What's new

Why India and Pakistan will keep growing apart

ajtr

BANNED
Joined
May 25, 2010
Messages
9,357
Reaction score
0
Why India and Pakistan will keep growing apart

If we skim through the Bollywood jingoism that most India-Pakistan comparisons necessitate, we arrive at a zealously guarded line of control around which, halves of once-a-whole nation, grow, fight their demons and with each passing day and each new policy made to corner each other, grow apart. Some suspect, irreversibly.

M J Akbar in his opening piece in ‘Worlds Apart’, the Independence Day special issue of the India Today magazine, asks, if we are essentially people with similar emotional wiring, ‘similar personality strengths and parallel collective weaknesses’, why have India and Pakistan walked completely different paths down nation building in the past 65 years?

The issue attempts to address the handful of differences in the countries’ ideas of nationhood, approach to society and understanding of freedom, which have set them on different political, ideological paths.

Akbar begins by exploring how Jinnah and Gandhi’s theories of nationhood were ‘mirror images’. While Gandhi wanted a united, secular India with a Hindu majority, Jinnah too had imagined Pakistan as a secular state with a Muslim majority. However, there was a glaring difference in their near-similar ideas of nation building. Akbar notes, “Jinnah’s state was exclusive, Gandhi’s India was inclusive.”

A supplementing article by Gopalkrishna Gandhi, Gandhi’s great grandson, puts together an imaginary conversation between two starkly different people made to share a political trajectory. And a little predictably, the conversation ends with the two political leaders who died before the countries they had envisaged became republics, expressing their disappointment about how India and Pakistan had shaped up.

Mark Tully, in his appropriation of dynastic politics in India in his article ‘It Runs In The Family’, notes how dynasties form the bedrock of party dynamics in India and while it helps parties dig their feet firmly into the ground, democracy become a casualty. In tracing how political hegemony is as good as a heirloom among the Indian political classes, Tully cites the example of a once-reluctant Sonia Gandhi‘s curtailing of Congress PM Narsimha Rao’s authority. He asks, “Who’s to know where Congress would have been today if Sonia hadn’t eventually decided to pull off a coup and take control of the family party?”

The country’s obsession with Rahul Gandhi‘s political career and Priyanka Gandhi‘s shadow-play in the party just confirms Tully’s point that not only parties themselves, in popular imagination too, political parties are bastions of ‘families’ – a card that possibly plays well on the rooted-in-families middle class and lower middle electorate in the country.

However, Tully notes how that prevents national parties from spreading wings in regional politics, widely enough to weather formidable regional forces like Karunanidhi, or Mulayam Singh Yadav in Uttar Pradesh or for that matter Mamata Banerjee in West Bengal now. “Congress is suffering because Indira Gandhi laid down the rule that no Congress politician should be allowed to become a regional political dynast,” notes Tully.

Khaled Ahmed, in his analysis of dynastic politics in Pakistan, notes how in Pakistan, dynastic politics in a democracy that Pakistan claims to be ‘arouses two negative pathologies’. “One is principled – hatred, stemming from violation of the spirit of transition of power under the Constitution; the other visceral – nursed by political rivals defeated by lineal magnetism,” says Ahmed.

In the comparison of the judiciary in the two countries, Yasser Latif Hamadani, a Lahore-based lawyer observes how the Pakistan judiciary with the Supreme Court at the helm of things have deserted objectivity and British notions of justice to actively intervene and challenge national politics. Instead of being a voice of reason, the judiciary of Pakistan has turned into an aggressive institution involved in active politicking and a relentless pursuit of their own idea of nationhood. ”In the recent years, the judiciary has grown more confident and and is a real threat to the functioning of democracy in Pakistan,” sums up Hamadani.

On the other hand, the Supreme Court of India continues to be a largely apolitical presence in the democratic system of India, necessary to keep governments and politics grounded to mass aspirations. However, Fali S Nariman in his article Justice Always Needs Courage, says how the complicated procedures involved in reform and upgrade of dated laws, have fettered the institution over years.

An article by Shehrbano Taseer, called Where Every Day is a Battle, a very important aspect of social living is explored – freedom of women. Taseer explains how religious fanaticism makes life a trial for Pakistani women and that remains as one of the biggest failures of its democratic system.

Internal insurgency, as noted in the issue, is a standing problem in both the countries. But like the Taliban have managed to snatch the popular sympathy away from the government in large sections of the religiously volatile country that Pakistan is, the Maoists, in spite of their valid criticism of the shameful failures of the government’s development policies, have mostly been slammed for raging a bloodied war against security forces and victimizing the same economic section of the country they come from.

