Four wars which it lost have not hammered home to Pakistan that India is more than its equal. Because India was magnanimous in victory, and Pakistan crafty in defeat. Because India’s political leadership of all hues remained bound by the Hindu view of ‘Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam’, making us regard even this implacable enemy as ‘family’ even if Pakistan did not think of itself as such. – Reshmi Dasgupta
India must reiterate what Pakistan’s Army Chief Asim Munir reminded his compatriots last week—“We are NOT the same people”—presuming that the Pakistanis are not all miserably aware of it already. In fact, India should reiterate it in action that is markedly different from what it has done so far. To date, the difference between India and Pakistan has been asserted emphatically for decades in the economic, business, academic and sports spheres.
Now India has to fulfil the unfinished agendas of 1948, 1965, 1971 and 1999. Four wars which it lost have not hammered home to Pakistan that India is more than its equal. Because India was magnanimous in victory, and Pakistan crafty in defeat. Because India’s political leadership of all hues remained bound by the Hindu view of ‘Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam’, making us regard even this implacable enemy as ‘family’ even if Pakistan did not think of itself as such.
Immediately after Partition, there were enough similarities and memories to make the first few generations at least on the side that did not propound the two-nation theory to believe that they were simply two siblings separated by a twist of fate. The world also hyphenated their relationship with India-Pakistan. A lot of water has flowed down both the Ganga and the Indus since then. The world no longer hyphenates, nor do most people in both countries born post-1947.
We Indians have put a fractured past behind us and forged a new, distinct identity and even rediscovered a pride in our Hindu past. But India should listen carefully again to what Gen. Munir told his admiring audience at an Overseas Pakistanis conclave in Islamabad five days before Pakistani jihadi proxies gunned down 26 Hindu men in a green meadow in Kashmir’s Pahalgam on April 21. Hindus and Muslims are different in every way, was his strong message.
“Our customs are different, our traditions are different, our thoughts are different, our ambitions are different,” he exhorted, with religious zeal. It was clear that he regarded India as the nation of Hindus and harked back to the two-nation theory as the raison d’etre for Pakistan, the pure land of Islam. “Don’t forget this story of Pakistan and don’t forget to narrate this story to the next generation,” he said. Yes, and Indians should definitely remember that bitter story too.
All the proponents of the two-nation theory—Mohammed Ali Jinnah was a relatively late convert to it—had outlined the deep differences between Muslims and Hindus, leading to their fear that Muslims would be denied control and power if they lived in a Hindu-majority undivided India. They achieved their goal of a Muslim homeland on either side of a vivisected Bharat, but West Pakistan soon turned on East Pakistan with brutality bordering on racism.
But with a jihadi-backed dispensation in power now in Bangladesh looking to reestablish links again with Pakistan—whose brutal Army aided by razakar collaborators massacred and raped lakhs of Bengali East Pakistanis, before India stepped in to create Bangladesh in 1971—the two-nation theory has got a new lease on life. It certainly seems that jihadi Islam has trumped linguistic and cultural differences, 50 years after that bloody schism.
If Islamism can make Pakistanis and Bangladeshis kiss and make up, then what Munir said must be true: we are two very different nations, because most Indians will not admit or accept this. Not for the sake of the billion Hindus who live in India, but for the 200 million Muslims. Going by Munir’s view, Pakistan does not count its tiny and ever-shrinking Hindu minority as Pakistanis, but India rightly refuses to think its ever-growing Muslim minority are not Indians.
That definitely shows that India and Pakistan are indeed not the same. But there is no longer any reason for us to loyally look back on a 10,000-year-old common history and imagine that India and Pakistan remain separated twins 75 years on. That surgically excised twin has become an unrecognisable entity, driven by its own inadequacies to political chaos and economic disaster, becoming envious, jealous and vicious. It no longer qualifies for a sibling pardon.
Successive Indian Prime Ministers, even Narendra Modi, started off their terms in office by extending a brotherly olive branch to a country that has never shown any indication that it would appreciate one. All of our gestures have been rebuffed—with four wars and a policy ‘a thousand cuts’ articulated by the then Pakistan Prime Minister Z.A. Bhutto. It is time to stop all this. Pakistan does not want to be our sibling, and frankly, neither do we anymore.
There is no doubt that the two nations started out with the same DNA, but the past 75 years have wrought some major genetic mutations. Many Pakistanis take out their frustrations on this divergence with humour and self-deprecation on social media, garnering many Indian followers too. They also believe that India is now so totally different from Pakistan—and so far ahead—that all they can do now is just laugh at their own failures to alleviate their misery.
But the ones who hold the levers of power and steer Pakistan’s history have far darker remedies for their consistent failure to even keep up with India, even as they tomtom irreconcilable differences. So those podcasters are also the target of Munir’s exhortation to Pakistanis to tell the ‘younger generation’ about the two-nation theory. The military-political establishment has no intention of allowing any younger Pakistanis to prefer humour to belligerence.
India, in its heart of hearts, also knows that it is different, very different from Pakistan. Just like Munir does. Which is why India is where it is today, and Pakistan is where it is. So India and its top leadership must not be bamboozled into an unnecessary display of sibling compassion anymore. That distorted entity next door does not deserve it. Whatever needs to be done to preserve this difference—and India’s way of life—must be carried out. – News18, 24 April 2025
› Reshmi Dasgupta is a freelance writer.
Filed under: bangladesh, india, pakistan | Tagged: hindu-muslim differences, islamism, religious bigotry, two nation theory, vasudhaiva kutumbakam | 1 Comment »
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