Remembering Haider “jigar”: India, Pakistan must talk peace


Remembering Haider “jigar”: India, Pakistan must talk peace
Haider Rizvi celebrating life and love earlier this year, at Ghizar District, Gilgit. Photo by Qamar Abbas.

By Partha Banerjee and Beena Sarwar

By Beena Sarwar

By Partha Banerjee

Last year around this time, we were saddened by the death of our poet and journalist friend Haider Rizvi in Lahore, Pakistan, on Oct 29, 2016. Haider had lived in New York, and was for many years a correspondent for the Inter Press Service (IPS), based at the United Nations.

With Haider’s untimely passing, we lost someone who loved to make friends irrespective of religion, color or caste — someone who believed firmly in peace.

At this crucial moment, when the ruling elites and their cohorts in  India and Pakistan are again beating war drums, with hate and violence raising their ugly heads in the region, we need a voice like Haider’s now more than ever before.

An icon of secularism who rejected the division between India and Pakistan based on their British-imposed political boundaries, Haider was an activist and a gentle being who loved to laugh and loudly recite his poetry. Having migrated to the USA from South Asia, his open and inclusive lifestyle often reminded us of the artificiality and meaninglessness of political divisiveness.

Americans were amazed by this person who epitomized the oneness of the nearly two billion people from the Indian subcontinent. Through Haider, they learnt of the commonality of history, culture and traditions across South Asia. The British colonialists severed the land but could not sever the thousands of years of common, rich history.

Unfortunately, India and Pakistan, since their post-colonial inception in 1947, have never found peace. They have engaged in several bloody wars over territorial issues like Kashmir and Bangladesh – three full-blown military conflicts and countless other, small-scale acts of armed invasion and counter-invasion. Since both countries tested nuclear weapons in 1998, such conflicts have an even more ominous edge.

The issue of Kashmir – who owns it and how much of it – continues to fester. Both India and Pakistan claim Kashmir as their own. In 1960’s, a Chinese invasion took over a piece of Kashmir from India, but the part remaining under Indian control has remained a turbulent, volatile politico-geographic zone, a situation not too different from the one in Palestine.

Politics coupled with lack of resources and extreme poverty have bred mistrust, rejection, and militancy. The policies of successive Indian and Pakistani governments have exacerbated the situation, with India’s brutal suppression of the Kashmiri uprising and militant attacks emanating from the Pakistan side.




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