When the captain of the Pakistani cricket team, Shahid Afridi, arrived at Karachi after losing to India in the World Cup semifinal, in a reply to mediapersons he said,
"Mujhe yahan ke logo ki soch samajh nahi ati. (...) Hum kyun India ke itne khilaf hain? Hum kyun India se itni nafrat leke baithte hain?"
(I cannot comprehend the mentality of people here. Why are we against India so much. Why do have so much of hatred for India.)
Then he gave a couple of examples of some things that Pakistanis like about India, like TV serials and Movies. The mediapersons were obviously disappointed since they were hoping for a typical "Insha'Allah hum agli baar India ko dho denge.." type response. But Afridi raised a question that no Indian or Pakistani raised for the past half century. Why do we hate each other so much? Afridi's comment made me think about the core cause of the so called nafrat or traditional rivalry between the general public of the two nations when it comes to things like cricket matches border flag ceremonies.
As it is very obvious, there are far more similarities between Indians and Pakistanis than there are differences. Language, culture, faces, food, races are all the same, and maybe there is more similarity between Amritsar and Lahore than between Lahore and Karachi. We understand when they curse us, and so do they when we curse them. And it is due to these similarities that people of both countries find perfect rivals in each other. We can hate them because they are not us, but just like us, which apparently makes hating them easy and meaningful.People try to explain this rivalry by giving references to incidents like the Kargil War, War of 1971, or to terrorism, but we did not feel the rivalry in the T20 World Cup in 2010 when India played Afghanistan, which has been the hub of Al-Qaeda and terrorism. We do not feel the same kind of rivalry when our team plays against the English, who ruled over India(and present Pakistan) with brutality from 1613–1947. This is because they are too different to relate to.
I guess It is easier to find a reason to hate your brother than to hate the guy across the street. There is a saying about sibling rivalry,
"Me against my brother; my brother and me against my cousin; Me, my brother, and my cousin against the stranger"I feel it is true in case of Indians and Pakistanis too, and we have the ability to stand together if situation demands.
Jai Hind.
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I think, (and most of the pakistanies and Indians will agree), that the disturbance between India and Pakistan is a total outcome of outragious hype created by media, which is slowly eating the thinking capabilities of both the nations.
ReplyDeleteOfcourse there are Initiatives which provides remedies for such kind of thinking, like Times of India campaign, which reminded people that after all we are just two neigbouring countries, with indivisual goals and dreams.