Source : Google photo of Hindu, Muslim and Sikh unity
Synopsis : We often dream of what seems impossible at times but dreams can become a reality if based on some valid reasons for such dreams. This blog looks at those dreams of a wishful thinker that I have become and suggests that they are not impossible dreams. John Lennon also had dreams that he sang about in Imagine and is wishing me luck from his grave.
I start this blog with the beautiful song by John Lennon when he sings about what is possible by imagination. I just saw a great historic event in India that will have a profound effect on the future of a nation that aspires to be one of the top three economic and military powers in the world and is well on its way to get there.
The return to power of Narendra Modi with a landslide victory that gives his party BJP the three fourth majority in the 547 seat parliament means that he will have the full backing of his program for the rapid development of the country that he had started five years ago and has made significant progress in all sectors of the society.
This video is in Hindi but it shows Modi’s determination to make an inclusive society and not a divided India. His popularity with Muslim women rose when he declared that the hated Triple talaq rule will be abolished by the Indian Parliament , a promise he kept.
But what made me sit up and take notice was a video that I post here where Muslims are seen rejoicing the victory of Modi shouting his praise and dancing in the streets of India. In a Hindu majority country like India, the Hindus celebrating the BJP victory can be understood but to see the large numbers of Muslim rejoicing as well made me think and an idea started to grow in my mind that is like the first ray of the sun that starts to wash away the darkness before the dawn when birds are still asleep and the whole world is in deep slumber.
This idea is so thought provoking that I started to put down in words immediately. I want you all to read it and ponder on the probability that the Muslims dancing in the streets of India rejoicing the victory of a Hindu nationalist like Modi could be a harbinger of something far bigger and greater that anyone can imagine at this point.
It could be an earth shaking event that may lead to something far bigger and of profound political importance to every citizen of India that may someday alter the political landscape in South Asia in a way no one is thinking of the way I am about to write about and explain in the following paragraphs.
So I turned on the Pakistan TV channels and got a mixed reaction there to the victory of Modi who is not exactly a popular figure there. Pakistanis are still smarting from the surgical strike by the Indian air force in Balakot that killed a very large number of terrorists there fast asleep at 3 am one night. The whole strike was over in less than 20 minutes in three locations in Pakistan that took them by surprise because they never saw it coming so were totally unprepared.
The 12 Mirages carrying smart bombs guided by satellite technology, accurate coordinates fed to the bombs and guided by “eye in the air” AWAC plane at great altitude and the Mirages protected on their flanks with other fighter jets appeared on their targets all of a sudden, destroyed them and went back to their bases in India before anyone in Pakistan could understand what had just happened.
The terrorist training camp in Balakot was well funded, well organized and run by the man who has now been declared by the UN the number one terrorist in the world with sanctions, house arrest, freeze of all the assets and other restrictions that Pakistan is obliged to implement giving the terror outfit a great blow that they may not come out of intact.
Naturally the credit for this attack on the terrorists in Pakistan was given to Modi that boosted his chances of a great win in the election because he had made a promise that he will avenge the attack in Pulwama where 40 Indian soldiers were killed by a suicidal terrorist who rammed the army truck with his explosive laden vehicle and died in the process.
Pakistan has not denied that there are terrorists who operate from there to cause havoc in India from time to time like the attack in Mumbai a few years ago and many such attacks that caused great loss of lives but has not taken concrete actions against them until now.
The terrorism is not just limited to India but it has taken a great number of innocent lives inside Pakistan as well. Just ask Malala Yousafzai and she will tell you about the terror in the Swat valley where the Talibans have killed even children going to schools and tried to kill Malala. They have blown up schools and attacked innocent people in Lahore and many other cities just because the people of Pakistan did not share the strict ideology of the terrorists who want to turn the whole country into a graveyard mimicking the American general who declared in the war of Vietnam that he had to destroy the entire village in order to win it.
The fact is that no one in Pakistan and India wants war. No one anywhere in the world wants war but the wars continue in many countries due to the geo political power games some people play from their safe havens in other countries actively supporting proxy wars in Afghanistan, Kashmir, Syria, Iraq, Colombia etc. so ordinary people who only want peace and freedom suffer.
The sufferings of common people in India and Pakistan due to this incessant proxy war and direct wars have been great. I should say horrendous because there is nothing great about any war or the consequences due to it.
The geographical perspective:
India is a huge country flanked on three sides by ocean and in the north by the mighty Himalayas. At one time in the distant past, it was a much larger country that included all of Pakistan, Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Ladakh. Most of this vast landmass was ruled by the Mughals who had invaded India centuries ago when Baber came with his hordes through the Khyber Pass to conquer India.
