Daily Times

The advantage of being an opinion writer is that I can write much of anything as long as the opinions I present have some basis in facts or objective assessment of the news or of historical reality. It is for this reason that I have avoided three topics since I always felt too emotionally involved to present any reasonable ideas about them. These three are religion, India-Pakistan relations, and US-Pakistan relations.

Today happens to be the Fourth of July, the US Independence Day. And I can assure my Pakistani readers that today like most other days, average Americans will not be thinking of Pakistan. Today, however, they will be spending most of their afternoon consuming large amounts of charred red meat and then will go off to see fireworks at their local public grounds. The point being that Pakistanis have this entirely incorrect feeling that the people in the US obsess excessively and continuously about Pakistan.

About religion there is not much I can say beyond the observation that as a Muslim, I find people who dislike Muslims for being Muslims unpleasant. This feeling extends to those among Muslims who dislike other Muslims for whatever reasons. One thing I might add is that Islam is much more than what our children are being taught in the madrassas or in our ‘formal’ schools.

The recent elections in Azad Kashmir however made me re-examine many of my personal attitudes towards India-Pakistan relations. And I would like to present some thoughts about this issue. Like many people my age who grew up in Pakistan during the early post-partition period, I was fed a continuous diet of anti-India ‘propaganda’. For most of us, especially whose families had migrated from just across the border in Punjab, the stories of Sikh-Hindu atrocities committed against the ‘defenceless’ refugees was a part of oral history we were exposed to consistently. And I am sure that our counterparts on the other side of the border were exposed to much of the same about Muslim atrocities committed against the fleeing Hindus and Sikhs.

The antipathy I acquired against the ‘Indians’ stayed with me for a long time. However, after working and socialising with Indian Americans over the decades I lived in the US, I realised that in essence we had more in common than either of us were willing to admit, especially when it came to cultural similarities. Now that I am in Pakistan I wonder that if we in these two countries build on what we have in common, then in time we could get over the persistent antipathy bordering on hostility that many of our people feel towards each other. Even though many Indians might deny any such feeling of hostility towards Pakistanis, they indeed do harbour them.

As far as Kashmir is concerned, I must admit that I never had any strong feeling about it either way. Frankly, after three wars the question whether Pakistan can ever wrest control over Kashmir from India is no longer even worthy of consideration. Clearly if the present situation in Kashmir is accepted with some modifications by India and Pakistan, then perhaps the people of Kashmir might find some peace and tranquillity and in time the people of the two countries can also move towards peaceful coexistence.

Besides the territorial claims over Kashmir, the problem extends into many related matters — most particularly the question of water rights. As a lower riparian country, Pakistan will always depend on Indian cooperation to get its fair share of the river water coming from Indian-controlled territory. Water is one of the major concerns for both countries but more so for Pakistan in the present environment. And real peace can perhaps also deliver a ‘peace dividend’ making excessive expenditures on our defence capabilities on both sides of the border a little necessary and the Pakistani reliance on its ‘security’ establishment a little less acute.

One important issue that is rarely raised in either of these two countries is the status of Indian Muslims. Frankly it is time for Pakistanis as well as the Indians to accept once and for all that Indian Muslims are Indians and their sympathies are with the country they live in. For the Pakistanis, especially those of a religious bent, it is important to realise that the concept of a trans-national ummah notwithstanding, Indian Muslims have no lasting love for Pakistan. And all of us in Pakistan should acknowledge that the ‘Two-Nation’ Theory is no longer relevant to the Muslims of the subcontinent except as a part of our history.

Before there can be a real peace between India and Pakistan a few things will have to happen. People of my generation, who essentially now run things on both sides of the border, will have to rethink their attitudes towards each other and decide once and for all that peace is indeed better than a state of persistent hostility. The next step then will have to be that both sides should stop meddling in the internal affairs of the other country through proxies. Then of course both sides will have to accept some sort of a compromise over Kashmir. Pakistan will probably have to accept the ‘Line of Control’ (LoC) as the final border in Kashmir. India will at the same time have to make a genuine effort to provide its Kashmiris with greater autonomy and remove its coercive security presence from the area.

I realise that India-Pakistan relations and especially the Kashmir issue are complicated matters and incite emotional and often irrational responses on both sides. It is time to put things in a rational perspective and not just look at them through the prism of our confrontational past or our emotional and religious perspectives. Many of my readers in Pakistan will accuse me of being pro-India and those on the other side will accuse me of being anti-India. I am just pro-peace.

The writer has practised and taught medicine in the US. He can be reached at smhmbbs70@yahoo.com