Been thinking a lot about all these India-Pakistan thingies.

For all people  of the two countries, there is a perspective i’d like to share:

• Identity: Pakistan seems to still be in teenage rebellion mode when it comes to India and the world for that matter – seeking approval from the world, needing support, hating the supporters, the family it grew up from… Its not a matter of if it is a current crisis or a new one. The important thing is to identify the emotional alignment and respect it, regardless of the “price in the moment”. Mindsets can’t be bullied into change – they can only be influenced into evolving.
• India on the other hand seems to be the patronizing elder brother who can’t really understand that teenager and seems to do everything “wrong”, including setting up of family functions (trade, communications…) to encourage the rebellious kid to come to terms with its fold.
• While the teenager may attend, hiding that anger doesn’t make it go away, but pushes it deeper into the psyche, where perhaps the teenager is not even aware of it at times, but it manifests in the tone, the smaller actions…..
• The “firm hand” is seen as supression. So at the moment, India is only unfair, patronizing and superior from the Pakistani perspective.

Unlike the rest of the world, I don’t believe Kashmir is the cause of the “differences” between the two countries, but a manifestation of those differences. Going by the earlier model, its the teenager encouraging the younger sibling to join its rebellion somewhat as a validation of itself as well, while the “patronizing elder” doesn’t think its for the good of that sibling. Of course, what the sibling wants is out of the equation entirely – from the King’s choice at freedom to the people’s in this time.

The rest of the world is unwilling to interfere or voice an opinion in a “family matter”.

If we have to be able to move on with this unending cycle, we need to first recognize it and be able to stop enacting it. It can’t be easy, but it can’t be impossible either.

First, I think its important for both countries to acknowledge their anger and their judgments that hinder them from seeing and being able to work with “the good” in the other. If this means an all out war, so be it. If it means media, cricket, …… that’s preferrable, I guess. In some ways I agree with Bal Thackeray when he calls for a decisive war – it would be an honest expression of the pent up hostility and we would be able to move on. Sure it would be violent and there would be a price in lives – but the option seems to be paying it upfront or in instalments with interest. Getting all that anger out in the open and seeing what it does to both would be the first step to moving on. The point is to get all that anger out in the open, acknowledge its there and work with the awareness that it influences both. Pretending to be saintlike “peace loving” people wronged by the other hasn’t worked for the last 60 years, and I don’t see this camouflage working in the next 60 either.

To accept the differences and to be able to work with what it would like to work with. We don’t need to fall in love. What we need to be able to do is recognize that while there are fundamental differences, their existing in the other okay.

What are these differences and where do they come from?

• The birth: Pakistan got carved out of India on the basis of religion. The greater land, the name remained with India. Somewhere, unconsciously, there seems to be a righteousness to India – as though any problems arising from this birthing process belong to Pakistan, as it is what it always was. That’s untrue. The name may have remained the same, but we are a new country. We also have a birth in our current form. Pakistan on the other hand, seems to operate from an unconscious assumption that it owes its identity to “differences”, therefore, finding common ground with India, threatens its very existence. Not logically, but unconscious fears are rarely logical.
• The enactment of differences: These create further differences to hide the unconscious need to hide anger (notice how it layers?). Wars, media hostility, disagreements…. keep adding fuel to the fire.
• The fantasy in India seems to be that we are a peaceful country, because we are nice people. It doesn’t seem to matter that the comparitively larger size of India cushions and nourishes the prosperity by allowing distance from the hostility. Ask those who live in Kashmir, the north-east or other parts that see regular violence about their experience of their country to discover how those busy surviving would like to paint the picture. One terror attack shakes Mumbai till the next lull comes – why? Because Mumbai is distant from the violence, and when it sees it, its shocked. No one notices the reassuring lull that happens, simply because the distance from the violence allows prosperity to flourish. No such lull happens in Kashmir, Pakistan, or other places close to the violence, not because they are bad people, but because they live closer to the manifestation of differences. The Indians who call India peace loving really need to examine their need for this white-wash. Are we saying that Kashmiris fighting for independence are not currently Indians? Are we saying that rioting Hindutva guys are not Indians? Why then do we have a police force at all?
• The fantasy in Pakistan seems to be that Pakistan somehow needs to be more powerful than India to survive. Their obsession over their identity being based on differences and then one side of the difference having to be “right” and the other “wrong” and their inability to co-exist makes them tremendously vulnerable to every difference that arises – because it must be overpowered or overpower – be it extremists and moderates, army and civilians, Baluchistan/FATA/POK and the rest of Pakistan. It is as though legitimizing any difference threatens disaster. This perhaps arises from the “difference of religion” being thier cause of splitting from India, so other differences seem to call for more and more splits. It also colours their perception of India and how hostility in India over differences is perceived by them. Fighting of any land for its differences seems to legitimize its not being a part of India.The way I see this, the question is not what the differences are, or how the other is “bad”, but what that difference means to us. If the other is evil, what is the threat to us? Is it a legitimate threat or are we operating from primitive responses? Is it possible that the other can be doing very bad things, but they are their actions, and we can still flourish?

