Aman Ki Asha – Let’s bring Peace in this New Decade!

This is one topic I wanted to write since Jan 1, 2010, when I picked up the Times Of India and saw the title “Peace with Pakistan: Give Tomorrow A Chance”.

What exactly is Aman Ki Asha?

Aman ki Asha is a joint initiative taken by two very powerful Media Houses, Times of India (India) and the Jang Group (Pakistan), to bring the people of the subcontinent back together on social, cultural, emotional and economic fronts. The two countries have been in constant fight over various issues, ever since they got partitioned over 6 decades ago. India and Pakistan have fought many wars in the past over territory issues. After partition there were fights for Kashmir occupation, followed by fight in 1960s and 1971 (Bangladesh partition), followed by Kargil. The reasons of these fights may include few of the following views.

Indian View - We Fight for Our Protection
Time and again India has blamed Pakistani militants and terrorists of entering the border and creating havoc in our motherland. There is said to be strong anti-Indian sentiment in Pakistani army and ISI, which is wrecking the possibilities of peaceful ties between the 2 countries.

Pakistani View – We fight for Our Existence
Still there is a wrong notion in Pakistan that India split them into half, creating Bangladesh. There is also a lot of dissatisfaction due to the Kashmir issue. This sentiment of hatred is further aided by other issues like sharing of river water and sudden success of India.

Consolidating the Views to form a Real Picture

The hatred between the countries have now reached a height where, some people, unfortunately, highly educated and powerful people look at the people from the other side of the border with complete distrust. As an Indian, while I am disheartened to see the massacre of innocent masses on this side of the border by Jihadi forces (which we presume are from Pakistan); I am pretty sure, there will be someone else in Pakistan, feeling the same emotion for the deaths of innocent people due to the activists from RAW.
Though we know for a fact, that not all Pakistani residents are bad, and unfortunately, not all Indian residents are good, there is still a bunch of people who don’t acknowledge this fact, and hence the countries are unable to move on from the gory-past of the Partition.

Why Aman Ki Asha is a Good Initiative?
A large bunch of the new educated citizens of both India and Pakistan form their views from what the media feds them. In past, we have seen the horrific articles on some terrorist activity somewhere, missile testing to threaten the other country, various racist or nationalist articles and in some way, at least for a small period of time, we get stimulated by the tune of the writer. Unfortunately, instead of giving us good news, these media sources generally talked about pessimism and failed negotiations. But then, can we really blame the media? I guess not. Don’t we as readers tend to focus on the negative-sensational news rather than read an editorial of some philosophy? The negative emotion buried deep inside us keeps getting reinforced with each such incident and we start forming wrong ideologies.
Now, with two of the major Groups coming up with initiative to appreciate what we have in common, rather than why we are fighting, it will slowly trigger in changing the decades-old feeling of rage and hatred in the newer generation. Print media is one of the most widely reaching means of communicating with the masses and what we really need is wider and deeper engagement to tear down the walls that separate us, and clear the misconceptions we harbour about each other.

Why should we do it?

Most of the articles I read boil down to fundamentally these questions.
Why us?
They did wrong to us, why should we forget what happened to us?
Shouldn’t they acknowledge and apologize first to us?
Why do we even need them in the first place?
The answer is simple. It’s better “living together” rather than “dying fighting each other”. A politically-stable and developed Pakistan is as much in an interest of India, as it is for Pakistan. Unlike the past, waging a war is not even an option now, and both the countries are now facing internal chaos because of the radicals and terrorists taking over. Also on the monetary side, if Kasab (the 26/11 lone surviving terrorist) is to be believed, he did not take to arms because of hatred for India, it was just because, it would have brought prosperity to his family. What we don’t realize is that, the amount of money both countries can save by not fighting each-other can actually push the two countries much faster and much further on the list of the “Developed Countries”.

Final Take

I have read a small number of blogs on this topics (both Indian and Pakistani), and found that there is more optimism than pessimism in the views of the people. To quote what Kamla Bhasin wrote in the Times of India.
“I always found it strange that leaders who will unleash wars and decide to cut off contacts between people continue to meet, while those who think Wars are absurd can’t meet.”
Should the good intentions of hundreds of millions of Indians and Pakistanis be subverted by a few hardliners and radicals? Certainly not.
I read a lot of blogs, which seem to suggest that this is a marketing gimmick and nothing more; but all I wanted to comment is, marketing or not, it is a new start and it gives hope. We are not fancying endless optimism here and saying, the two countries, aided with just this one initiative of two groups (which again is neither the first, nor the most ambitious) will kiss and make up. However, it may be just one of those “yet-another-small-steps” which finally helped us complete the journey of a thousand miles.

I am not sure if we are all ready for the plunge as yet, but,
I hope that there will be a day when we will have that trust and friendship back,
I hope a time will come, when Indians and Pakistanis won’t need be suspected as terrorists if they went to meet their brothers across the border.
I hope there will be a time, when we will be able to use the words “India, Pakistan and Peace” in one sentence without using any negative word in the middle.
I hope...