NEW DELHI: I am deeply saddened to hear that Dr Hoodbhoy was unable to get a visa to India. In response to his question of whether Indians find it equally hard to get a visa to Pakistan, I will say I have never applied myself and hence am not in a position to comment. However, on the large topic of Pakistan-India relations, I will say that the people of the two nations know very little about one another. Both my maternal and paternal grandparents hail from Pakistan. I have grown up listening to their stories about partition and about their childhood memories in Rawalpindi and Dera etc.
Naturally, I was curious about Pakistan and when I grew up I wanted to visit it at least once. However, I soon realised that there is a stigma attached to even discussing Pakistan and I could never freely discuss it with my friends for fear of being taken to be an anti-Indian.
According to my — albeit limited — understanding, the average Pakistani gets a glimpse of what India is like through its films and television shows. But for Indians, awareness of Pakistani or what the average Pakistani may be like is quite low. No Pakistani channels are shown in India and not many films make it there either. In fact, the website of your newspaper, which I came across through Twitter, is my first real interaction with average Pakistanis. I don’t think travelling to Pakistan is high on the agenda for most Indians and the stringent visa regime also doesn’t really help.
A reader
Published in The Express Tribune, October 28th, 2011.
