It has been a widely-read and -told notion that we Pakistanis, and the contemporary India’s inhabitants are the same because of a shared history, culture and what not. Busting this myth won’t take all that much longer.
Almost every Indo-Pak netizen, every now and then, comes across either a blog or an article or most probably a video preaching to stop wars and explore the potential trade capacity that we hold with each other; after all “we all are the same people” and hence, should not be a party to conflicts.
The second part is what we all should agree to, but the first stance of the previous statement is quite “illogically” controversial. Encouraging good relations with the neighbourhood should be the top most priority of every country’s foreign policy, but with substantial reasoning based upon evidence. Building ways to prosper association but having roots in falsehood will not prove feasible enough to benefit either. Neither we are, or were, the same people, nor we can ever be. Here is why.
Pakistan and India are two such countries which came into being as a recent phenomenon. Odd to notice about these two regions is that the force of coherence is neither a language nor a culture but, somehow, a religion. Being neighbours you are bound to have similarities and differences because somewhere far down the line a few of our ancestors must have lived across the border and vice versa. The minor overlap between Pakistan and “today’s” India in the face of Punjab with Indian Punjab, and Sindh with Gujarat does not imply that the whole of the country is in correspondence to the other. It is how similarities and differences exist between two neighbours, and it is a bound-to-happen event.
For instance, Pakistan’s Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province shares a border with Afghanistan’s Nangarhar province where the chief language spoken is Pashto and more appealing is that both the sides have the same religion as well, which is not the scenario for the India-Pakistan case. Should it be misunderstood the same way and stated that the Pakistanis and the Afghanis are the same people? Absolutely not! Even, in the case-scenario of Afghanistan, we also share the same religion, which is otherwise for us and India.
It is very much possible and doable, albeit laborious, to resolve all the man-made issues, like the yearly water crisis and the Kashmir issue, between the two countries, but the ‘tried’ undoing of the differences by the netizens to call the two very non-identical people, identical is not a sight any history has ever seen.
To cut a long story short, neither all the Pakistanis are Punjabis, nor the Indians, Gujaratis. It is just a minor overlap of a language between the two strata, and not any way near as huge of a similarity to call the two countries’ inhabitants one.
Another most frequently debated issue is of the term “India”. Some netizens quote that both Pakistanis and contemporary Indians, were once all “Indians”, pointing towards the pre-partition era of colonisation when all the people of the Subcontinent were under the same occupation of the English. This statement used is far from a logical perspective. The word India comes from the Indus, called Sindhu in Sanskrit; the Iranians and the Greeks who came through the northwest about 2500 years ago and were familiar with the Indus, called it the Hindos or the Indos, and the land to the east of the river was called India.
Then in the 18th century, when Britishers were aiming to launch an occupation, was when the word “India” was frequently used by them to represent the whole subcontinent for the purpose of simplicity. No author, historian or valid academic have ever been published saying that “India” represents the same people. It was more of a geographical term, mistook quite inexpertly.
Adding to it, history stands evident to innumerable occasions where the people from different cultures, backgrounds, ethnicities were being under one occupation. For instance, the very same people of the subcontinent were under the command of Mughal Emperors for over two centuries. There was a mere change in command to the British in the 19th century, and our identities kept intact and, yet, astoundingly diverging. At the same time, there is no denying the fact that we were once part of a British-administered India, where the term “India” implies a region of the subcontinent and is not a connotation for the same culture, ethnicity or values. All we share about this particular part is an unfortunate same history under an unwanted foreign occupation.
The period of the late 19th century till the partition of Indo-Pak also played a pivotal role in establishing two different identities, which were more religious-driven rather than by culture or language. Events like Khilafat Movement, Simla Delegation and the efforts of the Muslim leadership against the Hindu supremacy were remarkable for the divergence of the two identities towards two different religious standpoints. In the times near 1947, it was less of a Hindi vs Urdu controversy (a language conflict) and more of a Hindu vs Muslim war (a religious combat).
The culmination of all the past events, when put together, but to two different glasses, stirred and mixed thoroughly, is how different India is from Pakistan vis-à-vis its people.
It is very much possible and doable, albeit laborious, to resolve all the man-made issues, like the yearly water crisis and the Kashmir issue, between the two countries, but the ‘tried’ undoing of the differences by the netizens to call the two very non-identical people, identical is not a sight any history has ever seen.
