[mukto-mona] Fwd: Comments Re. Asiapeace (ACHA) Incoming barrage from India BY Irfan Husain

 

 

From: omarali502000@yahoo.com
To: Kirfani@aol.com
Sent: 12/4/2009 9:31:48 A.M. Eastern Standard Time
Subj: Re: Fwd: Comments Re. Asiapeace (ACHA) Incoming barrage from India BY Irfan Husain

 

I must say that Kamdar sahib embodies the biblical injunction to worry about "the log in your own eye first" very seriously. I think liberals generally tend to do this more than conservatives and that is a very endearing trait, but it can be carried too far. The best way to look at things would be to judge them ALL on their own merits, but the second best is to assume that large groups of people are not going to be that different from each other. If there are Indians who hate pakistan, enjoy its pain, behave unreasonably, then there must be similar people in Pakistan. As a general rule, this works fairly well... Omar --- On Fri, 12/4/09, Kirfani@aol.com <Kirfani@aol.com> wrote: From: Kirfani@aol.com <Kirfani@aol.com> Subject: Fwd: Comments Re. Asiapeace (ACHA) Incoming barrage from India BY Irfan Husain To: Kirfani@aol.com Date: Friday, December 4, 2009, 8:14 AM   Fwd: Comments Re. Asiapeace (ACHA) Incoming barrage from India BY Irfan Husain  From: sminhas@sbcglobal.net Kalim: I agree with Omar, while stressing that common cultural roots are too obvious to argue about.  I had already seen Mr. Husain's article. I had agreed with his logic by and large, until he yielded to the temptation of poking at India. Well, yes, the Indians had been under the Mogul rule. But then the entire subcontinent had been under the British for two centuries. I think everybody inherits a bit of experience of being under an alien rule. It is hard to see why the Indians would be more sensitive than the Pakistanis about matters that touch on national image. From what I know, I think there is altogether too much of nationalism in Pakistan, especially among the younger folks. Regards,  Sardul -------------------- From: mehulkamdar@yahoo.com Dear Dr Irfani, While I agree wholeheartedly with Omar Ali Saheb about the fact that India and Pakistan need each other to be flourishing nations in order for peace to prevail in the region, sadly, I have to concur with the article that there are many in India who practice a schadenfreude over problems that face Pakistan. And, a lot of the arrogant and sometimes cruel thinking in India does come from the educated and wealthy classes. In some Indian circles that I participate in discussions, there have been some very revealing conversations recently over the question of India's future - the insistence by some of my friends and I that India has huge problems and that it needs to go a long way before it can even be recognized as a nation of consequence, have met with some very angry responses especially from the relatively young who have clearly been brainwashed into believing that there can be no place on earth that is greater than India. The enormity of the myriad problems that India needs to confront seem to have been forgotten by many Indians and this is almost certainly due to the success of the propaganda put out by sections within the Indian government and the media. Lest someone thinks that I am making this up, I would refer them to this page on the India Today website where a heavily edited note sent in by me referring to the decisive manner in which Pakistan had taken on the Taliban and how India seemed hell-bent on refusing to acknowledge that it had a problem that threatens its very existence in the strength of the Naxalites received responses from a number of Indians who could not even accept the point that I was trying to make: http://indiatoday.intoday.in/site/ArticleComment?artId=69520 Granted that Swapan Chakravarty is a right wing Indian journalist who has been writing Hindutvaite op-eds for several newspapers (especially The Indian Express and The Pioneer which he was / probably still is editor of) I have seen some of the most ridiculous responses to Indian problems in the recent past by educated Indians whom I (perhaps, mistakenly) expected better from. But then, a continuous barrage of propaganda about "Indian exceptionalism" that has been put out by successive governments from Indira Gandhi's time, only seems to have managed to create true believers out of many who ought to know better. Sadly, Irfan Hussain's article is true and it portrays an accurate picture of the thinking in much of India's more privileged class. I wish that I could share Omar Ali Saheb's optimism, but, considering what I have personally experienced WRT India, I am not sure if I would be right in doing this, even though this is a broad generalization and generalizations invariably have something lacking. Best wishes, Mehul Kamdar The Ark was built by amateurs. Experts built the Titanic.   From: Kirfani@aol.com [mailto:Kirfani@aol.com] Sent: Thursday, December 03, 2009 5:46 PM To: Kirfani@aol.com Subject: Fwd: Asiapeace (ACHA) Incoming barrage from India BY Irfan Husain  Fwd: Asiapeace (ACHA) Incoming barrage from India BY Irfan Husain  From: omarali502000@yahoo.com To: asiapeace@yahoogroups.com, abdalian@yahoogroups.com, crdp@yahoogroups.com, Pakistan_Futures@yahoogroups.com, shaheryar.azhar@gmail.com, apnachat@yahoogroups.com Sent: 12/3/2009 2:01:51 P.M. Eastern Standard Time Subj: Asiapeace (ACHA) Incoming barrage from India... I disagree a little with Irfan sahib because I think his column puts the stress on how people feel about each other, while I think that is only a part of the picture. It doesnt really matter too much if ordinary people in Pakistan and India think they have a common culture or not. They need to cooperate in practical matters and they need to stop trying to undermine and destroy the other. They dont ALL have to love each other. Having said that, I do agree that there are irrational haters on both sides and they have a common tendency to get carried away in the heady rush of their own propaganda. I know Pakistanis who hunt out stories of indian poverty or their multiple insurgencies or their extremely incompetent government and immediately conclude that its just a matter of "one more push" and the whole rickety structure will collapse and "we" will rule the whole place. And I am sure there are Indians who read about daily bombings and terrorist incidents and military interventions and think Pakistan is an Islamist basket case and the sooner they go to hell the better for India. I think both are wrong. Neither country is going to fall apart and if either country does fall apart, it will be an unending nightmare for the other party as well. Indians who are happy to see Pakistan get a taste of its own terrorist medicine may have an excusable reaction, but they need to grow up. If Pakistan falls apart under Jihadi assault, India has had it....  