Am I the only one who thinks that sending the young and beauteous Hina Rabbani Khar to India to negotiate with it at one of the most fractious phases in its peacetime history was a decision as deliberate as it was desperate on Pakistan’s part?
Conflicts are rarely about the obvious. When wealthy families indulge in internecine wars, for instance, more often they have less to do with the disputed money and assets they claim to be about than with their unspoken hostilities and unspeakable slights and unresolved misunderstandings.
So for all the geo-political reasons of the India-Pakistan enmity — the unhealed wounds of Partition, the issue of India’s large under-served Muslim population, the rise of hardliners on both sides of the religious divide and the contentious Kashmir issue — there is one that few will dare name: simple human jealousy and contempt.
In his brilliant debut novel A Stranger to History, the young talented author Aatish Taseer, the half Indian, Delhi –bred son of the assassinated Pakistani leader, Salman Taseer had hinted at it when he wrote about the manner with which the Pakistanis he encountered mocked the way Indians speak or look.
According to the author, the Pakistanis he had met for all their warmth and hospitality held a prejudice close to their hearts: Indians were poor, mean, unattractive, badly spoken and dressed. In college campus terms it was the sports jock’s contempt for the shabby nerd.
Recently, Aatish expanded on this subject in his article ‘“Why My father hated India” published in the Wall Street Journal.
“To understand the Pakistani obsession with India, to get a sense of its special edge —its hysteria — it is necessary to understand the rejection of India, its culture and past, that lies at the heart of the idea of Pakistan,” wrote Aatish. “Pakistan defined itself by its opposition to India. It turned its back on all that had been common between Muslims and non-Muslims in the era before partition.”
So much for Pakistan’s animus — does any one doubt there is as robust a subtext of hostility reciprocated from the Indian side?
For as long as one can remember the Indian stereotype of the Pakistani has been of the flashy, shallow, untrustworthy good looker who gets by on style not substance.
Talk to any Indian diplomat or Indian student studying abroad and this stereotype will come to life with stories of being outmanoeuvered by better alcohol being served, more expensive suits worn to flashier cars driven and glossier living digs: the bitterness comes from losing the lobbying edge in Washington to losing out on the hot girls to Pakistanis. In campus terms it’s the earnest but geeky runner-up’s grouse against the suave class hero.
As facetious as these caricatures appear, they are predicated on inherent ideologies: the Father of the Indian nation, Gandhi, preached asceticism, simplicity, went about in a loin cloth; the Quaid-e-Azam of Pakistan Jinnah wore sharp hand-tailored suits, of which he was rumoured to possess over 200, and was supposed to have never repeated his silk tie twice.
Given this subtext of stereotypes and complexes, is it farfetched to wonder if, in its choice of sending Hina Rabbani Khar, Pakistan was not playing its last desperate diplomatic hand, by addressing India’s unspoken inferiorities, saying: “You may have your democracy, your economic boom, your moral high ground and your great future — we will always have our good looks and style.”
Malavika Sangghvi is a Mumbai-based writer
