India vs. Pakistan

When I'm at home in Morrison and reading about hostilities between these 2 nuclear powers I'm as concerned as anyone else. Two nations tied together by thousands of years of common history, disputed territory and armies with millions of people are poised on the brink of war. One nation Islamic and the other primarily Hindu adds to the tension and the media coverage and the village talk. The U.S. brokers peace and maintains close ties especially as we are engaged in conflict in Afghanistan and need their blessing and assistance and we don't want them to go to war.

But when I'm at work I do not worry or feel any of these tensions. Although I've never been to either country I have been working with men from both countries for the past 5 years and to watch them interact you'd never believe a war would be possible. Basically they are the same racial stock, speak the same language (although they call it Hindi in India and write in Sanskrit script and call it Urdu in Pakistan and write in Arabic script) and have similar customs and mores. Their relationship is more friendly rivalry like Americans and Canadians then peoples at war.

When the British left the Indian sub-continent a little over 50 years ago they agreed to split it 2 ways so that the Muslims might have a homeland of their own and so when Pakistan was formed there was a mass migration of Indian Muslims to Pakistan and a similar migration of Pakistani Hindu's and Sikh's to India. There are still more Muslims in India then there are in Pakistan. In fact there are more Muslims in India than any other country in the world except Indonesia.

This is just another example of how the world works, at least in the political sense. It is important to maintain differences, different opinions and to have a rival to maintain ones stature, especially in a democracy (yes, India is the world's largest democracy) where your power depends on the vote and the need to cater to the lowest common denominator and appease the majority. Thus Hindu vs. Muslim conflict is important for political parties. A common foe is important for maintaining national unity, patriotism and identity and takes everyone's mind off the day-to-day suffering of the poor, political corruption or other more obvious woes.

By the same token lots of the guys here agree that the nuclear weapons that both sides have has been a successful deterrent and probably saved many lives. When forces are massed on the border or in disputed Kashmir, tensions are high and many people might die, but if there is the threat of nuclear annihilation even out manned Pakistan has the potential to wreck havoc on its neighbor. The other aspect is that although India and Pakistan could mobilize an army in the millions they do not have the resources to arm them with much more than a few guns or knives, so the killing would be hand to hand, bloody and forever feed on itself. India probably has more people than bullets let alone guns.

Basically my reason for hope or optimism is that the guys I know here are meek, polite, peace loving, probably 1000 times less aggressive than the normal American and pretty well resigned to their fates as human beings with little intention of changing the world. The whole concept of peace and security is as foreign to them as the idea of the World Trade Center being demolished was to us before 9-11. They could use all their nuclear weapons on each other and there would still be millions of people alive and suffering. What's the point? Even the humblest and least able and most impoverished common denominator can understand this.

(by Marc Adami, Guest Columnist)