What we need is less judgments and more operating from empowerment than threat that frees us to accept differences without fear and striking back.

Equipment and training: I put these together, since it would be even more embarrassing to have an armed hawaldar disarmed by a criminal and his weapon used to create further harm. I think it is not enough to just arm our cops, but to instill in them certain standards of professionalism and pride in their roles. This needs to be backed up with adequate training. Not a small task, but necessary. Cops waving lathis chasing terrorists armed with AK47s is an image that doesn’t instill respect, no matter how brave they are. And it isn’t only about terrorism. In a world where every self respecting criminal has fancy arms, its about the cops feeling empowered enough to be a difference.

Emergency responses: Our emergency response needs designing. Note that I’m not speaking of updating or overhauling. If it takes over half an hour for the local cops to respond, its not a design worth keeping. Scrap it, work from scratch, and come up with something that allows the police response to be as near to the travelling time from the nearest presence as possible. This basically means that cops being trained to respond ASAP and their routines planned to accommodate at least one quick response team at any given time from any station.

Media: This has two sides. One is the media – there needs to be a plan about covering emergencies like this. This plan needs to include boundaries of what is not to be broadcast to the public. It wouldn’t even harm to continue with regular programmes with regular updates instead of creating a live test match out of a sensitive situation and compounding it with unconfirmed, contradictory information, rumours and speculation, which perhaps was a blessing if the terrorists were indeed following it. The other side of this is PR people for the cops/armed forces if their representatives can’t resist giving out information. Obviously the people of the country want information, but how much information is necessary to give immediately and what can wait till the end of the operation? What kind of information will help the country more in the situation? I imagine that I’d have preferred a blank screen rather than live telecast of commandoes rappelling to the top of the Nariman house for example. A simple statement like the army has been involved would be far better than details of which commandos, how many, and shots where their equipment is clearly seen. Go ahead, shoot it, and edit it into a breathtaking special after its all over, but not at a time when the criminals can get tactical information directly. There was a hue and cry over twitter which is full of rumours and tough to decipher with over 80 messages a second, yet clear shots of the commandos and their weapons continued, including direct statements like “bodies being carried out of the back entrance of the Taj”. No one is going to blame an official for refusing to share potentially sensitive information in the middle of a situation and no one is going to blame the media person who refuses to air it till safe.

Intelligence: We need to figure out a system for wading through all the information we get and working with it. Too much information was wasted that turns up now likehints of this plot coming up from terrorist captures in Lucknow, Kashmir, fishermen….. Nothing seems to have been done out of it. Ignoring intelligence defeats the entire purpose of gathering it in the first place.

Citizens: We have a concerned community alive to the dangers of terrorism. Is there a way that we can harness the helpless frustration of those camping out on twitter (for example). Can we engage volunteers to find out information, report things, sift through reports to remove the random chatter from the potential information, spread awareness, work on social integration objectives……?

