Daily Times

Our knowledge about surgical strikes and violation of working boundary has surely increased in the past few days owing to the claims being made by both the countries, thanks to their respective media. The extremely patriotic anchorpersons and analysts from both sides are not losing a single opportunity to take part in the blame game that has risen fundamentally because of the unrest in the Indian-held Kashmir followed by the Uri attack and reported surgical strikes by India. These obstinately opinionated souls exhale words ‘unity’ and ‘nation’ with such zeal and valour that citizens of these countries actually start believing in these ‘mystical’ phenomena.

Broadcasters do not think even once before chanting the catchphrase, “We stand united in times of war,” and warranting their claim by proclaiming the other side to be fragmented. Surprisingly, both the countries make this declaration for each other. The reluctance of a country’s citizen to admit it on their part is even more astonishing and, somehow, problematic. This war hysteria, which is being instigated in us by our jingoistic media and stakeholders, is blinding us from seeing the obvious unwillingness we all reflect on our faces to have a war. However, there is a faint difference between nationalism and jingoism; violation of this line will surely lead us to a devastation that we all will have to face with unity for it will treat us equally.

“C’mon! India doesn’t stand a chance in front of us. Haven’t you heard of the Khalistan Liberation Movement? We all stand united against India. We are fully equipped to strike back.” I heard an analyst assuring his listeners on a prominent Pakistani news channel. While I watched his moustaches move up and down with lunatic exhilaration, my mind kept thinking of how disunited India actually is. Just think for a moment about the United Liberation Front of Asom, Muslim United Liberation Tigers of Assam, Naga National Council, the National Liberation Front of Tripura, and, of course, Jammu Kashmir Liberation Front. Just think about the number of people who, in Dr Amarjeet Singh’s words, want to get rid of the prison called India.

But then try to muse on the Baloch Liberation Front, and how Bengali nationalists along with Mukti Bahini managed to demarcate Bangladesh on the world map. Given these several movements and fronts, are we really as united as these analysts suggest?

What if we keep the aforementioned issues aside? What if we deliberately cease to think of all those people who have and are shedding blood in the name of winning a separate identity? Do we stand united then? Well, let us envisage a scene from a battlefield somewhere near the Wahgah-Attari border, with citizens backing their armies. Let us envision starving women and children with flared ribs standing alongside men with wrinkled foreheads, all of them thinking how badly they want this war to end so that they could go back searching or begging for food. Let us visualise a determined girl holding India’s flag in one hand and a rifle in another, but just when she is about to aim an enemy she feels someone buffing her body and finds a potential rapist standing right next to her. Let us think of a scene where a filthy rich industrialist refuses to let his shoulder be touched by a profusely sweating penurious farmer. Finally, let us picture a crowd on Pakistan’s side fighting over who gets to fire a cannon just like they had competed for getting hold of party flags at a political party’s assemblage. Stated that, would we really be standing united as proposed by Pakistan and India’s media?

With millions of people honking horns, violating traffic rules just to win an unsought race, scurrilously blackguarding others using obscene words and creating absolute mayhem on almost every road of Pakistan and India, how can anyone even think about distant ideas like unity, harmony, consensus and solidarity? With over 40 political parties in Pakistan, and approximately, 80 in India, all of which manage to invite to their political congregations an overwhelming amount of people who basically cannot help showing their teeth and revelling in almost everything, let it be in another person’s distress and suffering, do we really seem to be banding together to form nations? With thousands of people taking birth and dying on walkways in Jaipur, India, and over two million children not receiving any form of education in Pakistan, should we really anticipate a war whose result is assuredly more poverty, illiteracy, social stratification, inequality, racism, crime, violent extremism, religious intolerance and frustration?

These thoughts were already banging against the walls of my skull when yet another one struck me: can the super-patriotic men and ultra-nationalistic women of both the countries bear standing beside the transgender community who are not even considered human enough to be treated humanely by and large? Remember 32-year-old Annu Sharma from India and 23-year-old Alisha from Pakistan? Plus, how can these ‘senior’ analysts claim every reciter of Kalma-e-Haq and Bande Matram to be willing enough to fight for the countries representing their religious ideologies respectively? What about the 20 percent of India’s population and the white stripe in Pakistan’s flag, both of which represent the minorities living in both the countries?

This fervor that is being generated has really flabbergasted some of us given that so many journalists, columnists, publicists, Marxists, realists, progressive revolutionists and radical left-wing democrats have been writing and speaking since long about how ineffective our armies are and suggesting ways of getting rid of them so as to spend that budget on noble causes. How can this faction be expected to stand behind the armies and form ranks to fight and embrace martyrdom — the idea they maniacally ridicule — in the name of nationalism? In the end, it would be our soldiers and all of the inhabitants who would get killed or excruciatingly suffer for the ravaging agony would definitely treat us uniformly. In fact, it would not even discriminate one populace from the other; both the nations would be eyed by devastating effects as ONE.

Before asserting and ‘making it clear’ on each other how much ready and eager the two countries are to have this war, let us think about the citizens of these republics. Are they ready?

The writer is a student of Biotechnology