A fresh start in South Asia is possible if India and Pakistan can put their disputes behind them and walk forward together in friendship, writes Aijaz Zaka Syed* Earlier this month, when everyone was going suitably mushy over the 20th anniversary of the fall of Berlin Wall, I was reminded of two other unnatural walls created by a conspiracy of history and geography: first, Israel's humiliating, crippling Apartheid Wall that has imprisoned Palestinians in their own land. Second, the great invisible wall that has existed between India and Pakistan for the past 62 years. Just like the artificial divide that separated the West and East Germany for three decades, India and Pakistan are eclipsed by a wall that perpetually cuts, corrodes and drives them apart in spite of centuries of shared past, culture, language, religion and much, much more. Watching the celebrations across Europe over German unification and end of the Cold War, I wondered if South Asia's Berlin Wall would ever come down. "No!" My boss, ever a pragmatist, shook his head. While Germany was divided largely peacefully after World War II, the subcontinent's division was birthed in violence and was preceded and followed by great bloodshed. This is why, he argued, in academic tone, it is unlikely that the wall of mistrust and hostility that divides India and Pakistan will ever come down. As the anniversary of Mumbai terror attacks -- often described as India's own 9/11 -- is upon us, and India and Pakistan revert to a familiar blame game, I feel rather low. Will we ever change? Is there any hope for the people of the subcontinent? As if the violent separation in 1947 wasn't enough, their feud and endless bickering over Kashmir has further poisoned Indo-Pak relations, condemning neighbours to a perpetual inferno of war. They have already gone to war three times and are ready for a fourth. As Salman Rushdi famously put it, India and Pakistan remain forever handcuffed to history. And this state of permanent war in the subcontinent is not limited to armies or political establishments. This is a disease that afflicts the entire civil society. Just switch on any television network either in India or Pakistan and all you hear is never-ending, poisonous rhetoric against the vilified "Other". It's so intense and overwhelming that you feel sick, literally, just watching it. Every time Indians and Pakistanis get together, or are fortunate enough to visit each other across the border, they earnestly assure each other they have nothing but love and goodwill for the other. "It's them darned politicians who have landed us in this mess. Otherwise, we are all peace-loving people," they sweetly persuade each other, promising to strengthen "people-to-people contacts". If this were really true, why have our armies been in a state of war, eyeball-to-eyeball, for the past 62 years? And, pray, why are we spending boatloads of hard-earned dollars on arming ourselves when we can't feed, clothe and educate hundreds of millions of our people? A recent ActionAid report put India at the lowest of the low when it comes to children's health and mortality rate, even below Sub-Saharan states. Despite the impressive strides forward the country has made on the economic front in recent years, every year hundreds of thousands of children die before even being able to stand up and walk on their feet. Infant mortality rate in India over the past five years has been twice as much as that in China and Brazil. The state of affairs in Pakistan is not much different, albeit on a smaller scale given its relatively smaller size and population. In Pakistan, people are literally fighting for basics like food, water, electricity, and security of course, while their army lives in a first world luxury cocoon and politicians devise ever ingenuous ways of parking their billions in Swiss banks. But why blame the politicians and generals? After all, it's we the people, or so-called civil society, who have produced them. You get the kind of leaders -- and generals -- you deserve. Who created the monster in the mirror? We did. The monster that stares back at us is us. Many of my Pakistani friends endlessly dream of visiting India but are deterred by the walls we have built around ourselves. Even if you manage to get a visa, you have to report to the nearest police station upon arrival. A dear Pakistani friend's mother desperately wanted to visit her ailing mother in Lucknow, India. By the time she got the coveted stamp to visit what had been once her home, her mother was on her deathbed. She managed to reach Lucknow only after her mother had died. Similar situations exist on the other side of the border in Pakistan. I've been to far and distant places on the other side of the world as part of my job. But I haven't been able to visit the neighbour next door despite my fervent hopes and wishes. It seems if you are an "Indian journalist" you need special permission from Pakistani authorities. Will this ever change? Why can't we bring down this blind wall of hostility and hatred? Why do we need a worthless piece of paper to visit each other, for heaven's sake? Wasn't this, not long ago, a single country? From Afghanistan in the west to Burma in the east, you could travel from one end of the subcontinent to the other -- that is, until the British left us to our self- serving ways. The Grand Trunk Road that Sher Shah Suri had built connects the Khyber Pass to Calcutta and beyond. Those were true visionaries, constantly building roads and bridges to connect people. We build more and more walls to imprison ourselves. We are prisoners of our limited vision. Change should come from the bottom up. Indian and Pakistani civil society must act and push their leaders to reach a real and lasting peace. Instead of continually blaming each other for "sponsoring terrorism" and stoking trouble in each other's backyard, leaders of India and Pakistan must be persuaded to join hands to fight the common enemy they face in poverty, hunger and disease. They pose a far bigger threat to the subcontinent twins than their nukes directed at each other. It is time for India and Pakistan to move on. They have expended all their resources and energies in fighting each other all these years. Why not give peace a chance for a change? I know I'm being a hopeless romantic in dreaming India and Pakistan can ever break free from their past to look to the future. But trust me, dreams are possible, if you really believe in them. It may not be possible to gloss over all the disputes and differences they have obsessed over for the past six decades. But we can take baby steps and make a small start. It may not be possible to resolve the Kashmir conundrum in foreseeable future. But can't we start exploring solutions? India has to stop pretending it doesn't have a problem in Kashmir. It has to start the dialogue with Kashmiris where the Vajpayee government left it. More important, Delhi can never hope to win Kashmiri hearts and minds with half a million troops breathing down their neck all the time. Why blame Pakistan for "cross-border infiltration" when there are enough causes and willing volunteers in the Valley? Pakistan, for its part, has to stop playing with fire in India. With the kind of mess it's already in, it's total lunacy to stoke the blaze in the neighbour's backyard. It's time to make a fresh start in South Asia and bring down our own Berlin Wall. * The writer is opinion editor of Khaleej Times