The Khyber pass is located between Afghanistan and Pakistan in the mountainous region of Pakistan that the invaders used to bring in their armies to conquer and loot India so Afghanistan became their base of operation. That country has never seen peace since the fundamentalist Muslims started operating from there and have ground the once peaceful and beautiful country to dust in their fervor to make it a strict Islamic country. They came from Ghazni, Kabul and Mazar e Sharif to loot India, spread death and destruction and eventually conquered the whole country to establish the Mughal Empire.
Later came the British in the guise of doing business and trade but stayed as colonial master for over 200 years and left India under tremendous military pressure of the Indian National Army of Bose in 1947. Gandhi’s impact on the independence movement was minimal according to the British themselves.
However, they plotted in London to divide India into three parts in 1947 so that India could never prosper but would remain subservient to England and protect the interest of the British companies still operating there after independence.
The nationalist leader Sardar Patel opposed this British plan so he was pushed aside by the Gandhi and Nehru clique under pressure of the British who insisted that only Nehru could safeguard their interests in free India. Nehru was not called a brown Englishman for nothing.
The politicians saw great advantage in dividing the Indian population into Hindus and Muslims and Jinnah insisted on a Muslim Pakistan in the east and west of the country so an arbitrary division was made on the map of India by a bureaucrat brought in from London who made an arbitrary pencil mark creating the borders but in reality divided India into three parts.
The resultant partition in 1947 led to massive numbers of people who became refugees overnight and lost everything they had so most of the Hindus in Pakistan took shelter in India and many Muslims went to Pakistan from India. This led to massacres of Hindus and Muslims in unprecedented numbers for which no one took any responsibility least of all the British who had caused the vivisection in the first place.
Some of it can be seen in the movie Gandhi that was a purely propaganda movie to eulogize Gandhi funded by the Congress party of India but it showed the partition and the massacre at the Jalianwala Bagh in Amritsar by Gen. Dyer as well.
Since 1947, Pakistan took an adversarial role and fought 4 wars with India over a part of India called Kashmir that they claimed but lost all four wars. The 1971 war in East Pakistan was the most devastating for Pakistan because not only they lost it, they surrendered over 200000 soldiers to India and lost half their country to be renamed Bangladesh. Smarting from this great loss they then resorted to proxy wars with India over Kashmir that is still going on today.
The present situation:
Both India and Pakistan spend huge sums of money to beef up their defensive and offensive capabilities due to the military tensions that prevail and the cross border attacks in India and the terrorists operating from Pakistan. The amount of money India spends on national defense is huge that could be spent elsewhere to develop the country if Pakistan did not pose any threat to India. Likewise Pakistan spends a huge amount of money on arms and nuclear missiles that they could spend on developing the country if they could only accept that Jammu and Kashmir is an integral part of India and will always remain so.
So both countries place their air force on alert, place large number of tanks, missile launchers and other assets near the border and place armed border patrols 24/ 7 that guard the border. The situation is so tense that it is like a bone dry forest that can catch fire with a thunder strike and burn it all to the ground. People on both sides of the border live in perpetual anxiety and fear of attack which has a strong psychological effect on them.
Now look at India:
India has never stopped growing economically but the speed has accelerated in the last decade or so. There are big projects of massive infrastructure development all over the country, new dedicated freight railway lines , new container ports on the east coast as well as the west, hundreds of new airports to better connect people, massive expansion of new highways, new housing schemes for the poor, toilets for all villages, rural electrification, universal health care etc.
New schools, universities, technical institutions, engineering colleges all over the country to increase the level of education, massive aid to poor farmers with electricity, irrigation water, farm loans and guaranteed farm prices etc. are numerous projects the government is working on and has made significant progress to develop India.
So the Muslims who felt alienated in the past now feel that they are getting the benefits of the development in the country like everyone else so they rejoiced when Modi won the election. They feel that for the first time there is a government that does not discriminate in any way the minorities like the Muslims so they have started to feel that they too are Indians and can participate in the nation building.
This does not mean that all Muslims agree or support the new government so some of them remain opposed and behave the way they have always done. At their back are the firebrand Mullahs who stoke the fire of hatred against the majority Hindus and encourage sedition.
So what if ???
So I started to think what if one day Pakistan and India became one country just like the East and West Germany that reunited after so many years? No one thought that they could reunite but they did and became one. Now Germany is strong and is a model of economic growth in Europe that others are trying to emulate.
