Them against Us or them and us?

A new volume of essays brings together disparate Indian and Pakistani voices, on themes ranging from politics and economy to cricket and art.

At a preliminary meeting to discuss the theme for a special volume of the India International Centre Quarterly, in December last year, the choice of subject was unanimous: India and Pakistan. The Mumbai attacks had just happened, and the role of Pakistan in sponsoring the terror strikes was very much in focus. Calls to go to war with the country were not infrequent in Mumbai, Delhi and elsewhere, and, at the very least, a cutting of trade ties was demanded by all those who didn’t want India to emerge a “soft state”.

 

It was in such a scenario that author and editor (she is the chief editor of IIC publications) Ira Pande sat down to begin work on The Great Divide that has now been published by Harper Collins and is set to emerge as possibly one of the most comprehensive volumes available on voices from both sides of the border. The essays not only tackle political, military and economic issues, the so-called “hard” topics as Pande calls them, but also give us glimpses of the larger life in the subcontinent by delving into subjects as diverse as cricket, art and music. There is a hint of nostalgia, even a tale of fiction (by Daniyal Mueenuddin, one of the most promising writers to emerge from Pakistan), and all these come together in painting a comprehensive picture of the state of the two nations and the dynamics between them: Them vs Us, but also them and us.

“I wanted two points made,” says Pande, in an email interview, “One, that our relationship is not only about confrontation and difference but also about connections and shared memories and histories.” Cricket, for instance, she points out, “is a perfect microcosm of our complex love-hate relationship. Music, because all our major gharanas have a syncretic tradition of ustads and pandits singing together. Crafts, because they reflect the deep cultural bonds....”

Among the pieces — some tracing the birth of Pakistan and examining the very premise on which it was found; others scrutinising whether it is, or indeed can be, a “failed state”— what you may find interesting is an essay by Meghnad Desai. Actually, it’s less essay, more statistics really— but illuminating nevertheless. “Most Indians think — indeed some openly say—that Pakistan’s economy is a failure, and the country is a basket case. Granted that today India’s success as an economic power house is undeniable, yet, as recently as ten years ago, the Pakistanis were equally snooty about India’s economy. As it happens, there is and never has been much difference between the two countries if one studies their respective economic records,” writes Desai, and then goes on to present us with just these.

He traces the growths in per capita incomes, growth rates over the years, and the respective splits in national incomes (between agriculture, industries and services) and proves his hypothesis that despite the absolute size of India’s economy (which affects our perception of it as an emerging power), “The truth is that India’s ordinary people were always poor. And, after 60 years of independence, this continues to be the case in both countries.”

The other essay that is likely to become a conversation piece — even in Indian drawing rooms — is by Pervez Amirali Hoodbhoy, chairman at the department of physics, Quaid-e-Azam University, Islamabad. Hoodbhoy is also the author of the book Islam and Science: Religious Orthodoxy and the Battle for Rationality, has anchored TV programmes and won the UNESCO Kalinga prize. He paints a grim picture of a Pakistan gradually getting Talibanised. “For twenty years or more, a few of us in Pakistan have been desperately sending out SOS messages, warning of terrible times to come. Nevertheless, none anticipated how quickly and accurately our predictions have come true,” he writes in his superbly candid piece.

Hoodbhoy talks about “Pakistan’s collective masochism”, the cultural offensive that has spelt the death of classical music and Persian-inspired poetry (because the stereotype is of Sunni Islam, where Shias are not considered Muslim enough), the expunging of Hindi words from Urdu to be replaced by unfamiliar Arabic ones, the apathy of the elite, the reluctance of those in power to take on religious hardliners, and finally the harsh fact that “in the Pakistani lower-middle and middle-middle classes lurks a grim and humourless Saudi-inspired revivalist movement that frowns on every expression of joy”.

But writing such as this is rare even in this volume. One of the biggest problems Pande says she faced while putting together the book was getting hold of enough Pakistani writers and commentrators. People did not want to be seen contributing to an Indian journal on sensitive issues at “a time like this”, she infers. The other challenges were “avoiding cliches and romance as also trying to get a blend of two voices…between those who feel we should become one country again and those who think of as ‘us’ and ‘them’”.

While Pande may have wanted to steer clear of romance, there is just that bit of nostalgia to make some of the writings more empathetic. Her own piece on the long-dead “Ganga-Jamuni” culture evokes nostalgia for a way of life that some of us may have been part of while growing up in “Muslim majority” towns like Lucknow or Moradabad or Aligarh and so forth, sharing lives with the Other, as children, without bothering about religion and religion-inspired taboos.

Finally, we also have a few pieces on and by some of the stars on the present literary firmament of the world. Pakistani writing in English has been growing stronger over the last couple of years and last year saw a deluge of talented writers, old and new, publish some of their best works. Pande is confident that one of them will win the Booker this year. She is betting on Daniyal Mueenuddin, though she mentions Kamila Shamsie, Mohammad Hanif, Nadeem Aslam and Musharraf Ali Farooqi too in the same breath. “Their writers show rather than show off. Their writing has a smell and feel of the multiple layers of their society. Our writers (the English language ones) are only focused on urban metropolitan life,” she says.

If they do win, there will be some celebrations across the border too.

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THE GREAT DIVIDE
INDIA AND PAKISTAN
Editor: Ira Pande
Publisher: Harper Collins
Pages: 380
Price: Rs 495