Destiny's children: India and Pak united in divide

LOVE THY NEIGHBOUR: Panelists on State of the Nation debate and discuss India and Pak's shared past and future.

                    

Featured Blog

Rajdeep Sardesai

Maharaj or Dada, Ganguly's legacy lives on

Featured Slideshows

“It's really troubling records. To be candid, the idea is not to sit there and gloat over what went wrong in your neighboring country but the idea is to say can good democracy make us co-exist better. That’s the key to the way forward. Pakistan will return to democracy. The aspiration equal everywhere perhaps more because obviously when you haven’t got something you wanted more,” Sherry said.

Sixty years ago British historians who wrote about partition said, “Wonder whether India would survive”. They believed that India would break up into several smaller states. Sixty years later in a sense at the moment India seems to have own the bet.

Discussing the fact Shekhar Gupta said, “It’s very easy to take a simplistic view of these things. Historians have wisdom about the past. You should not put too much stress on what they predict about the future. These are nations, which are going through intense process of nation building. May be Pakistanis are got caught in a peculiar situation in Bangladesh mainly because there was lack of democracy.”

“India’s democracy has opened up the rule of one party has gone away. Now there are many parties, the aspirations of many minorities, regions are now being fulfilled. Pakistan is as imperfect a dictatorship as India is an imperfect democracy. So in the name of democracy we don’t give our citizens quite all the rights we must give them similarly the Pakistanis even they have the worst kind of dictatorship don’t deny their citizens all the rights. So these are very complex situation, “ he added.

Democracy for one, democracy for all?

Is democracy most suitable form of government? In the survey when the question was asked to the people, 88 per cent of Indian said yes democracy is most suitable form of government while 82 per cent of Pakistanis said yes. So both the country wants democracy. All the young believe that the future will be better.

“We have to remember that these are the polls which were conducted in urban cities. While we have enjoyed 60 years of independence I think we still haven’t been able to root out poverty and hunger, which is quite a shame and that is something we should be working together. There are so many problems yet that both the country face, Aamir Khan said while talking about the democracy form of government in India and Pakistan.

Echoing the view Lalu Prasad said that the two countries should have democracy but there should be peace first. Till India and Pakistan restore peace both can’t unite.

“If it will be in my hand, I will open the border and two countries can be unite forever,” he said.

India, Pakistan: friends forever?

Can India and Pakistan be friends in the future? 51 per cent of Indians are blaming people in Pakistan for hostile relations and 66 per cent of Pakistanis are blaming India. Whenever anything goes wrong in the two countries they blame each other. Kashmir remains a problem.

“I have never met a single Pakistani from whom I have sensed any animosity. Though I have met people in London Pakistanis who congratulated me on being a Muslims and successful in India, which I thought was a strange kind of observation,” Naseeruddin Shah said.

“The business of opening border is very well to talk about but until we get rid of these kind of parochial attitude I don’t think we are going to make any headway in that directions. I don’t blame the people I blame the governments.”

While blaming the media for exaggerating things, Aamir Khan said, “Media does tend to overplay certain things which then gives a very different colour to all things.”

Defending the attack on media, Shekhar Gupta said, “Where does the media come from, If the government comes from within us the media is also comes from with us. Medial tells you what’s going on in the minds of the society.”

“Media do sensationalizes everything at various points of time. But look at the way Bombay cinema, which I think has its finger on the pulse of Indian society as much as Sensex has on the state of the economy. When there was lot of anger with Pakistan then Gaddar became a great hit, Roja became a great hit, anger subsided, Veer Zara become a great hit. So its not as if films are setting the agenda. Films are reflecting the mood of the day that’s what the media does, “ he said.