Daily Times

Pakistan and India are the two neighboursof South Asia with remarkable things in common — language, festivals, music, culture, food, architecture, fashion, rituals, and superstitions. No such similarities are found in the Arab countries, but the Mullah would tell us in every Friday sermon that the Saudis are our brothers. But we would always feel closer to the Indians!

For tourism, higher education, jobs, asylum and immigration, the West would always be our priority. Our Muslim brothers would never offer us their country’s citizenship even if we marry their daughters, sisters or widowed mothers! What kind of ‘brothers’ we have — Biratheran-e-Yousuf!

The Arab rulers can see the Muslims dying of hunger,but they can’t accept them as refugees like the Ansars. However, they can waste money like water to satisfy their instincts like profligacy and licentiousness. King Salman was in Indonesia last week with 1,000 people including princes and ministers, 500 tonnes of luggage including four limousines and eleven electric escalators. Did the Prophet Mohammad (peace be upon him) or any of his companions set examples of such an extravagant lifestyle? Modesty and humanity are the two fundamental messages of Islam which are impressively followed by the kafir countries. Germany welcomed more than one million Muslim refugees last year. It provided them all the basic necessities of life and what did it get in return? The Muslim refugees started harassing the German women at public swimming pools!

India and Pakistan are at loggerheads for the last 70 years. Pakistan treats India as its ‘eternal enemy’. The perception is fallacious since there are no permanent ‘friends’ or ‘foes’ in politics. The good news is, the masses (excluding the followers of extremist outfits like Shiv Sena or Jamatud Dawa) in the two countries have warm feelings for each other. The most lamentable fact albeitis, the two countrieshave yet to co-exist peacefully. This isone of the worst tales of the failed leadership.

The ego and the vested interests of the policymakers of the two countries are humiliating the hundreds of millions of people. Behind every singlesuffering and deprivation, the culprit is the callousness of those at the helm. The hysteria of ‘superiority’ has inflicted endless miseries on the people of the neighbours. Both the countries have state-of-the-arts arms including the nuclear weapons to annihilate each other that ironically nobody can use!

What is the use of having something that is achieved by keep people hungry and illiterate and it can’t be used at all? This simply means that it is just the madness that controls the minds of the leaders of the two countries. If they would have used a bit of common sense, India and Pakistan, by now, would have been the two most prosperous states in the world. All they have to do is to understand a simple truth that other nations — who used to be each other’s worst enemy — have learnt. The truth is, a peaceful co-existence is the only panacea to all the sufferings of the two rivals. This is the best solution in circumstances where they share not only the borders but also the problems.

What is the progress of the two countries during the last 70 years? A huge majority of the people has yet to find food to eat and water to drink. The water is polluted and fatal. The money that should have been used in securing clean water fit for human consumption is being spent on buying the ‘heavy water’ to make bombs. The plan is to kill each other with these bombs and further spoil the ground water!

They have yet to find a school that imparts knowledge to their children. Those who managed to get an education have yet to find a job. They have yet to find a toilet that has four walls and a roof. Footpaths or public parks are their permanent abodes. They have yet to find a small house for a respectable living. Pakistan has snatched the last shelter from the shelter-less by locking down the public parks due to fear of terrorism!

They have yet to find a hospital where they could be treated in an emergency, a small clinic that could offer them free medical services, not for chronic health problems but minor seasonal thinslike a fever. They have been leftat the mercy of their immunity system. Some might recover, and others might die but who cares!

The policy of ‘live and let live’ can instantly give everyone a decent access to all the basic necessities of life and very soon the two can rub shoulders with the most developed and civilised societies of the world. But the problem is, you can’t live in peace with others if you can’t live in peace with your own people.

Our paranoia is not limited to perceiving India as an ‘eternal enemy’. It has an infinite ability to perceive threats that don’t exist. For example, the one who talks sense or advocates peace is labelledas a ‘traitor’. See how we treated Bacha Khan or the Bengalis who had put more sacrifices in the making of Pakistan than the Punjabis. We failed to co-exist with our own people and lost the East Pakistan. We are not treating the Balochis differently. They are as unhappy and disgruntled with us as were the Bengalis. The latest military operation RadulFisad started with the victimisation of Pashtoons. We can’t live in peace with the ‘parts’ of our ‘body’. How can we live in peace with others?

The writer is a journalist/researcher based in Islamabad. Yamankalyan@gmail.com