The Conundrum of Identities

 

Travel is something that tests all our limits of theories, learnings and ideas by opening up experiences that challenge and change one's perception, unlike any book.. Travelogues in that sense are always a window to those experiences and can be very interesting at times.

 

In this Travelogue, Stephen Alter seems to have followed through an emotional thread of tracing his and his spouses roots and in that process has opened up a window that lets us, readers who read it, to a unique and profound viewpoint on subtlety of Pakistan and India relationships. With his easy and smooth flowing language, he captures our attention for keeps.

 

Stephen Alter, who is a Son of an early American Missionary to India, Rev.Robert Alter, Cousin of Charismatic late Tom Alter, was born in Mussoorie  and an alumni of Woodstock School there. He is passionate about India and particularly about his neck of woods in Himalayan region. 

The narration starts with him returning to Landour, to his family Home after some years away from India and his deep felt homing instincts to that place even after so many Years. It is exactly that emotion, he traces and expands on all those who were impacted by the Partition on both sides of the border. In trying to trace the roots of his family's past footprints in Lahore and that of his wife’s in Abbottabad, he presents emotions of so many people who are living with the past scars of the Partition. In doing so he throws open a contemporary view of relation between the two young nations, their contrasts and possible similarities. 

While opening the narration, he falls into a familiar trap of stereotyping the Muslims in India as if all of them were one mass, were intent on moving to Pakistan but were not able to, while in reality he is only referring to those in the Northern part of India, particularly those around the line of Partition who opted to move.

 

“The Partition of India and Pakistan was intended to create a homeland for Muslims throughout the subcontinent, but once the first wave of migration ended the borders snapped shut, and it is now virtually impossible for Indian Muslims to emigrate. Only those who can prove that they have family on the other side of the border are granted one-month visas, and their movements in Pakistan are severely restricted.”

 

However, that does not seem to impact the objective as he moves forward with his narration. 

For those who don’t get to see the other side of the border, especially for people like me in the Southern part of India, for whom partition is only something we stumble across in our history texts, this narration interspaced with insightful recollection & references from serious authors belonging to both India and Pakistan, present and past, offer a rare experience and learning. 

Some years back, some apparently well meaning individuals from India, led by notable Journalist Kuldip Nayar, went on a series of Candle marches to the Atari / Wagah border in sync with similar souls from the other side. It drew a big swell of people in India, who accompanied him in that supposedly noble goal of promoting brotherhood between India and Pakistan, surprising even the organisers. However, it was a damp squib when there was very little reciprocation from the other side of the Border. Except for those notables and organisers who had planned it out with Nayar on the Pakistan side, not many takers were there from the general public of Pakistan.

 

https://gulfnews.com/world/asia/india/spirit-of-friendship-lives-on-1.329865

 

While the organisers then learned from that experience and tried improving it in the subsequent years, that one particular incident served the purpose for the hardliners in India to sell their narrative to a wider audience about the "Pakistanis who are inherently malignant towards Indians". For those of the section which looked at it with a lot of hopes, it was completely unexplainable and a big let down. 

Alter, who took up this travel and wrote this  soon after that debacle, however, offers a very insightful observation presented out of experiences during this trip.

 

"At heart, the problem lies in the conflicting demands of statehood, a concept which was essentially alien to the subcontinent until the British arrived. The central tenet of nationalism, as conceived by Europeans, is that an individual must relinquish his own identity for the greater good of the state. Patriotic sentiments dictate that if you are one thing — a citizen of Pakistan, for instance, or a citizen of India — you cannot be the other."

 

Identity is always a sensitive topic. Human societies thrive on the basis of identity, both real and imagined. Over the time the lines were redrawn a number of times and people have intermingled so much that there is no single characteristic that is holding these concepts of identity anymore. There is no Scientifically finite definition for any of these identities that exist in the world. Yet, race, religion, class identities are always flowing and cutting people across, solely by the virtue of their emotions.

 

“The line that was drawn between Pakistan and India in 1947 is particularly contentious because it carries completely different meanings for the two opposing sides. In India the border represents a source of national regret, something to be rejected as a falsehood, a tragic mistake of history. In Pakistan it is a symbol of identity and pride, the bulwark of their republic and a cause for defiant jubilation.”

 

People who want friendly relations with India in Pakistan don't support the so-called good Samaritans from India because there is a basic disconnect of identities.

While the Indians in their well meaning enthusiasm, present a basic tone and rhetoric that conveys a picture to the public in Pakistan that they want to reject  the border and thereby the partition. For Pakistanis, it is a question of identity. That is the reality of partition, which cannot be wished away. 

In that sense they don’t see a fundamental difference between a extremist who wants to build a “Akhand Bharath” and the Passive good samaritan who wants to forget the partition as a bad dream.  That is a powerful observation about the identity and subtlety we don't see in the cacophony of noises which are against and for normal relations with Pakistan, on this side of the border! 

So the way forward lies in respecting each other and acknowledging the identities - that would mean also the baggage those identities bring with them - rather than empty rhetoric and jingoism. 

In the end the anecdote quoted from Time magazine Sums up the conundrum very clearly. 

“In the same anniversary issue of Time magazine, in which Rushdie’s essay appeared, there is a brief anecdote that puts these views in perspective: F. S. Aijazuddin, an investment banker in Lahore, recalls being on a bus in Paris when he was hailed by another subcontinental passenger. ‘Are you Indian?’ asked the stranger. Aijazuddin, 55, said he was from Pakistan. ‘Oh, India-Pakistan, one and the same,’ replied his new friend blithely. ‘Then,’ said the banker, ‘can I say you’re Pakistani?’ The Indian man’s smile faded and he turned away.”