Omar  ----------------------  An incoming barrage from India Irfan Husain Wednesday, 02 Dec, 2009 A Pakistani border security guard, in black uniform, shakes hand with an Indian border security guard, during the 'Beating the Retreat' ceremony at the joint India-Pakistan border check post of Wagah, in Amritsar, India on Tuesday, Nov. 24, 2009. – Photo by AP. A part of my daily routine is to check my inbox for emails from readers, and answer them, even if briefly. Occasionally, I upset some of them by the brevity of my reply, but I do try and acknowledge them all, unless they are downright abusive. However, these last few days have seen such a flood of hate mail that I click open incoming emails with a sinking heart. Some are unprintable; other readers have gloated over Pakistan's current problems with unseemly glee. One Indian reader (a doctor, no less!) wrote from Australia to say that every time he heard of yet another terrorist attack in Pakistan, he raised a celebratory glass of wine. All this outpouring of anger has come my way from Indian readers because of a column I wrote in this newspaper last Saturday ('Mumbai's winners and losers'; November 28). I had argued that by halting peace talks, the Indian government had handed the terrorists a major victory. I had also made the point that attacks like the one in Mumbai a year ago were precisely the reason for negotiations to continue with a greater sense of purpose. Finally, I had suggested that India, being the bigger and far more powerful country, could afford to make a unilateral gesture to reassure our generals without compromising its own security. I concluded by saying that India needed peace as much as Pakistan did. One would hardly have thought that these proposals would warrant such a torrent of venom. Luckily, a handful of Indians did agree with me. But over 90 per cent rejected my arguments, saying basically that 'Pakistan should stew in its own juice', and that as long as terrorist groups existed on its soil, there could be no peace talks. Clearly, this seems to be the prevailing attitude in India, and given such hard-line views, it is difficult to see how there can be peace between the two neighbours. I have long argued that the only way to lift millions of people in South Asia out of their abject poverty is to unleash the potential of trade and travel between the two enemies, and to reduce defence spending. Clearly, this is not going to happen in my lifetime. Sadly, younger Indians and Pakistanis seem to be increasingly indifferent to the whole notion of normalisation. They have been so badly let down by two generations of politicians and opinion-makers that the very idea of peaceful relations seems positively bizarre. I was made aware of this generational shift in attitudes a couple of days ago when our Indian friend Renu got into a somewhat heated discussion with my son Shakir here in our beach house in Sri Lanka. She had made a comment on how culturally close Indians and Pakistanis were, and I agreed with her. Shakir disagreed, saying that both of us were out of touch with the vast majority of Indians and Pakistanis, as we spent a part of the year abroad. Predictably, the discussion swung to Partition, Kashmir and the history of tension and mistrust that has marked Indo-Pakistan relations. While Shakir finally conceded the original point about cultural commonalities, he did not budge on the need for both sides to shed old animosities and get on with life. Nearly ten years ago, I was in New Delhi to attend a conference, and was invited to speak to the editorial staff at the Times of India. I made the point that despite all of Pakistan's problems with censorship over the years, several journalists regularly questioned and criticised core government policies in the mainstream press. This could not be said of India where the major newspapers formed a consensus around important issues like Kashmir and the nuclear programme. None of the Indian journalists present challenged my assertion. The incoming hate mail I am getting these days reminded me of a conversation I had a couple of years ago with a visiting Western journalist in Lahore. He covered Pakistan for his news weekly from New Delhi, and was a frequent visitor. I said something inane about how he must miss the social scene in Delhi. His reply surprised me: 'I love visiting Pakistan because when I write a critical piece about India, all my Indian acquaintances are furious with me. In Pakistan, when I write something negative, everybody agrees with me.' There is a great deal of truth in this flippant remark. Indians take themselves and their country a lot more seriously than Pakistanis do. The smallest slight from a foreigner, whether real or perceived, unleashes a barrage of defensive comment across the spectrum. This hyper-sensitivity to criticism is in sharp contrast with the cynicism Pakistanis bring to bear on national issues. Perhaps these opposing attitudes are a legacy of the historical baggage we all carry. Indians are now in charge of their own destiny after long centuries under first Muslim, and then British, rule. They are proud and prickly, brooking no criticism from outsiders. Even when one of their own casts too jaundiced a view on India – as Nirad Chaudhri did over fifty years ago – these views are rejected and their author virtually hounded out. No doubt there is a lot to admire in this strong sense of patriotism. But for my part, I am much too jaded and cynical to wish there was more of it around in Pakistan. Decades of animosity and travel restrictions have deprived two generations of Indians and Pakistanis of the opportunity of getting to know each other's country, and separate fact from propaganda. Despite satellite television and the Internet (or perhaps because of them), the gulf between the two countries is growing wider. So while I agree with Renu about our common cultural roots, I am forced to agree with Shakir about peace being low on the agendas of both countries. [Incidentally, I would like to request my Indian readers to resist the temptation to lash out at me again; and if they must, I may be unable to reply]. Footnote: I was horrified to learn of the recent attack on columnist Kamran Shafi's Wah residence. This brutal attempt bears the fingerprints of one of our agencies, as mentioned in the FIR. President Zardari must have the incident investigated promptly, even though we all know the fate of such inquiries. Asiapeace Association for Communal Harmony in Asia (ACHA) www.asiapeace.org www.indiapakistanpeace.org

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