Ticker - 2 things:
1. No Indian disputes that India has problems. But no Indian also fails to point out and takes pride in the fact that the direction of movement of the country is the correct one. We are only improving - in every sphere.
Reducing poverty, reducing terrorism, reducing uneducation.
2. When talking about Pakistan, there are 2 things:
Pakistani's have an innate adherence to justify 2 nation theory by mixing Indians as Hindu's and Hindu's as Indians. That is not how we see ourselves. When Indians say something - it could be a Hindu, Muslim, Christian, Sikh or Budhist. But Pakistani's seem to find comfort and solace in thinking India as Hindu.
Pakistan in its text books does not present the whole truth. It presents one sided facts and many lies. A simple example will be that many Muslims were killed by Hindus and Sikhs during partition, but will not mention that many Hindus and Sikhs were killed by Muslims as well in Pakistan. This highly selective writing of history along with sheer maligning of Hindus and projecting diversity as an adversity will be the undoing of Pakistan.
You can have a different opinion, but this is a firm fact. India does not present its history that way. India does not malign ANY religion in its books. Bad deeds done by communities are NEVER generalized. A Name will be associated to any bad deed, never a community or religion. Really, read through any CBSE book once. You will not regret it.
First off...I went through the same mill so to speak so if anecdotal evidence is anything to go by - Bear me for a moment !
In the context of assuming that India is Hindu and Hindu is India - We are guilty ! We are guilty of looking at our own religion, recognizing the profound and pronounced socio, political, legal and economic dimensions of it and considering such an 'organized structure' to be valid for religions in general, by default. Consequently that leads us to lend some sort of patronage by ourselves to the view that 'Hindus' are a Nation ! Naturally exclamations like 'Akhund Bharat' and 'Hindu Mohmeddans of India' amidst others have served to fortify that image. Secondly our struggle for Pakistan wasn't against the 'Christians, the Sikhs, the Parsis or the Buddhist' it was against 'Caste Hindus' who, we thought, wouldn't give us a fair deal in a United India. Our views have purported that in a United India it would be as if we had changed British Raj for Hindu Raj and by Hindus we've always meant 'Caste Hindus' who believed in a hierarchical structure of sorts never those who shunned it and certainly never the 'Untouchables' ! However one would be justified in asserting whether that criticism was in itself fair to begin with ! We think it was ! Our elders who lived through those times seemed to have experienced it in the flesh and we've seen subsequent events that have consolidated our opinion on that even further. So essentially we're guilty of three things - 1) We mistook Hindus to be a Nation (though that may not be incorrect per se !), 2) We concentrated on the 'Hindu Discriminating Us' bit and didn't focus on other some very, very pertinent factors that, in my opinion, substantiate our point of view on why India should have been Partitioned, even further. And 3) Somewhere along the way 'Caste Hindus' dropped to just 'Hindus' but whereas one might see a contradiction in this over here in 2012, in the years leading up to the Partition, or so I've understood after doing my own reading, it went without saying that 'Hindus' referred to 'Caste Hindus' hence why many of the 'Untouchables' including their leader Ambedkar amongst other Hindus showered much praise on Mr.Jinnah and why even during the time he had taken up the cause of the 'Muslims' and started using such 'rhetoric', he wasn't and his rhetoric wasn't misconstrued as being 'Anti-Hindu' or anything like it ! It targeted a specific group of people.
Conversely just as we've been in the wrong on a plethora of issues there is much about you guys that irks us to no end ! Indians love to talk about the 'Two Nation Theory' when almost always it means to you guys as, to quote a resident Indian on PDF, 'We don't want to live with Evil Yindoos' when most of us feel like pulling our hairs out on hearing that, for such a view doesn't cover even 1/10th of what it was and it certainly wasn't the raison detre for the TNT but rather a part of its logical conclusion ! I think, conversely as well, Indians too suffer from the same problem of 'perception' when they look at Islam and then compare it with a dharmic faith like Hinduism and are unable to relate to the communal (or community-based - lest it gets misinterpreted !) aspects of Islam. I think for any Indian who wishes to understand the TNT they'd do well to read much..much more about it then the 2-3 paragraphs that are repeated ubiquitously in sensationalist pieces of journalism that do engage in d*ck measuring albeit in a much more subtle way. A little more in depth reading of Islam too would do one a lot of good ! *Hint - If you thought Islam was predominantly praying 5 times a day and fasting in the Ramazan then I was referring to you !*.
Onto the Second portion of your post :
History is the namesake of 'half-truths, exaggerations, omissions and out-right lies' ! The trick is to sandwich them between enough truths to make it look convincing enough. And this isn't unique to Pakistan but is practiced without reservation throughout the rest of the world for it cuts at the very center of 'Nationalism' - Create enough hype so that 'the Nation' is elevated to such a position that it transcends everything else ! What, however, is unique to Pakistan is an atrocious lack of 'subtlety'; which is to say in our chest thumping and proclamations we fail miserably, beyond measure, in packaging anything that would sell. Whether its our take on 'history', 'extremism', 'Afghanistan', 'Kashmir' - You name it and we've probably done things that would bequeath a million face-palms every single time and we've done them even when Providence provided us with facts that favored us more than they favored the other-side.
Having said that the 'pursuit of truth' is indeed, in the opinion of many Muslims and I agree with them, at the very core of faith ! At the same time one mustn't forget that 'history' out there is little more than 'narratives' and if your willing to dig deep enough one comes up with 'facts and figures' to support anything ! Napoleon wasn't being cute when he said 'History is written by the victorious' - He probably said something more profound and far-reaching then most of us give him credit for.
Khair...nice talking to you ! I think I'm going to bail out...its 2:30 a.m (at night !) here and I have to go to work tomorrow ! Why oh why did they make 'Saturday' a working day !
