Why My Father Hated India (son of a Pakistani politician writes about his dead father)

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Given how much of an American presence there is in that part of the world, I figured this would be at least tangentially relevant to the readers of this forum.

Why My Father Hated India

Aatish Taseer, the son of an assassinated Pakistani leader, explains the history and hysteria behind a deadly relationship

By AATISH TASEER

Ten days before he was assassinated in January, my father, Salman Taseer, sent out a tweet about an Indian rocket that had come down over the Bay of Bengal: "Why does India make fools of themselves messing in space technology? Stick 2 bollywood my advice."

My father was the governor of Punjab, Pakistan's largest province, and his tweet, with its taunt at India's misfortune, would have delighted his many thousands of followers. It fed straight into Pakistan's unhealthy obsession with India, the country from which it was carved in 1947.

Though my father's attitude went down well in Pakistan, it had caused considerable tension between us. I am half-Indian, raised in Delhi by my Indian mother: India is a country that I consider my own. When my father was killed by one of his own bodyguards for defending a Christian woman accused of blasphemy, we had not spoken for three years.

To understand the Pakistani obsession with India, to get a sense of its special edge—its hysteria—it is necessary to understand the rejection of India, its culture and past, that lies at the heart of the idea of Pakistan. This is not merely an academic question. Pakistan's animus toward India is the cause of both its unwillingness to fight Islamic extremism and its active complicity in undermining the aims of its ostensible ally, the United States.

The idea of Pakistan was first seriously formulated by neither a cleric nor a politician but by a poet. In 1930, Muhammad Iqbal, addressing the All-India Muslim league, made the case for a state in which India's Muslims would realize their "political and ethical essence." Though he was always vague about what the new state would be, he was quite clear about what it would not be: the old pluralistic society of India, with its composite culture.

Iqbal's vision took concrete shape in August 1947. Despite the partition of British India, it had seemed at first that there would be no transfer of populations. But violence erupted, and it quickly became clear that in the new homeland for India's Muslims, there would be no place for its non-Muslim communities. Pakistan and India came into being at the cost of a million lives and the largest migration in history.

This shared experience of carnage and loss is the foundation of the modern relationship between the two countries. In human terms, it meant that each of my parents, my father in Pakistan and my mother in India, grew up around symmetrically violent stories of uprooting and homelessness.

But in Pakistan, the partition had another, deeper meaning. It raised big questions, in cultural and civilizational terms, about what its separation from India would mean.

In the absence of a true national identity, Pakistan defined itself by its opposition to India. It turned its back on all that had been common between Muslims and non-Muslims in the era before partition. Everything came under suspicion, from dress to customs to festivals, marriage rituals and literature. The new country set itself the task of erasing its association with the subcontinent, an association that many came to view as a contamination.

Had this assertion of national identity meant the casting out of something alien or foreign in favor of an organic or homegrown identity, it might have had an empowering effect. What made it self-wounding, even nihilistic, was that Pakistan, by asserting a new Arabized Islamic identity, rejected its own local and regional culture. In trying to turn its back on its shared past with India, Pakistan turned its back on itself.

But there was one problem: India was just across the border, and it was still its composite, pluralistic self, a place where nearly as many Muslims lived as in Pakistan. It was a daily reminder of the past that Pakistan had tried to erase.

Pakistan's existential confusion made itself apparent in the political turmoil of the decades after partition. The state failed to perform a single legal transfer of power; coups were commonplace. And yet, in 1980, my father would still have felt that the partition had not been a mistake, for one critical reason: India, for all its democracy and pluralism, was an economic disaster.

Pakistan had better roads, better cars; Pakistani businesses were thriving; its citizens could take foreign currency abroad. Compared with starving, socialist India, they were on much surer ground. So what if India had democracy? It had brought nothing but drought and famine.

But in the early 1990s, a reversal began to occur in the fortunes of the two countries. The advantage that Pakistan had seemed to enjoy in the years after independence evaporated, as it became clear that the quest to rid itself of its Indian identity had come at a price: the emergence of a new and dangerous brand of Islam.

As India rose, thanks to economic liberalization, Pakistan withered. The country that had begun as a poet's utopia was reduced to ruin and insolvency.

The primary agent of this decline has been the Pakistani army. The beneficiary of vast amounts of American assistance and money—$11 billion since 9/11—the military has diverted a significant amount of these resources to arming itself against India. In Afghanistan, it has sought neither security nor stability but rather a backyard, which—once the Americans leave—might provide Pakistan with "strategic depth" against India.

In order to realize these objectives, the Pakistani army has led the U.S. in a dance, in which it had to be seen to be fighting the war on terror, but never so much as to actually win it, for its extension meant the continuing flow of American money. All this time the army kept alive a double game, in which some terror was fought and some—such as Laskhar-e-Tayyba's 2008 attack on Mumbai—actively supported.

The army's duplicity was exposed decisively this May, with the killing of Osama bin Laden in the garrison town of Abbottabad. It was only the last and most incriminating charge against an institution whose activities over the years have included the creation of the Taliban, the financing of international terrorism and the running of a lucrative trade in nuclear secrets.

