The lost realm...
I was reading an article about the people on the ‘Samjhauta’ Express, and how the hopelessness of the case has more to do with being mired in political jingoism for the darkest part of society who ironically are the ones who need someone to speak for them. The people who travel by this train are the ones who cannot afford to fly, and spend months saving for this trip, weeks to get through the immigration hoops of both countries. These are people who don’t understand that each family member needs a passport, and that all they want at the end of the trip was to visit a long lost relative. And these are precisely the people who fall through the leaking system.
I would generally call myself an optimistic guy, I believe in India's sovereignty as a nation, about the steps needed to make our country safe. But somehow this case doesn’t get past me even after a couple of months of the blasts. My initial reaction to these blasts was it shouldn’t have happened, but I personally didn’t want this case to be solved before the Mumbai blasts of July. But then I realize that case shouldn’t be solved before the Mumbai blasts of 2001, which again shouldn’t be solved before the blasts in 1993.
And that’s when it hits me. No one really cares.
I don’t blame anyone for being that way, this is what you expect when you have an inadequately equipped system to take on the entire population. It was designed on purpose this way so that the ones who can help themselves move on, the ones who cant fade into oblivion. Nehru's socialistic dream gone sour. or something I had read somewhere a long time ago, an advanced stage of decay.
So for all the CBM the two countries take, there are equal number of unchecked crimes against humanity that occur with no one to answer for. How do you decide on the priority that any of these horrid crimes should get? Well, both countries take the easier way out. You don’t have a problem if you don’t talk about it, hoping it just goes away. Like an ostrich hiding its head in the sand.
There was another moment of truth that I had over the past few weeks. For over twenty years I kept hearing the term Cross-border terrorism used by all the Indian PMs. And then heard the Pakistani rebuttal that it doesn’t exist. That never made any sense to me, it was like the Indians keep saying 2+2=4, but the Pakistanis kept saying it was 3. How in the world could this be true, I used to wonder? Can't anyone see the truth? Where was the US or the EU to play the neutral referee when it mattered the most? Lives were being lost because of this equation.
But now it makes sense. The US and NATO have been accusing Pakistan of allowing Cross border terrorism to take place on its Northern borders with Afghanistan. And the Pakistanis still deny it. The same EXACT response I had heard them give the Indians for over a decade. So I started decoding their response because it just didn’t make any sense. So, when the Pakistanis deny cross border terrorism, it doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist, it means it’s just something the Pakistanis don’t know of, have no control over, and cannot do anything about. Call it a balancing act; call it having to deal with a failed state not in control of its provinces.
A fourth realm of radicalism. And the missing '1' in the equation was always lost in this realm.
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