Re-engaging India and pakistan
Intellectual partition : While the two countries had been physically partitioned before, the ‘intellectual partition’ of India and Pakistan is now taking place. The “intellectual and emotional partition” of the two countries is more stark today. Indian and Pakistani societies have learnt to look away from each other culturally. Pakistani students learn a language more Arabic than Urdu, of a polity that begins in 1947, and about an ancient history that relates to foreign invaders from the country’s west more than the shared history with its east. On the Indian side, contemporary cultural linkages have been severed, with Abida Parveen and Ghulam Ali no longer able to perform in India, Pakistani actors barred from work in Indian films, and a television network stopping the very popular telecast of Pakistani soap operas. Sporting events are fewer, and there is lit...