Adil Najam
Today is August 15. India’s Independence Day.
ATP sends all Indians sincere and heartfelt Independence Day greetings and the very best wishes.
Each year since All Things Pakistan started, we have written a post on this day with the same headline and the same opening words (here, here, here, here). Today, for the fifth time, I write the same words dipped in the same feeling the very same intensity of emotions. Let me begin, this time, with the prayer I ended last year’s post with: May the best hopes of both Mr. Jinnah and Mr. Gandhi come true for both our nations. May all our futures be good futures.
As we wrote last year, these posts have carried a trilogy of imagery our post in 2006 sought to revisit our imagery of our past (here), in 2007 we highlighted the changing imagery of India-Pakistan relations in the present (here), and in 2008 we called upon our readers to re-imagine our visions of the future (here).
But the same imagery has also held a constancy of purpose: An investment in the hope that relations between these countries will, in fact, become better and reflect what we believe are the true aspirations of most Pakistanis as well as most Indians.
This year these hopes have been challenged on both sides. Talks restarted amidst cautious hopes, but the images coming out of them have been of tense nerves rather than real relationships. It also does not bode well that the news today is that the Pakistan government is still deliberating whether to accept an offer of aid from India to help its flood victims, or that the Indian Prime Minister is again vexing hawkish fingers towards Pakistan. Neither should really be news and one realizes that there are political compulsions on both sides that could explain these moves. But one wishes that this were not so.
The statesmanship, it seems, is coming not from the leaders on either side, but, instead, from within the people rather than the political classes. But maybe that is only to be expected since politicians seems too entrenched in their own rhetoric. I have long believed, and continue to believe that if indeed there is going to be headway it will be pushed by people-to-people processes and the best that we can expect from leaders of either side is that they will then follow the aspirations of their own people.
So today, on India’s Independence Day, we the Pakistani people send the fondest of greetings to the people of India. May all our shared futures be prosperous and peaceful. May our tomorrows be always better than our todays. May our tomorrows be marked by friendship, by peace, by prosperity, by goodwill, and by understanding.
Happy Independence Day, India.
My warm wishes to everyone in Pakistan and India on 14th and 15th August. I disagree that the politicians on both sides are the only problem, extremist mindset in common people on both sides is as much a probelm as politicians. You don’t have to go too far, read some of the commments here.
Happy Birthday to India and Pakistan! Hope and pray for a better future and peaceful coexistence
For those who were born in Hindostan singing songs of Mother India, Bharat and Pakistan, are not two countries but two states of Hindostan, with separate paraphernalia of states like two brothers living in separate homes. In fact this was the idea of the Founding Fathers of the partition of Hindostan, Jinnah and Gandhi. They could not visualize that the communal hatred will divide the Mother India into perpetual warring camps. So it is basically the communal hatred among the people of the sub-continental Hindostan exploited by the self-seeking politicians who are preventing friendly relationship among the two states, rather three now, with addition of ethnic hatred.
So unless we solve these communal and ethnic problems among the people of Mother India, it will go on dividing into warring camps of different states as India had been before the British rule.
Happy Independence Day India. All the very best for both countries and their future. We cannot undo our past but we can move forward to co-exist.
Peace & stability to our region!
Thank you for the greetings. It makes my heart feel very happy.
Sad that we in India do not reciprocate very often. We have also been brainwashed by our leaders who use Pakistan as a way to distract from their own problems like Manmohan is doing right now.
But I hope people of two countries will rise above this and make real bonds of friendship.