Politics: Is there a way that we can bring parties together quickly in an emergency and work in collaboration to reassure, organize and manage the country by working with their audiences that support them?

There is so much potential for efficiency without even creating new structures. Can we try and ensure that things work as they should?

Came across this photo – Photo from AP Photo by Ajit Solanki – Daylife from a rally in Ahmedabad by local Muslims protesting the terrorist attacks in Mumbai. Nice white pigeons being freed as a symbolic peace message. While I admire the fact that there was a rally to protest the attacks, I’m more than apalled at the message in the photo: “atankwadi nahi atank ko khatm karo” – Finish terror, not the terrorists!!!???!!!

If they have been looking at their TVs, how do they propose to finish the terror without finishing those terrorists? And why is there a placard raised for them not to be killed anyway? These 10 guys killed almost 200 innocent people indiscriminately. Obviously if possible, they would be captured alive for information. So why protest if they obviously need to be killed to be stopped? Or should there have been a hundred more victims for them not to be killed?

Don’t tell me that killing these bastards also counts as an opression of Indian Muslims!

Really, we need to get a handle and some kind of rational perspective on sympathy for terrorists.

PS: In all honesty, I think it is someone with an inadequate grasp of what it conveys who wrote it. They probably meant to finish terror and not just stop at the terrorists. I hope so.

I describe myself as a nomad. The life of Nomad is one that is interested in all, yet lacks attachment. In a positive way, it could be said that I belong to nowhere and am at home everywhere.

Many things are happening in life, and some synchronicity is leading to insights about myself as a woman. The roleof women in society is all crap, as we know it. Each person has their own fantasy of what society “allows” without halting to reflect that it is them that collectively create society. Anyway, all that is irrelevant to my current ponderings.

I read Germaine Greer’s book – Sex and Destiny, where she talks about the role of our sexuality in out life and the impact of the world on us based on our gender. The book is an awesome read as well as a life changing line of exploration, but what is currently on my mind is the chapter she wrote on “a child is born”. She describes a “western culture” which admittedly is unfamiliar to me, yet some observations strike a chord.

I have started seeing this whole business of contraception and family planning as a wholesale cultural hatred and negation of a woman’s fertility. Identifying goals as a working woman in a relationship with a man has taken a whole new meaning. No? Think about this:

• Pregnancy is a normal state of being for a woman – yes/no? If it is normal, why doesn’t anyone trust a pregnant woman to know what’s best for her?
• We see having more than the “prescribed number of children” as a socially embarrassing thing and consider an excess of children to be a drain on personal and national resources. Never mind if a rich man can afford a hundred kids, or a poor man can’t afford one. No one thinks that a rich man having plenty of kids will eventually lead to an increase in the population of rich people, or the division of the wealth between them will lead to decreasing differences between the rich and poor. Thinking is superfluous – the statistic is the allowed fertility.
• A woman’s fertility is unacceptable and needs to be allowed only in the form of “planned pregnancies” where the focus is not so much on her being a fertile woman as it is on planning ovulation, contraception and then living by the word of some expert (earlier it was midwives, which graduated to doctors, and now its, gynaecologists, sonography techinicians, etc) who knows better what she should do with this alien state of her body till it is rid of its alienness through birth of the child.
• Contraception is a way of removing the consequences of intimacy and reducing the requirement for commitment. Yet, how many females want to remove the requirement for committment? How many males are willing to take responsibility for their intimacies? I don’t know, but my hunch is that by solving the symptom on the physical manifestation level, we have left an entire culture vulnerable to emotional consequences.

As I sit here staring at my screen, I am wondering what impact these insights will have on my life. Will it mean a more meaningful intimacy with my husband, where awareness of the implications of the intimacy between us as man and woman open up an entire world of beauty? Or will it be a hesitation to rock the boat, where we continue to see fertility as a thing to be “controlled”. Can we acknowledge that as a woman and man, our fertility is a part of it?