There can’t be challenging times for India that do not impact Pakistan. It is not possible to stay disconnected with the happenings in India. That connection, indeed, is the unfinished agenda of partition.
Those in Pakistan who looked up to the ideals of Indian democracy, constitutionalism and secularism as values to be cherished and replicated in full measure in our own country are at a loss but so are the people on the other side. The more difficult part is that the recent incidents of communal violence in India tend to give a new lease of life to the ultra-nationalists on our side. As someone pointed out rightly, these are the people who hated India’s secularism as much they now hate India’s saffronisation.
The secular India has struck back. Many distinguished members of the Indian literati have returned their prestigious awards to the issuing authority for its silence on the senseless violence. The public intellectuals, the actors, the poets have all spoken up against it as well against the government’s silence.
In today’s Special Report we have tried to look at the happenings across the border in order to learn the right lessons. I.A. Rehman has sane advice for people in both Pakistan as well as India. The communal forces, he says, "are at the wrong end of humankind’s march towards rationalism and peace and are bound to lose…"
Avinash Kumar writes an anecdotal piece to make a very serious point about the middle class support for the current political dispensation in India. The good thing is that he remains hopeful. The solution, he hints, would come from Indian democracy itself and the narrative would change. We hope it does for both India and Pakistan and by extension for the game of cricket between the two countries, too.