The Worlds Apart edition of India Today is not available for free download online. However, a digital edition can be purchased from the India Today site.
 
The sad truth of the matter is that India and Pakistan came into being due to a flawed concept that was further perpetuated by the incompleteness of its execution.
 
The sad truth of the matter is that India and Pakistan came into being due to a flawed concept that was further perpetuated by the incompleteness of its execution.

It is indeed very interesting when an Indian born in post-partition India says that, the two nation theory was flawed or was wrong. Those born and bred in post-partition environment have lived in two different countries as two different sets of peoples belonging to two different nations for over 60 years now. So why would the Indians still call it a flawed concept. Why is it that the Indians do not accept the fact that Pakistan is a reality and won’t go away because of what they feel was a flawed concept.

I am a Pakistani. I don’t know what India looks like. I don’t know many Indian people. I see them as foreign nationals belonging to a neighbouring country. Yet even after over 60 years of our creation I am being bombarded with the mantra that somehow, Indians and Pakistanis are the same people.

Why can’t we accept the fact that we are two different people, from two different countries which happen to exist in the same geographical region. I don’t even want to be called a South Asian, because I am only a Pakistani.

Most of such ideas emanate from India. By still challenging the two nation theory, they don’t accept the creation of Pakistan and subsequent emergence of Bangladesh. For those who cite creation of Bangladesh as a negation of two nation theory fail to understand that, Bangladesh did not rejoin Indian union and has probably reframed the two nation theory into three nation theory.

I immensely dislike when Indians here come and challenge the existence of my country, telling me that we are the same people, telling me that our cultures are the same, our languages are the same. How can one sink it in their upper story that I am neither like any Indian, that my language is different, that my culture is different and that I am a Pakistani. My father would’ve lived in pre-partition India. As for me and many more like me, I am a Pakistani and very proud that I am.
 
Not just that Pakistan creation was flawed and aberration, we are also told, and by no one but the Indians themselves, that Indians are much better than Pakistan. That they are more democratic, more liberal, has achieved better standards of nationhood blah, blah blah... What the hell!!!
 
A very old video. Our Pakistan. :pakistan::pakistan::pakistan:

We love our country, it has nothing to do with the entity to the east. :pakistan:
 
Last edited by a moderator:
I am a Pakistani. I don’t know what India looks like. I don’t know many Indian people. I see them as foreign nationals belonging to a neighbouring country. Yet even after over 60 years of our creation I am being bombarded with the mantra that somehow, Indians and Pakistanis are the same people.
Caught you!!!:woot:
Didnt you say in an other thread that you have been to both India and Pakistan and in your observation you are more developed than India

Not just that Pakistan creation was flawed and aberration, we are also told, and by no one but the Indians themselves, that Indians are much better than Pakistan. That they are more democratic, more liberal, has achieved better standards of nationhood blah, blah blah... What the hell!!!
If you want to see that brother please visit India.
 
It is indeed very interesting when an Indian born in post-partition India says that, the two nation theory was flawed or was wrong. Those born and bred in post-partition environment have lived in two different countries as two different sets of peoples belonging to two different nations for over 60 years now. So why would the Indians still call it a flawed concept. Why is it that the Indians do not accept the fact that Pakistan is a reality and won’t go away because of what they feel was a flawed concept.

I am a Pakistani. I don’t know what India looks like. I don’t know many Indian people. I see them as foreign nationals belonging to a neighbouring country. Yet even after over 60 years of our creation I am being bombarded with the mantra that somehow, Indians and Pakistanis are the same people.

Why can’t we accept the fact that we are two different people, from two different countries which happen to exist in the same geographical region. I don’t even want to be called a South Asian, because I am only a Pakistani.

Most of such ideas emanate from India. By still challenging the two nation theory, they don’t accept the creation of Pakistan and subsequent emergence of Bangladesh. For those who cite creation of Bangladesh as a negation of two nation theory fail to understand that, Bangladesh did not rejoin Indian union and has probably reframed the two nation theory into three nation theory.

I immensely dislike when Indians here come and challenge the existence of my country, telling me that we are the same people, telling me that our cultures are the same, our languages are the same. How can one sink it in their upper story that I am neither like any Indian, that my language is different, that my culture is different and that I am a Pakistani. My father would’ve lived in pre-partition India. As for me and many more like me, I am a Pakistani and very proud that I am.

Put very beautifully. There is nothing common between India and Pakistan. I hope people come to this reality. I hope we keep growing further apart, but would live as good neighbours.
 
