To me it is pretty darn clear that although people should get along, they just won’t.
Whether it is over religion, money or power, it matters little. People do not get along.
If a difference of opinions appears between any two given people, what is the case when millions and billions butt heads on theological matters or whatnot?
According to the lights of eminent psychologists like Gustave Le Bon, the situation is much much worse when masses of people are involved. There, individuals lose their grip on reason, allowing impulsive emotions to overcome them, with all the contagious and irrational consequences we know and fear from crowds.
They say crowds have minds of their own. And it is true. Nowhere was this notion clearer than during and after the separation of British India into the Dominion of Pakistan and the Union of India.
How many of us know that during the bloody summer of 1947, 1.5 million Indians of both denominations, which is a misnomer since they were mostly Muslim, Sikh, and Hindu, lost their lives via canning with wooden sticks?!
We often talk of violence. And when we imagine or conjure up violent images or examples we think of murders or killings with firearms, edge weapons, explosives, gas, nuclear holocaust. But who could ever imagine killing 1.5 million people by beating them with wooden fucking sticks.
After all, Chappelle became famous in part for his Netflix special “Sticks and Stones”, that according to him may only break his bones.
Well, Mr. Chappelle, I’ve got some news for ya: sticks have actually killed dead a whole lot of people.
In what became one of the bloodiest political divorce ever, the British got out and when they tried to wash their hands of the entire colonial endeavor, they found that water was in short supply. And they decided to use blood for a change.
Most people think of the Arab-Israeli War of 1947-1949 as one of the hallmarks of post-WW2 decolonization era.
I beg to differ.
I believe that although the story of Israel was and continues to be fraught with existential danger to itself and others, I am firmly of the opinion that WW3 will also involve an open cataclysmic conflict between India and Pakistan.
For starters, we have Nehru’s and the Indian National Congress Party’s radically opposed legacies that can be spelt out in a very clear turn of phrase:
Pakistan Zinzabad versus Jai Hind!
Glory to Pakistan versus Victory to Hindustan (India)!
These legacies have brought about a good share of hot wars between these two nations, while also making sure they both pursued nuclear armaments, which in turn made them immune to existential threats.
Funny how a bad thing like War can actually lead to something good like Nuclear Deterrence. The irony is, I’m sure, lost on most of us.
What is not lost in translation is the spirit of Hindustan (a.k.a. India). Somebody should pay the screenwriter of Border 2 Bollywood movie a crore of Rupees, man! He or she deserves it.
Learn to stay within your limits … or there will be neither this border left, nor you.
And to think that at some point in time, both Pakistanis and Indians lived happily side by side, eating their beef and pork, separately, while both hating on the British. Gone are those days of miniature-massacres like the one in Amritsar (1919) by the colonialist foreigners! Nowadays when they clash, many thousands die each day if not more.
This is why I do maintain and declare that humanity is doomed and destined for complete annihilation. Unless we start getting along with one another, our future is bleak in deed.
P.S. I am neither pro-India nor am I pro-Pakistan. I am pro-Humanity. I do not agree with senseless avoidable violence. All I know is if the atomic booboo breaks somewhere on Earth, it will happen in Punjab, Jammu and Kashmir, along the 1,900 km Line of Partition they call the Border. Both nations have the wherewithal and the moral determination to annihilate one another with relentless abandon. And neither will back off if push comes to shove. A Pakistani Prime Minister once said even before India’s first successful nuclear weapons test in 1974:
We will eat tea leaves or grass, we will go hungry, but we shall have the Bomb.
Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, in the mid 60s – early 70s.
By 1998, Pakistan had nuclear weapons.
I rest my case.
Götterdämmerung 