Surprising as it may seem, I usually have some idea of where I am going with my blog posts. I must say that today I have no clue how or where this post of mine would end. But I know what has brought it on. Today The Hindu carried a story, a very poignant one. It involves an email sent by an ex Pakistan Air Force officer by the name of Qais M Hussain to the Farida Singh the daughter of Jahangir Engineer whose airplane that the Pakistani officer shot down during the 1965 war fought between India and Pakistan. The email tells the story of how Mr. Qais was forced by his superiors to shoot down the unarmed 5 seater plane being flown by Jahangir Engineer, that had strayed into the Rann of Kutch on the Pakistan side. Mr. Qais tells the story of how he was forced to shoot the said plane despite Mr. Engineer flapping the wings of his aircraft indicating that he was asking for mercy. Though Mr. Qais carried out the orders given to him, he could not live peacefully with what had happened. For years he tried to contact the families of the people who had lost their lives due to the unarmed aircraft being shot down. Due to the efforts from officers on the Indian and the Pakistani side Mr. Qais Hussain was finally able to track down the family of Mr. Jahangir Engineer. Mr. Engineer's wife had passed away in the interregnum between the incident and now and his elder daughter who is apparently blind lives in the USA. The other daughter Mrs. Farida had married a pilot who went by the name of Mr. Singh. Mr. Qais Hussain wrote this email explaining what had actually transpired and how sorry he was about it. Needless to say this was an act of great moral courage on Mr. Qais' part.
Equally poignant or perhaps more is the reply written by Mrs. Farida Singh. She said "we are but pawns in this game of war" and accepted with great grace and dignity the apology offered by Mr. Qais. But what really caught my attention was the last line of her reply where she said "we were after all at one time one nation". This exchange got me thinking about something that a nephew of mine who served in the Indian Army once told me. He was posted at the border of India and Pakistan somewhere in Kashmir and there was a small stream flowing between two small hills and on either side of the flowing stream on each of the hills were the Indian and Pakistani camps. The source of water for both sides was the flowing stream. Therefore there was an understanding that at a certain given time of the day, both sides would come out with white flags and make their way to the stream to fill up whatever whatever they required. This was a time when there was an exchange of pleasantries and the soldiers addressed each other as "Saathi" (friend). My nephew told me that one day he was told by a Pakistani soldier that the two sides were like a family since they had only each other for company. After the exchange of such talk, both sides would go back to their respective stations and raise a red flag and commence hostilities immediately. My nephew kept saying that apart from the usual jingoism between the armed forces on both sides, there was no real understanding about the pointless shelling and infiltration.
I once again draw your attention to what Mrs. Farida Singh wrote in her reply to Mr. Qais Hussain when she alludes to the fact that both sides were one at a time in the not so distant past. I have believed in that myself. When I once made a post about how Indian and Pakistani and Bangladeshi Muslims had more in common with each other than they had with Saudi Arabia or Indonesia one friend said that that may have been the case at the time of partition but now there is nothing in common. When I once argued that people irrespective of religion spoke Punjabi in some parts of Pakistan and India and Bengali in West Bengal and Bangladesh another friend drew my attention to the difference in dialects (he specifically cited Mirpuri). Political haranguing and rabble rousing on both sides have made cultures different but there was a time when all people across the Western side and the Eastern side of India lived together, peacefully. Acts of war were perpetrated by the various kings and sultans who ruled the land. But most people crave peace, not war. Anyone who disagrees with this argument stand to hover dangerously close to endorsing the idea that Hitler and Mussolini represented the true desires of their people and therefore all Germans and Italians were Nazis and Fascists.
Political leaderships when taken in totality the world over have done more harm than good to the world. They have conquered, plundered and driven wedges between people all over the world. The politician thrives in that space between two human beings by simply first converting that space into a difference and then building a wall so that the more gentle and civic humanity that is their in every human being is rendered impotent and aggression legitimated. Hardliners who call themselves realists have successfully brainwashed the world into believing that we should all divide ourselves on any basis that we can. Colour of skin, eyes, hair, and language. In dividing ourselves we have also divided lands and always remain ready to fight each other. The sad thing is that it is the army that bears the brunt of this. So I remember this wonderful line from the song Us and Them by Pink Floyd whose lyrics were written by Roger Waters. "Forward he cried, from the rear, and the front ranks died, the Generals sat and the lines on the map moved from side to side". It is because that people like Roger Waters, John Lennon and the great and peerless Mahatma Gandhi who have dared to challenge the realist and dared to dream of a benign world order that there is still some sanity left in this world. Take such people away, and there are many of them, the dreams will die and along with them humanity and the world itself.
P.S: Not proof read. Please bear with me. Thank you.
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