It is indeed very interesting when an Indian born in post-partition India says that, the two nation theory was flawed or was wrong. Those born and bred in post-partition environment have lived in two different countries as two different sets of peoples belonging to two different nations for over 60 years now. So why would the Indians still call it a flawed concept. Why is it that the Indians do not accept the fact that Pakistan is a reality and won’t go away because of what they feel was a flawed concept.


Most of such ideas emanate from India. By still challenging the two nation theory, they don’t accept the creation of Pakistan and subsequent emergence of Bangladesh. For those who cite creation of Bangladesh as a negation of two nation theory fail to understand that, Bangladesh did not rejoin Indian union and has probably reframed the two nation theory into three nation theory.


The 2NT is not acceptable to many Indians not because of a non acceptance of Pakistan (& Bangladesh), it is simply an imperative if we believe in an secular India & assume that Muslim citizens are equal to the others in every sense. That's all. No sane Indian wants to undo partition or cares about pre-partition India anymore. Indian rejection of the 2NT theory is all about how we see our country & the direction we would want it to go in.

As for your argument of not being the same people, that silly notion(of being) is just the last gasps from some Punjabis who might have had connections with parts of what is now Pakistan. No Indian from the South or the East will ever make the argument that Pakistanis & they are the same people and most from the North too have moved on. They aren't (the same people) & what little connections existed certainly don't anymore some 65 years after partition.
 
Pakistani people who say they are sick of Indians who believe "Pakistani and Indians are same people ....", they are correct. Indians think that if they are kind enough to accept that the ppl on the other side are same as they are, they would reduce hostility and start living like good neighbors separated by a good fence. Seriously wat fools. I also used to be among these but every day I am reminded by few comrades how wrong I am.
 
It is indeed very interesting when an Indian born in post-partition India says that, the two nation theory was flawed or was wrong. Those born and bred in post-partition environment have lived in two different countries as two different sets of peoples belonging to two different nations for over 60 years now. So why would the Indians still call it a flawed concept. Why is it that the Indians do not accept the fact that Pakistan is a reality and won’t go away because of what they feel was a flawed concept.

I am a Pakistani. I don’t know what India looks like. I don’t know many Indian people. I see them as foreign nationals belonging to a neighbouring country. Yet even after over 60 years of our creation I am being bombarded with the mantra that somehow, Indians and Pakistanis are the same people.

Why can’t we accept the fact that we are two different people, from two different countries which happen to exist in the same geographical region. I don’t even want to be called a South Asian, because I am only a Pakistani.

Most of such ideas emanate from India. By still challenging the two nation theory, they don’t accept the creation of Pakistan and subsequent emergence of Bangladesh. For those who cite creation of Bangladesh as a negation of two nation theory fail to understand that, Bangladesh did not rejoin Indian union and has probably reframed the two nation theory into three nation theory.

I immensely dislike when Indians here come and challenge the existence of my country, telling me that we are the same people, telling me that our cultures are the same, our languages are the same. How can one sink it in their upper story that I am neither like any Indian, that my language is different, that my culture is different and that I am a Pakistani. My father would’ve lived in pre-partition India. As for me and many more like me, I am a Pakistani and very proud that I am.

Exactly India and Pakistan have nothing in common today other than the fact that we share a common history, Partition was inevitable if it wouldn't have happened in '47 it would have happened sometimes later. Pakistan went down the Islamic Republic route while India had other priorities, this can very well tell the difference between the set of two people even in mentality
 
Not just that Pakistan creation was flawed and aberration, we are also told, and by no one but the Indians themselves, that Indians are much better than Pakistan. That they are more democratic, more liberal, has achieved better standards of nationhood blah, blah blah... What the hell!!!

Don't worry, Pakistan will never unite with India.

The religious factor is the biggest thing.

Same thing with Myanmar. Myanmar will never unite with India. Myanmar is a predominantly Buddhist country.

We should ban Saris in Pakistan! We should not even trade with India.

The only thing we have in common with India is the territorial dispute.

Insh'Allah when the war in Afghanistan is over, we Pakistanis should increase our bilateral relations with our Central Asian brothers.

Forget India.

We also need to increase our bilateral relations with China and Iran.

Although our country is a Sunni country, at least we have a common culture with Iran in sense that, we share the same "conservative culture."

We don't need bollywood prostitue dancing and saris revealing the belly.

I just heard Indians want to build a casino in their Punjab. Unfortunately India is becoming a gambling house!

We need Pakistanize our country.

Sindh needs to be renamed "Sindistan" and our Punjab "Punjabistan."
 
Yeah pak shah..your da man!
Stop anything and everything to do with yindoo banya India!
 

Pakistan Affairs Latest Posts

Back
Top Bottom