When I went through my parents’ wedding album as a kid, I took for granted how paired down it was compared to the weddings I had attended in my own life. At some level I assumed my parents’ wedding was a product of early 70s nuptial minimalism, the sort of wedding fad that died down with the rise of the shoulder pad. I was wrong. When I got slightly older, I correlated the dates of their wedding to the war of 1971, which (contrary to schoolbooks) we lost so spectacularly that only half our country came out of it intact.
War wasn’t something I spent a lot of time thinking about. My grandfather spoke about World War II, telling me exciting stories of his time in the jungles of Burma, or about his treks through the mountains. “Did you kill anybody?” was all I wanted to know. He had. I thought it deeply cool that I had a relative I could place in the narrative universe of the war movies that came out every summer, but I couldn’t imagine my parents living through anything as eventful as a war. When I asked them about it they brushed me off, eventually relenting with stories of those few days in December when sirens would sound out announcing the arrival of enemy combat planes, or the digging of trenches around the border. (“Did you kill anybody?”)
To better days - soldiers share sweets along the border between Pakistan and India
They lived in a different time, I thought. I would never have to live through a war in my life. Surely I would never have to dodge bombs and hastily leave my belongings at home as I made my way Von Trapp-style across the mountains. In a sense I was right. In another, I wasn’t. My generation has been living in a world war for the last decade and a half. We do dodge bombs, we do leave our homes, we do worry for our safety. It may not look like the world wars from the movies, but the world is at war. The advantage of the modern age is that the fortunate among us can ignore the fact that there is a war going on at all, which is why the current battle of rhetoric going on between India and Pakistan comes as a bit of a shock.
As a Pakistani I am trained to disbelieve everything I hear in the news (a trait that isn’t as common in India), so when I heard that a bunch of militants broke into a military compound in Indian Kashmir, shot 18 soldiers and then died leaving behind only their Pakistani ID cards, something in my mind went “Child, please. Check yourself before you wreck yourself.” How was it that these men broke into a fortified military compound but decided to take along their Pakistani IDs? Why would that happen? Logic dictates it happened because someone wanted it to. I can think of people on both sides of the border for whom this attack is an opportunity to re-ignite old fears.
Image Copyright - www.globecartoon
As a Pakistani I am trained to disbelieve everything I hear in the news (a trait that isn't as common in India)
Despite the fact that we are living through several ones simultaneously, the threat of war is still one of the existential pillars of Pakistan. We are told (ordered?) that we need to invest our resources in warfare rather than education because we are under threat from a giant “other”. The defense expenditures, apparently, will save us. The Indians are told by and large the same thing, which makes us both fools.
I wonder often how sad it is that our civilian government has nothing to do with foreign policy. Think about that for a second. Don’t you find it strange that an institution of war gets to decide with whom we make peace? Why should that be? How is it fair? More importantly, how long is that sustainable?
But the politics of this ancient grudge/new mutiny are far too mangled for any kind of sustained logic. We have seen this dance too many times before. Its steps come from small-minded, petty-hearted people who have demonstrated time and again that stupidity is far more rewarding a state than optimism, and who are invested not in our communal good but their personal advantage. Screw them. I cannot change their hearts, just as they cannot touch mine. Amidst all of the accusations and angry speeches that we heard this week at the United Nations General Assembly (an IR group-therapy session, really) I am far more impressed with the attitude of the peoples of India and Pakistan who have shown, on both sides, wells of compassion and brotherhood that have warmed me. Lots of papers have carried articles about how India is turning against the Pakistani actors working there. I don’t doubt this is true of some. But I have read just as many articles in the Indian press saying how art and artists (like Khan) have to be above the petty demands of politics, and why it’s not only OK but necessary in times of heightened animosity to continue to engage with each other. I have seen people being gracious, kind and loving, just as their governments have been cruel, bigoted and angry. The truth is peace will only win out over the threat of war in the subcontinent when peace becomes more lucrative. Art (and the commerce that underpins it) can do that, so please let’s keep trying.
