Note: As this article is going through a publication which is located in India, a teenage Hindu nationalist will be the peer editor for this piece.
Editor’s note: I will keep this piece in check to make sure nothing wrong is portrayed about my nation, Jai Ram, Jai Hind!
Thank you, I will try my best to not offend anyone and portray the truth.
One of my favorite times of the year is winter, as most of my extended family gets together for the holiday season. During this time, a family tradition of ours is to have the elders share stories around a bonfire about their past experiences.
My father, a brigadier in the Indian Army, is always armed with an intriguing story or two to share with my cousins and me.
During one of these get-togethers, my cousin asked my dad, “Don’t you hate all of those sly Pakistanis? Tell us about some tricks you played on those fools.”
My father chuckled and replied, “No, not at all. In fact, I found them extremely nice and friendly.”
Baffled by his response, my cousin asked, “Shouldn’t you hate each other, especially because you are in the army?”
Amused by our confused faces, my father explained to us that he had several friendly interactions with the Pakistani army when he was deployed in Kashmir. “I was always surprised by their willingness to help out,” he said.
He told us a story about, how, when one of the soldiers who was under his command had sprained his ankle trekking through the rugged Kashmiri terrain, it was the Pakistani army which had contacted the Indian base through the radio to get medical attention to the fallen troop.
Editor’s note: They probably had ill intentions, how are you going to explain the number of times they violate the cease-fire line at the Line of Control (LOC)?
That might sometimes be true, but not always. My father then recalled another story about, how, when there was a massive forest fire, Indian and Pakistani soldiers worked together to douse the flames in order to save the ammunition on both sides.
“My job is to protect the nation, I don’t really hate any Pakistani,” my father said.
Editor’s note: Ah, just another guy who is overly friendly and optimistic about those fools. They can’t ever be good, they are affiliated with the Taliban!
Actually, I researched a little more about the relationship between the two nations and realized that circumstances weren’t really that bad.
My father’s accounts echoed with the writings of Ashish Shukla, an Indian author on geopolitics and terrorism, who wrote an article in Aman ki Asha in which he described his visit to Pakistan as an eye-opening experience. He recounted the Pakistanis he met on his trip as “extremely kind and genuine.” He even said that certain shopkeepers went to the extent of offering their products to him for free when they realized he was from India.
Editor’s note: What a fool! The ISI was probably following him the whole time, the same way that they harass other Indians who visit Islamabad.
His accounts clearly indicate otherwise?
Shukla also explained that a friend of his, a researcher from Pakistan, had a very positive experience in India as well and his visit to India had shattered many misconceptions he had.
Editor’s note: That is because we Indians are actually nice. We are Hindus and we consider a guest as a god, unlike the idiots across the border.
And if we are friendly and hospitable, why can’t they be? Afterall we were the same people 72 years ago.
Similar experiences were written by Asim Jaweed, a Muslim Indian-American whose family had decided to stay in India during the Partition. He described his trip to Pakistan as finding a second home: “Even though I was Indian, every Pakistani was extremely friendly to me and all the fear in my mind of Pakistan had disappeared.”
I wondered to myself, that if the citizens of the two countries don’t have such negative experiences on both sides, then why is it that we only hear pessimistic connotations about Pakistan? And then it occurred to me: this is because of the biased and one-sided lens the media has shown about the two countries.
Even when there is a chance of hearing good things about Pakistan, the media uses unfavorable events to portray situations. An example of this is the recent opening of the Kartarpur border which allows Indians and Pakistanis to cross the border visa-free. At the dawn of this event, the Indian media decided to highlight how the Pakistani prime minister was hindering peace talks between the two nations, instead of showing that the two nations are making a step in the right direction.
Editor’s note: That is because that crook does nothing but support Jihadi terrorism!
And that is exactly my point: until things are not looked at from a different and more optimistic perspective, relations cannot change. We are currently living in an age which is dominated by the internet and therefore the media plays a big role in the opinions of youth. If Indians are brought up with such negative thoughts about Pakistan, how can we ever hope for peace between the two countries?
Don’t be like the editor of this piece; try to look at the positives and the things that are going right, and then perhaps the wrong things will eventually fade out.
Partition 72 years ago was permanent. However, parting ways with Pakistan doesn’t have to be.
thewoodstocker.com 