inside to create the symphony that only words can. Recently, I am getting a very strong vibe of reconciliation from our neighbors. Why is this so?

First of all when India spoke through its recent polls, the message was not that off “annihilate Pakistan” as the hawks and extremist parties all lost out to the subtle progressive and relatively peace loving Congress party. Thus the world’s view of how Indian polls would change after the Mumbai incident turned out to be totally off the mark.

There are very strong reasons for this. Key to this is India’s burgeoning middle class, which, after getting more access to the outside world during the last decade when India opened its doors to the tech world, was also exposed to its Pakistani counterpart on www, and pleasantly it found that Pakistanis were so similar in culture that they could be from any another province in India let alone another country.

Not that this feeling is from the Indian side only. Personally speaking, whenever I come across someone from Gujarat, I feel as if s/he is from across the road rather than across the Neelam valley. In fact, most of the conversations I have had over my blog Deadpan Thoughts and with our neighbors, have all ended with “so why the hell are we fighting”! It’s quite stunning that two cultures which basically derive themselves from the same roots have been so actively involved in wars in the past, but then politics is a dirty game. However, I, for one, do not think we will go to war anymore, although at times the emotional side of me gets upset over the constant finger pointing by the Indian media. Inside, I somehow feel that the people will not tolerate their armies going at each others’ throats again. Not even in a conventional sense forget nuclear war. All this talk of deterrence and how the region will descend into chaos, to me now seems like hogwash perpetrated by men in khaki on both sides to keep the money flowing into the defense coffers.

Think man as to who loses the most if there is everlasting peace between Pakistan and India? You got it -- the politicians, the defense contractors on yonder shores and the armies of the two countries.

Individuals are now also playing more of a role of peace makers and reaching out across borders to prove this point in public. The visit of Arundhati Roy to our Press Club, the constant interaction between the two countries’ media and the teaming up of Pakistan’s Aisam ul-Haq Qureshi and India’s Prakash Amritraj in Wimbledon doubles is not lost to any of us. I know that we cannot oversimplify our old rivalry to a few gestures but are we so blind that we cannot see how similar we are?

We must build on this interaction and become more accepting and more flexible for our neighbors. The world has enough wars and we do not need to fight. In fact, we should use this public goodwill to turn our guns towards those that want to control us and maintain tension in this region to feed their death producing factories. We might have parted ways in 1947 but our hearts and minds, even though sometimes misled, are still one.

(The writer is a Karachi-based Journalist)