Indus Pakistan
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It has been a hidden, guilty pleasure these last few days of coping with grief, and rushing to perform a mixture of the mundane and the sublime, to look at this thread and the older one and look at your contributions. Understanding the keen, ardent desire of many Pakistanis to carve out an identity for themselves which is not a mere appendix to somebody else is an easy thing.
At the end of the day, even though I disagree profoundly with some of the understanding of how things happened, I believe that this is a very positive development. There was a time when getting either side to talk of history was a frustrating task. The differences in position were too wide to be bridged.
It is my sincere suggestion that you, and those of your way of thinking, continue to engage in these discussions and others like it elsewhere. The exchange of information, of ideas and of perceptions is important enough to justify the effort.
A personal word: my own interest in Pakistan was minimal all my life, and three men highlighted the nature of that interest. In 1961, Brigadier 'Hesky' Baig helped the Calcutta Polo Club beat a strong Ratanada Wanderers team, with the legendary Rao Raja Hanut Singh, son of Sir Pertab Singh, and his sons, Bijay and Hari, playing at their best form. In 1971, I met Mehdi Masud, Deputy High Commissioner in Calcutta, while he was detained in the ground floor of my father's official residence. There was then a gap of 30 years and more, when I met Mohammed Rafi, a professional manager in a firm in the middle east, and a fine gentleman. That was it.
It was only after the carnage in Bombay that I set out to find out what Pakistan was about. Through All Things Pakistan, and then PakTeaHouse, I came to find out that not all Pakistanis were murderous armed terrorists, nor fundamentalist bigots. It also became clear that the vast numbers of Indians who, around the same time as I, had started crowding Pakistani sites, were also looking for answers.
If you check with older members of these fora, you might get an astonishing insight into the psychology of many Indians coming here (there are exceptions). It is not the prurient interest that you have suspected. It is the fascinated horror of a neighbour at seeing an entire country willfully converting itself into an armed arsenal.
Please keep talking to us, however obnoxious our views might seem, from time to time. It has been true in the past, it continues to be true today, it is the Indian side that always seeks out the Pakistani side and attempts to talk. In loud, coarse tones, sometimes, with an irritatingly smug air, sometimes, with fixed ideas about the past, about history, about culture, about everything that might set a Pakistani's teeth on edge - but Indians have always tried to talk things through. So please let us keep talking.
Hey Joe, I can be harsh and tend to get carried away sometimes. I did not intend to disrespect you in anyway. I think your a very well educated person with a fine temperament. By comparison most of us here are crude, crass and coarse and I am a fine example of that.
I hope your family is well and it is nice to have you back. I think Joe, if we can get to terms with our heritage, build on that and I firmly believe lot of our problems will be resolved. India needs to respect our quest to claim our heritage of the Indus Valley and we in turn will be glad to be part of the South Asian family. We are not Arabs and never will be, majority of our roots are deep in this old land, the Indus Valley.
I stress again we accept that while we are unique, we are also part of the wider South Asia and are glad to engage with you guys as equals, Not as mere adjuncts, not as minor sliver of a bigger entity, not just as a smaller shadow of India. Yes, we know we are small in numbers compared to India. It was only a few days ago I realized Pakistan is in terms of population smaller than just one Indian state - Uttar Pradesh and correct me India has 30 states?.
But small we maybe but we are as proud of our corner of South Asia any other. One day I am sure we wil all be part of some wider economic union in South Asia like EC, that is after we can sort out our differances.