PTK WEB DESK
SRINAGAR, (PTK): India and Pakistan live side-by-side. Both are started off their journey together. Both are share history and in some instances much the same culture. Both know it and the world knows all the good that they can do so simply by standing together.
Following the Pulwama attack in which almost 44 CRPF men were killed and the situation of both countries are all no the way to fight a war against each other.
In case they change their minds, here are few things India and Pakistan can do together instead of fighting:
1. Increase people-to-people contacts
India and Pakistan need more than ever. The forces of extremism and bigotry are loud on either side, and the way to counter the ensuing misconceptions, hatred and stereotyping is to get the people in touch with each other in a manner unfettered and unfiltered by media biases.
To this end, the governments should facilitate traveling between the two countries. Ease up visa regimes, provide security to tourists, set up student and faculty exchanges, invite professionals, intellectuals and artists over to their sides of the border, organise concerts, host joint exhibitions and events, develop shared publications, invite critique and let guests conduct their research and document their experiences.
2. Trade freely
Remove the non-tariff barriers and bureaucratic hurdles impeding trade. Let India get its Non-Discriminatory Market Access to Pakistan. Create separate routes for different tradable items that stay operational round-the-clock. Cut down duties and improve customs clearance procedures.
Yes, India is a much bigger market than Pakistan, but proportionate trade is still possible, if the government sets the right policies. In auto, textile and several other sectors, exports and partnerships can benefit traders from both countries equally.
3. Tell the story of Partition, together
Shouldn’t India and Pakistan have had enough of maligning the other, of teaching our kids hate. Let’s, for once, work together and come up with a better story to tell our children now — of one where people did give and love, where men, women and children saved one another from injustices regardless of their religious or regional affiliations.
Educationists and historians from both countries must sit together and work on this narrative which shows that in an event when all begin to go topsy turvy, people had have their humanity in tact and shielded one another from harm.
Indians and Pakistanis have been one people for most of their histories. They may be separate now, but they’re clearly not foes, with a shared culture and consciousness in many an instance.
So let’s tell the stories of Partition, but let’s tell them together. Purge school curricula of political propaganda and make films that tell the stories of people, not ideologies. Write stories that record the joys and sufferings shared through centuries and not the divisions borne over a few decades.
We may be two nation-states now but our attitudes toward life, our cultures and customs, our zest for sport, our love for the arts, our values of friendship, hospitality, tolerance and progress remain the same.
4. Play each other
Pakistanis and Indians indulge themselves in mostly the same sports and games. Cricket, hockey, football, volleyball, kabaddi, squash, tennis, polo, snooker, bridge and the list doesn’t end. Our sportsmen have run neck-and-neck with each other for decades. A Pakistan-India contest defines the term ‘sport’ for people all over the world.
Why not play each other more often, then? And not just on the professional level. Get youth from the academies, schools and colleges to participate in games between the two countries. The governments must facilitate here and making visa issues an excuse to be impede contact in this vital arena should not be acceptable.
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