| Islam and Politics | |
| 27 Jul 2011, NewAgeIslam.Com | |
| An Indian Defends Salmaan Taseer | |
By Nilim Dutta
July 20, 2011
Aatish Taseer, the estranged half-Indian son of assassinated Governor of Punjab Salmaan Taseer, wrote a column for The Wall Street Journal on July 16, titled, ‘Why My Father Hated India’.
It is a well written piece that argues rather well the roots of Pakistan’s obsession and enmity with India. The only problematic part is that Aatish Taseer offers rather tenuous evidence of his father’s ‘hatred’ towards India. It is also problematic because, by that very act, Aatish Taseer leaves in suspicion the attitude and intent of the Pakistani liberal towards India that Salmaan Taseer had come to represent.
The reactions to the piece had been heated. And the tortuous debate seems to have been reduced to just two mutually hostile narratives brazenly dismissive of the complexities as well as of each other. Those in Pakistan who have jumped to Salmaan Taseer’s defence see nothing but malice in Aatish Taseer’s assertions, going so far as to even defend Pakistan’s military and stooping to undignified name calling. It has somehow been lost on them that at least Aatish, even in his harshest criticism of his father, was never disrespectful or that Salmaan Taseer had fallen victim to the very seeds of intolerance that the Pakistani military had sown and nurtured. On the other hand, those in India have found in Aatish’s assertions what they had always suspected, that even the ‘liberal’ in Pakistan is rabidly hostile to India and that there probably is not a single soul in Pakistan who was not an existential threat to the idea of India as a tolerant, liberal, pluralistic nation. This by itself should not be surprising. But when many seemingly reasonable and ‘liberal’ voices on both sides align themselves to either of these two narratives, a reality check is urgently required.
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7:41 AM
Moderate Islamist here
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