Voices from Pakistan

Voices from Pakistan by Anees Jillani

A friend recently organised a candlelight vigil in solidarity with the Mumbai attack victims last Wednesday in Islamabad. I received several SMSes and emails asking me to join but I could not go.
I am glad I did not in this cold weather, as less than 15 people in the city of more than 1.5 million turned up to show solidarity with the Mumbai victims. The fate of another function to deplore the Mumbai attacks organised by another peace activist, Liaqat Ali, in Lahore was no different.
One can partly attribute it to the general apathy in Pakistani society in general about any issue, what to talk of one related to India, in this tense situation. Newspapers periodically make fun of civil society demonstrations stating that there were more fancy cars parked at a demonstration venue than protesters but the turnout at these symbolic vigils to show solidarity with the Mumbai victims is still pathetic.
There are a few expressing positive feelings for the victims and this category generally falls in the class that frequently visits expensive restaurants like the ones located in Oberoi and Taj. Many also associate Mumbai with the September blast at the Marriott Hotel. It is possible that more people would have shown sympathy for the Mumbai victims and would have shown solidarity with the people of India at this juncture, if India had not upped the temperature by blaming Pakistan and the ISI.
One may find it hard to believe but a sizeable section of the educated class in Pakistan seriously adheres to the view that 9/11 was the product of a Zionist-cum-CIA conspiracy to malign Muslims, and consequently to topple the Taliban and Saddam’s regimes.
I thus found it hard to convince a friend, a senior executive in a multinational, while the Mumbai holdup was continuing, that the attacks were unlikely to have been perpetrated by RSS, VHP or BJP.
This line of reasoning is becoming more prevalent, with the Pakistani electronic media taking the lead in forming it. It must again be stated here that we never see the Pakistani media adopt this attitude when an act of terrorism takes place in India, and it can thus be described more as a reaction to the perceived Indian media hype against Pakistan.
Public opinion is growing for a call to ask India to extradite Colonel Srikanth Purohit and Sadhvi Pragya Thakur (arrested in connection with the Malegaon blasts) for being responsible for killing Pakistanis in the Samjhauta Express blast (February 18, 2007), and other Muslims elsewhere in India.
This is a reaction to the old Indian demand to hand over 20 terrorists said to be living in Pakistan.
Indian news channels are not shown on cable television anywhere in Pakistan, although the entertainment ones are widely watched and admired. And it goes without saying that people, notwithstanding the hype, regularly continue to watch Indian soap operas and movies on TV and their DVDs. Despite lacking access to news channels, it is widely reported by all local TV channels that the Indian media started to blame Pakistan within minutes of the first attack in Mumbai.
One small TV channel has gone to the extent of constantly playing national and martial songs sung by Noor Jehan during the 1965 War, which the majority of Pakistanis feel they won. India attacked Lahore on September 6, 1965, and this day is celebrated as Defence Day and a national holiday.
The most popular TV channel other than the government owned PTV as it is a terrestrial channel, is Geo, owned by the Jang Group of Newspapers. Its viewership is said to total that of all the other channels put together, except PTV. Geo News has been constantly covering the Mumbai attacks for the past few days, blaming the Indian government for failing to anticipate it, and mishandling the rescue operation.
Clips about the Mumbai police running from the Victoria Station are being shown and the likes of Hamid Gul, former ISI chief, and Shirin Mazari, former DG of the Institute of Strategic Studies, can be seen and heard on almost all channels.
There is hardly a person on the talk shows who even alludes to the likelihood of the Indian claims of the involvement of Pakistani militants being true. The Mumbai attackers are classified by these hawks as either being Indian Hindu militants, or maybe Indian Muslims, but never Pakistanis.
A lot is made of one of the militants seen in a photograph with an orange thread tied to his right wrist. Pakistanis do not generally tie such threads; and it is thus taken as clear evidence that the attack was by a non- Muslim group. They find it hypocritical that the Indian media has not picked this up at all. Or they accuse it of deliberately ignoring this pointer.
Mercifully, the country has not yet started air raid rehearsals, but it is in martial mood, although almost everybody believes that there won’t be war, thanks to the American presence. It is a sad reflection on the state of Indo-Pakistani relations that we are proud of our status as nuclear powers, but unable to sort out our differences bilaterally. Our leaders hug and indulge in double-handshakes in front of cameras but react emotionally at the first tense moment.
Dr Mubeshir Hasan, a well-known peace activist associated, with the non-governmental Human Rights Commission and India Pakistan People’s Forum, is of the opinion that “the peoples and the governments of India and Pakistan are well on their way to improve relations between the two countries. There are hiccups now and then but they will be overcome. The two governments face insurgency situations, and as such are not in full control of the elements who take up arms against their own state or other states.” He is obviously an optimist! Thomas Friedman recently asked an interesting question in an article in The New York Times. How would the Pakistanis or, for that matter, the Muslim world have reacted if the attackers had been Hindu militants, and the venue Karachi instead of Mumbai? You need not waste time trying to calculate the reaction, as Muslims would have reacted, even if not on the streets. This is a basic problem in trying to improve relations between the communities.
Relations can only genuinely improve when people of the Muslim community, or the Hindus, for that matter, regard the others as enjoying the same rights and being part of the overall community going by the name of humans. When the tsunami hit parts of Southeast Asia and South Asia on December 26 2004, common Europeans gave millions in charity during the Christmas festivities that year, without pondering for a moment if the victims were Muslims, Hindus or Christians. We in South Asia would be eligible to belong to the civilised world when we in Pakistan genuinely sympathise with the Mumbai victims, and the Indians do the same with the Gujarat or Orissa riot victims. Mahatma Gandhi could do it. Why can’t we?
About the author:
Anees Jillani is a prominent Pakistan Supreme Court lawyer