India and Pakistan: Freedom vs. Azad
Recently a co-worker of mine who is a Muslim from the Middle East asked me whether Indians like the people of Pakistan. I explained to her that an average Indian citizen probably has never heard of Pakistan and would not be able to point out Pakistan or Kashmir on a map (an average Indian most likely would not be able to name India’s Prime Minister). This I know is an unsatisfactory answer but is very close to the truth.
India is one of the fastest growing economies in the world (currently the 12th largest in the world). At the current rate of growth it will be the 3rd largest economy in the world in 2020. Yet millions of Indians live a life of poverty and struggle to make ends meet. The country has the largest number of illiterate people in the world and the most number of people below the poverty line. It is the land of contradictions and will remain so for a long time.
There is a common belief among many people outside of India that the India-Pakistan rivalry is a rivalry between governments and the people themselves do not really care about this rivalry all that much. It is partly true. There was no border between India and Pakistan before 1947 and the people got along well. So there is no reason to believe that they will get along well now or in the near future. However, although part of the British India, both India and Pakistan are new nations and have chosen completely different paths since their creation.
One of the unintended impacts of the Indian economic success story is that most Indians today do not feel the same way about Pakistan the way they felt just a decade ago. This combined with India’s rapidly growing relationship with both the United States and China (Pakistan’s best friends and financiers) has changed the mindset of many Indians towards Pakistan. Pakistan is no longer considered as the enemy and the threat it once was. It is looked on as a major supporter of the nagging problem in Kashmir.
Even this might be about to change. Many experts believe that India and Pakistan have come close to an agreement on Kashmir a few times in the past ten years. After a two year impasse talks have begun again. But making peace is not going to be easy. The Prime Minister of Pakistan-held Kashmir (also known as Azad Kashmir) Raja Farooq Haider Khan has said that “Let me assure you that every home in Kashmir will become a bunker against India. Azad Kashmir will become a base for the independence movement”.
The Prime Minister then added “Holy war is the only solution to our problem. It is mandatory for every child in every street to wage war against India to bring it down to its knees”. If holy war could not bring down India to its knees in the eighties then how is it going to bring down India in 2010? Azad among other things means independent. Azad Kashmir can never be a reality because both India and Pakistan will not give up an inch of land in Kashmir. Some sort of autonomous secular democratic rule with minor presence of Indian and Pakistani troops in the state is the only practical solution.
Maybe instead of Azad Pakistan should get used to the concept of freedom.
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- India Using Koran Burning Pastor to Clamp Down on Freedom
- India and China: Contest or Friendship of the Century?
- India Proposes High-Level Talks with Pakistan
- United States Issues Biased Report on Religious Freedom
Category: News & Government
solution is simple, and yet the most difficult to implement, thnx to the opportunists like the PM u mentioned above:
LOC is the Intl border. We dont want the sh**y POK, nor will we give our side. You keep ur side and we keep our’s.
coz, come to think of it, nobody wants cancer inserted into his/her body, which is what pok has become with terror training camps.
and then pak can concentrate on themselves rather than india
There are three groups: Those who want to be with India, those who want to be part of Pakistan and those who want Kashmir to be an independent nation. LOC as the international border might be the ideal solution for the first two groups but not for the third.