We will never rise above hatred

I learnt a sad truth while working as a comment moderator on the blogs section of The Express Tribune. The first time I read comments, I couldn’t believe the unabashed hatred that people have for one another.

Perhaps, I was living in a bubble, thinking that we had come a long way from Partition, that Pakistanis and Indians had learned to coexist, and that Muslims and Hindus didn’t cringe at the very mention of the other.

My idealistic bubble burst as I moderated comments flooding in from around the world. Our blog readers belong to the educated class. These are people who read pieces of writing and then partake in healthy intellectual debate.

More often than not, this debate turns into an emotional rant of who did what in 1947, who said what in British India, whose criminals are worse in the war on terror and which country is better than the other in the eyes of the Western media. Everyone brings up their defensive guards and comes up with the worst possible things you can say to hurt each other… and all for what?

My question to these commenters is: what is the point of us being educated when our minds remain small as ever? What was the point of us studying history in school when we cannot learn from the mistakes of our forefathers? They say, with education comes awareness and tolerance, but what is its purpose if we still fail to look beyond borders, religion, colour, race and language?

Perhaps, I was too naive in the first place, to think that the enmity between India and Pakistan was only limited to the cricket pitch. I was wrong to think that maybe, younger generations will rise above the divide our forefathers created decades ago. I was wrong because judging from the disgust emanating from the words of our literate lot, Pakistan and India will always remain the kind of neighbours that only rise when the other’s head is deep in the ground.

Published in The Express Tribune, October 17^th, 2014.