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Association for Communal Harmony in Asia (ACHA) Articles of the Month *Pakistan and the Class of '74, Aseem Chhabra, Rediff.com, June 21, 2011 *Pakistan and the Class of '74, Aseem Chhabra, Rediff.com, June 21, 2011 Must Indians and Pakistanis be bound by the easy classifications of enemies and terrorists, muses Aseem Chhabra There is an old black and white photograph on my Facebook profile page, taken perhaps in 1965. It is a photograph from my kindergarten class, on the steps of the Raghubir Singh Junior Modern School in New Delhi. In the photograph are 32 kids, our classroom teacher Mrs Nigam, the junior school principal Mrs Sachdev, and a stern looking man in a gray suit seated in the middle. I revisit the photograph sometimes, searching for my childhood -- the innocent days when we were quite clueless about the realities of life and the world around us. I often think of my classmates; most who stayed back in India a few who live in other parts of the world, and a lovely young woman who committed suicide as an adult. Most of us studied in the same school from kindergarten to the final year of high school. Many of us are still in touch, nearly 50 years later, through a Yahoo! list serve that allows us to post everything from news about our kids' school and college graduations, to birthday wishes, to comments about vacations and jokes. On rare occasions, people post articles. Recently someone posted an article about the Kashmir situation and Pakistan's role in the tumultuous politics of the north Indian state. The article referred to people of Pakistan as Pakis. It bothered me, and so I wrote to the list. I said in my note that the term Paki is often used as a racist slur in England for all brown people from South Asia. I also added that while all of us have issues with Pakistan as a country, its government, its spy agency Inter Services Intelligence, and the Al Qaeda and Taliban elements, most Pakistanis are decent people who cope with the daily onslaught of domestic terrorism unleashed on them by Islamic forces. My comments drew angry responses, albeit from only a handful of people on the list. A few classmates suggested my saying that all Pakistanis are not evil people amounts to my being anti-Indian. One person even said that I should not be allowed to visit India. There were other personal attacks from classmates who have had no contact with me for decades. Most important, they seemed to suggest that all Pakistanis are essentially untrustworthy and hence should be shunned. As an Indian American living in New York for a long time, but also as someone who is very engaged with India, I am very shocked by these reactions. And I wonder what happened to the sweet innocent kids from Mrs Nigam's class in the photograph. How did we all become what we are today? We are products of a liberal, secular school. There were touches of patriotism in our education, but I do not remember it to be jingoistic and nationalistic to the extent that we would hate our South Asian neighbours. During the Bangladesh war of independence some of us even performed in a stage production where we learned the new nation's national anthem. A lot has changed since those innocent days. In the last 20-plus years, the Kargil war, the strife in Kashmir, and terrorist attacks on Mumbai and other parts of India have strengthened the sense of Pakistan as India's greatest enemy. As the United States-led war on terror in Afghanistan spilled over inside Pakistan, that country has become more and more fractured. Newsweek was right to declare Pakistan as the most dangerous place on earth. The daily reports of bombings, killings, assassinations in Pakistan are disturbing. But it is even more disturbing when forces of reason and balanced individuals are silenced in Pakistan. The recent killing of Pakistani journalist Saleem Shahzad was a stark reminder of how tough the current situation has become for most Pakistanis who want to live normal lives. I follow a few smart Pakistani journalists and writers on Twitter who have had enough of these ugly realities of Pakistan, but continue to tirelessly write about all that is wrong with their country. But unlike some of my classmates from the Modern School's Class of 1974, I cannot dismiss Pakistan and simply consider all its citizens as enemies of India. I have friends in New York and elsewhere, Hindu Indians who are married to decent, Muslim Pakistanis. These marriages and the children of these relationships are a reminder of the common roots and permanent ties that exist between India and Pakistan. There is a lot of good happening in Pakistan -- a parallel world to what we see on cable news channels -- and we as Indians and people of Indian origin should appreciate it. Pakistan has an exciting art scene, as my friend Priyanka Mathew discovered during a recent visit to that country. My favourite singer of all time is Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan the great qawaal who I saw perform eight times in New York City. No musician has connected me to my roots, as a Punjabi and a South Asian, more than Khan whose collaborations with India go back to the time of Shekhar Kapur's Bandit Queen (1994). There are exciting things happening on the music front in Pakistan, and it is not just in the form of Abida Parveen and Rahat Fateh Ali Khan Just look at the Coke Studio Pakistan's web site. One singer Meesha Shafi (Chambe Di Booti and Chori Chori) has been cast in Mira Nair's next film The Reluctant Fundamentalist (based on Pakistani author Mohsin Hamid's novel). Brave young filmmakers are reviving Pakistan's film industry, long considered dead as piracy plagued the country. In recent years we have seen important films from Pakistan including Sabiha Sumar's Khamosh Pani, Mehreen Jabbar's Ramchand Pakistani (both co-productions with India), and last year's brilliant Slackistan, directed by Hammad Khan and unfortunately banned in Pakistan. In the world's literary circles, it is a well-regarded fact that the best English writing in South Asia is now happening in Pakistan, and not in India. Writers like Hamid (Moth Smoke, The Reluctant Fundamentalist), Daniyal Mueenuddin (Other Rooms, Other Wonders) and H M Naqvi (Home Boy) have all enriched our lives with new visions of Pakistan and reflections on the contemporary society in that country. So I revisit that black and white photograph of Mrs Nigam's class. I do not want to dismiss my classmates and childhood acquaintances since we had a lot that bound us together and perhaps still does. There are many varying political points of views in India today, and in a way my class represents all of those of perspectives. Will we understand each other someday, soon? I