‘Mindsets are more dangerous than nuclear bombs’

Dr Huma Baqai says Pakistan and India have fought wars in a 'civilised' manner

KARACHI: It is not the nuclear bombs of India and Pakistan that are dangerous. It is the mindsets of the nations that are far more dangerous.

Institute of Business Administration (IBA) social sciences chairperson Dr Huma Baqai said this on Thursday. She was speaking at a session on 'Problems of Peace in the Region in the Context of Pakistan-India Relations' on Thursday, the third day of the annual Urdu conference being held at the Arts Council of Pakistan, Karachi. "The India-Pakistan situation can become better for us if we come to terms with the truth that every war with India was initiated by Pakistan," she claimed. "It's not the nuclear bombs at both ends that are dangerous but the mindsets of the nations that are far more dangerous."



Talking about the recent peace efforts of Pakistan and India, Baqai said that she is hopeful about improved relations in the future because, even when Pakistan and India go to war, they fight in a 'civilised' manner. "The three-and-a-half wars we have fought, we don't attack each other's infrastructure or people," she said.

On a question posed by moderator Karachi University professor Dr Syed Jaffar Ahmed regarding interior challenges, playwright and critic from across the border Shamim Hanafi said that the obvious problems are poverty and illiteracy.

"Literature's role is limited," he said. "The English press although maintains a positive stance, it is the Urdu press that is largely negative. Even if the recent peace efforts are a directive of an external force, we need to learn to live in peace."



Giving his views on the same subject, broadcaster Raza Ali Abidi said that every now and then we get to hear the same stuff that you can't do away with your neighbour. "The way we had instated an Islamic system in Pakistan, a Hindu prime minister has imposed a Hindu system in India," he said. "It is, too, showing its wonders there."



As the discussion moved towards about what literature and writers could do for the betterment of regional peace, Hanafi said that the role of literature had been limited. "It is the curriculum of hatred that should be worked upon," he said. Abidi, too, reiterated Hanafi's stance that the writers' community is not doing much. "It is the mutual grief that can unite us and the most recent [one] is terrorism," he said. Dr Ahmed, on the other hand, lamented that there is not much exchange and trade of knowledge and books happening between the two countries.

Published in The Express Tribune, December 12^th,  2015.