This army, whose might has always been justified by the imaginary threat from India, has been more harmful to Pakistan than to anybody else. It has consumed annually a quarter of the country's wealth, undermined one civilian government after another and enriched itself through a range of economic interests, from bakeries and shopping malls to huge property holdings.

The reversal in the fortunes of the two countries—India's sudden prosperity and cultural power, seen next to the calamity of Muhammad Iqbal's unrealized utopia—is what explains the bitterness of my father's tweet just days before he died. It captures the rage of being forced to reject a culture of which you feel effortlessly a part—a culture that Pakistanis, via Bollywood, experience daily in their homes.

This rage is what makes it impossible to reduce Pakistan's obsession with India to matters of security or a land dispute in Kashmir. It can heal only when the wounds of 1947 are healed. And it should provoke no triumphalism in India, for behind the bluster and the bravado, there is arid pain and sadness.

—Mr. Taseer is the author of "Stranger to History: A Son's Journey Through Islamic Lands." His second novel, "Noon," will be published in the U.S. in September.

[Ban Hammer 12,836]

very enlightening read

[Harsh_77 716]

It sounds like why your father should hate Pakistan and Pakistani Army.

[Laveau 67]

I enjoyed this read, too. My question: During the time when Pakistan became independent of India, were most of India's Muslims already in that part of India which is now Pk? And what of the Hindus and Christains that were in the area that is now Pk?

I know there is a small population of Christians in Pk today but what about Hindus?

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During the time when Pakistan became independent of India, were most of India's Muslims already in that part of India which is now Pk?

The parts of pre-Partition India which became Pakistan (today, the two separate nations of Pakistan and Bangladesh) were the parts of pre-partition India with Muslim majorities. That's not to say that the majority of Indian Muslims lived in those area.

And what of the Hindus and Christains that were in the area that is now Pk?

Their lives suck. Small in numbers, highly persecuted.

[Harsh_77 716]

There was a mass migration in 1947 Hindus from present Pakistan and Bangladesh moved into India and Muslims from India moved into present day Pakistan and Bangladesh.

There were lot of massacre on both sides during this migration and lot of ppl lost their lives.

Lives of Hindus, Christians or non Muslim who continued to live in Pakistan was turned into hell, including killing of non Muslims, rape forced marriages and no justice by authorities.

I feel the author has not painted the picture with complete truth, as he is talking about growing nation with good infrastructure and prospering nation. That was true if you are from aristocrat family and lived in major city like Islamabad while rest of the nation suffered.

At end of the days its book and author is free to write anything they wish.

[Laveau 67]

There was a mass migration in 1947 Hindus from present Pakistan and Bangladesh moved into India and Muslims from India moved into present day Pakistan and Bangladesh.

There were lot of massacre on both sides during this migration and lot of ppl lost their lives.

Lives of Hindus, Christians or non Muslim who continued to live in Pakistan was turned into hell, including killing of non Muslims, rape forced marriages and no justice by authorities.

I feel the author has not painted the picture with complete truth, as he is talking about growing nation with good infrastructure and prospering nation. That was true if you are from aristocrat family and lived in major city like Islamabad while rest of the nation suffered.

At end of the days its book and author is free to write anything they wish.

And those Muslims who continue to live in India?

Now I have to google the breakdown of religions in present day India.

Editted to add my findings.

http://censusindia.gov.in/Census_Data_2001/India_at_glance/religion.aspx

http://www.pap.org.pk/statistics/population.htm#tab1.4

Edited March 27, 2012 by Shal

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And those Muslims who continue to live in India?

They have it better than Hindus/Christians in Pakistan but 'better' is relative. Anti-Muslim violence occurs with some regularity and Islamophobia is very much an accepted part of the political discourse. It's a good vote-getter in some parts of the country.

The difference is the Muslims in India are well off and numerous enough to fight back (they dominate organized crime) and to be courted by political parties. This is not the case with Hindus/Christians in Pakistan.

[Harsh_77 716]

And those Muslims who continue to live in India?

Now I have to google the breakdown of religions in present day India.

Editted to add my findings.

http://censusindia.gov.in/Census_Data_2001/India_at_glance/religion.aspx

http://www.pap.org.pk/statistics/population.htm#tab1.4

What is your questions, both link you included are census.

Do you mean how is life of Muslim living in India?

Than Indian Muslims are not treated same way, Muslim woman are not raped or forcefully married to Hindu or Christian family.

Mosques are not destroyed on regular basis and leveled to ground, they have the same right and are protected by the same constitution.

Since 1947 India has always been ran by a democratic form of govt, infact Muslims being a minority they automatically get certain number of seat is house and parliament so they can get equal rights, no such reciprocity is granted to Hindus in Pakistan.

Take an example of Kasab, he was caught by Indian forces in Nov 09 for killing and setting off explosive he was given his rights lawyer was provided for him at cost of Indian tax payers and was taken to court which would make fair decision based on the evidence provided presented to court.

Now you would ask does communal tension happen yes that happens when you have communities living togeather and political instigation time after time such thing happen.

At the same time there are lot of Muslims in India who own business and have certainly prospered, recent years constant attack from pakistan in name of god, anger from Hindu commmunity has increased toward the Indian Muslims as well.