What if the two adversaries like India and Pakistan could bury their hatchets and become one huge country that could bring economic growth to all, where every citizen lived in complete freedom to practice his faith, where everyone could enjoy a better quality of life, where they could spend money on building new schools for girls like Malala everywhere, where tremendous opportunities for tourism could open up generating millions of jobs, where the neighbors like Iran and Afghanistan could live in perpetual peace with India, where people of all religions and faith could live in peace and harmony just like they do in India?
These are a lot of what ifs but just think about the benefits. What has Pakistan gained with its years of stagnation and animosity toward India? All the money it now spends on missiles and arms could be spent for the poor to give them a better life. All the lives that could be saved if all hostilities could stop once and for all is surely worth considering!
The separated families could be reunited, people could travel anywhere without visas and restrictions once again, they could settle anywhere and buy properties or start their own business. The society will no longer be divided based on the religion where everyone will have the right to practice it.
The threat of nuclear war between the two countries will be eliminated forever making the world a safer place.
If the Muslims in India are rejoicing because a nationalist Hindu has won the election, is it not a good sign that the future of all Muslims there is safeguarded? There will be no more communal tensions that used to lead up to riots and mayhem in the past.
Do you know that there are Muslim Mullahs who read and give lectures on Geeta in India, Saudi Arabia and Quatar? They sing the hymns of Geeta, Ramayana and read Vedas and openly declare that the Hindu scriptures have a lot to offer the world. The Sufi Muslims have always appreciated the Hindu philosophy and practice most of them.
Pakistani children are taught hate and animosity toward all Hindus in their Madarsas that are Koranic schools where they train the future suicide bombers but they can be taught about love for others.
I have always maintained that the Pakistani people as such do not hate Indians and often praise India for its economic might and the nationwide progress the country is making. They love Indian movies, Indian music, Indian food and many women want to marry Indians.
Pakistan has many internal problems like Baluchistan and Gilgit where people want to be free and join India so this problem would be resolved if the two countries join and become one.
The best outcome:
The best outcome would be the end of conflict in Kashmir where once again people will live in peace and prosperity and the people of Gilgit will enjoy the same rights as anyone in the united India and prosper
.
Kashmir is probably the most beautiful state in India that has a curse. When this curse of war is lifted, it will shine once again as the paradise that it really is. The purest mountain air fragrant with poplar and pine scent, the cleanest water and the most beautiful Dahl lake, the snow capped mountains will attract the world tourists once again creating millions of jobs for the beautiful but poor Kashmiris and Gilgit residents.
Read my blog called the Curse in Kashmir here
The Indian part of Kashmir is fast developing with rail links to the rest of the country , new roads and with new air connectivity but just go across the Line of Control (LOC) and you will see poverty and despair among the residents. When there is no more border , they will also enjoy the same benefits as the rest of Indians and will not live in fear of shelling and bombs.
In new united India, all the madarsas ( Koranic schools) teaching hate will be shut down and the kids will grow up just like anyone else going to normal schools. The fundamentalists like the Taliban terrorists need oxygen to breathe that they get from these hate schools so they will wither when such schools are shut down.
The Pakistani Muslims have the same aspirations and hope as the Indian Muslims so they too want to live in peace and prosperity. Hate is a loser anywhere but love conquers all.
The 21st century belongs to India that will emerge as the most powerful country economically and militarily but not as an aggressive country but a country that will be the world leader promoting peace and harmony among all.
I hope that someday people on both side of a hateful artificial border that divides people will come to realize that it is in their interest to unite and become one strong and prosperous country where Hindus may dance on the street of a united India for the victory of a Muslim Prime Minister or vice versa.
That is the dream of Malala and that is also my dream. Who knows? May be some day she will be the Prime Minister of a new undivided India where all girls and boys will go to school without fear. She is still young. The future belongs to the young who are daring, educated and are willing to accept the challenges that they face and overcome them.
It does not belong to hate mongers who thrive on dividing people. People are the same everywhere who want to live in peace. I may not be alive to see that day when people of all faith will live in a great United Republic of India but I hope someday it will become a reality not through war but through an awakening that there is wisdom in the saying United we stand, divided we fall.
Note : I could not find any video from Pakistan in English to include here in this blog so posted what I could find in Hindi. If you are reading my blogs in Pakistan, India, Bangladesh and Nepal then I hope you will share them with your friends freely. Thanks.
Note : My blogs are also available in French, Spanish, German and Japanese languages at the following links as well as my biography:
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