sincerely hope so. Just as I sincerely hope that the common ties that bind Indians and Pakistanis will make us see each other beyond the easy classifications of enemies and terrorists. __ *The missing links of the two Punjabs, Tridivesh S. Maini, Tehelka, June 29, 2011 Tridivesh S. Maini says Indian and Pakistani historians forgot to record the good deeds Two recent events bring to light major drawbacks in the way India and Pakistan approach the past and the present. First, one of the recommendations that was announced at the recent talks between the Indian and Pakistani foreign secretaries was to exempt individuals over the age of 65 from seeking visas to visit the other country. This has been a long-pending demand, and many believe that it is too little coming too late. They are not wrong, because both the countries have ignored the role which the pre-partition generation can play in generating goodwill between both sides. While it is true that this generation in India did carry a degree of negative baggage vis-à-vis Pakistan, it is important to keep in mind that amidst the trauma and the pain of partition, there are some stories of compassion which have been obliterated and need to be told. But, these stories got overshadowed by the national history project, just as jingoism and national fervour exhibited by the Indian media have overshadowed the second important event that Pakistani human rights activist Ansar Burney’s trust rescued Indian sailors. While there has been a mention of Burney’s stellar role in rescuing these sailors, it stands pale in comparison to the criticism of Pakistan by the Indian media. It must be mentioned that the humane dimension of the partition is not an act of romanticisation or exaggeration, as in at least 25 to 30 per cent of the cases, members of one community rescued those of another. Such episodes are unknown, and the stories remain untold as they have got obscured in the larger atmosphere of tension and hatred. Seldom has there been a structured attempt to document such episodes. Mushirul Hasan, a prominent historian, was amongst the first to bring to light stories such as that of Khushdeva Singh, who rescued numerous Muslims during the partition riots. In her book “The Great Divide,” Yasmin Khan too draws attention to such instances. If one were to point to some books or projects which have specifically dealt with humane episodes and helped in beginning the process of reconciliation, the ones by sociologist Ashis Nandy and writer Rajmohan Gandhi stand out. I would also like to make a mention that this author co-authored a book ”Humanity Amidst Insanity: Hope during and after the Indo-Pak Partition,” in 2008 with two Pakistani writers, which attempted highlight the compassionate stories. It will not be incorrect to say that I did not realise the significance of this unexplored dimension of history until I embarked on writing the book. Some of the findings of the book were truly fascinating and nothing less than revelations for me. It showed that religious preachers saved individuals from other communities, specifically women and children. Interestingly, religious shrines were used for hiding these individuals from attacking mobs. This came as a surprise to authors, because for long faith has been presented as the main cause of the partition. Out of the 22 cases documented, there were five such cases on both sides, and there must be many more which are left undocumented. In one case, a senior Muslim politician had sent his Muslim assistants to escort his non-Muslim friends to a rescue camp. The assistants, however, killed some of these people. On learning of this betrayal of trust, the politician could not control his wrath and actually murdered his assistants. This episode underlines the fact that for such people friendship and honour are paramount. While the partition literature has spoken about revenge against members of ‘other’ communities, it has seldom made mention of such instances. It will not be incorrect to say that with all its flaws, oral history has the ability of bringing out facts which are not common knowledge. In another case, a Muslim family migrating from Amritsar to Lahore and fled along with two Sikh girls, whose father was abroad at the time of rioting. While, on the one hand, they were eager to save their own lives, they took along the two girls, which was perilous to say the least. The girls were brought back to Amritsar, once violence ebbed months after the partition. The point that until August 14, 1947, many non-Muslims were not sure that they would have to migrate to India has been made by Parkash Tandon, who has stated, “We Hindus and Sikhs have lived under the Muslims before, then under the Sikhs and the British, and if we are now back under Muslim rule, so what? We shall manage somehow, as we have managed before.” In our research, two cases of Sikhs unfurling the Pakistani flag came out. I would also like to make the point here that the use of oral history was critical in learning about the above mentioned points, because they are individual experiences. Such individual experiences have not been sufficiently documented in written scholarship. While partition-fiction has made commendable efforts to portray the humane dimension and compassion, it tends to be dismissed as mere nostalgia. The survivors of the riots have some very interesting facts and insights to offer, which have been overlooked because of inadequate use of oral history. It is crucial to make use of this oral history, as the survivors of the partition, who have vivid impressions of that cataclysmic event, are withering away, and a lot of interesting and important facts are in threat of being obliterated. A survivor of Auschwitz is not wrong when he says: “Today, the last living survivors of the Holocaust are disappearing one by one. Soon, history will speak about Auschwitz with the impersonal voice of researchers and novelists at best, and at worst in the malevolent register of revisionists and falsifiers who call the Nazi Final Solution a myth. This process has already begun.” It is important that both sides promote projects, possibly joint projects, which bring to light some of the instances discussed above, which have been obliterated and overshadowed. It is also important to drive home the point that the partition resulted in human suffering on both sides, just as the present acrimony between the two countries is damaging both equally. It needs many more Ansar Burneys to blunt the sense of jingoism, hysteria and hatred, which has brainwashed numerous Indians and Pakistanis. Tridivesh S Maini is associate fellow at Observer Research Foundation tridiveshmaini@orfonline.org ARCHIVE:
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