To Indo-Pak peace and women's rights

Hey Chintan!

You must be away on your whirlwind India tour and enjoying working and having a good time in the mountains. And I thought it was high time I took my turn to blog; it was just that I couldn’t think of a lot to write about.

The past two weeks have given a lot of people from both sides of the border both extremes: reasons to be ecstatic followed by utter depression, dismay and frustration.  First the happy part! Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s visit to India on the invitation of his Indian counterpart Narendra Modi for the latter’s inauguration was probably the best thing to have happened between the two countries in a long time. The visit and the conduct of both leaders towards each other gave a lot of us much happiness and joy, thinking this could be an opportunity for restarting the stalled dialogue and peace process between Pakistan and India.

My personal take on this visit and the meeting of the leaders is that following the announcement of PM Sharif’s acceptance of the invitation there was a lot of joy around. But shortly after, many realised that there isn’t going to be a long, one-to-one meeting that could be called ‘dialogue’ per se between the two, however, it wouldn’t be wrong to assume the short meeting that took place could be a prelude to more detailed and formal processes in the future that cold lead to the much-sought peace between the two countries. All that in itself seemed quite promising and I for one was overjoyed at the presence of PM Sharif in India and how both leaders conducted themselves and that they had resolved to resume the stalled dialogue process. Here’s hoping it’s a new beginning to a much friendlier South Asia.

Another exciting part of all this was that I was invited by an online Indian news channel, www.indiapostlive.com, to participate in a live show about the invitation to PM Sharif by PM Modi. Here’s the link: http://indiapostlive.com/modi-invites-sharif/. I wish I could be there live but due to my idiotic work hours I managed to send in a recorded video message that they included. Some other show maybe!

Now for the distressing part. All the positivity had not yet subsided when that gruesome incident in Lahore happened. Shockingly, a woman was bludgeonedto death by bricks by none other than her father, brother and other male members of her family for marrying the man she loved. While the story is undergoing twists and turns as I write this, the basic fact that she was murdered in broad daylight and that too in front of Lahore High Court while people watched like bloody spectators. The father turned himself in and proudly confessed to the murder, saying she had been killed for ‘honour’.

This term ‘honour killing’ always freaks me out. WHAT honour are you talking about in a killing? Bloody uneducated, feudal, male chauvinistic lunatics! And this wasn’t the first such case. Many women have been and are killed for ‘honour’ almost everyday while nobody can do much about them because it’s the family that does it. And then there are rapes happening every single bloody day, regardless of a girl’s age, even as little as 2 or maybe 7 or 8. Gosh!! Even writing about it is giving me shivers. It’s scared and depressed the shit out of me.

Then probably the next day there were tow other news, India and Malaysia. Two Dalit girls, gang-raped, killed and hanged from a tree in India! And a 15-year-old girl gang-raped by 37 or 38 frikkin’ men in Malaysia. For heaven’s sake!!! If we weren’t troubled enough already. What is happening in this world? Is this all a girl/woman has been reduced to? Mere objects of desire, means for sexual pleasure, victims of tribal/feudal customs, exhibit power? Really? Do they cease to be human beings?

Education, which is also a topic we are expected to discuss this month under the BPP syllabus, is key I feel. But the sad part is a whole lot educated people are as misogynist, bigoted, male chauvinistic as their rural or uneducated counterparts. So what do we do? Educating men in this part of the world or maybe anywhere wouldn’t stop rapes or sexual abuse. So what would? I get speechless when asked this question. Even when I think for myself I can’t come up with a solution. This trend doesn’t seem to decrease, yaar! Ufff so it’s been a very very depressing one week, and so far it continues to be as more horrifying cases come up.

So anyway, that was my part of the rant. And that’s all that’s been consuming my thoughts for now. 

Here’s hoping for a better and friendlier future for Pakistan and India. And a peaceful world for women to live in where they feel secure, loved and can take their decisions themselves. More power to women! 

Cheers!

P.S. I'm quite excited about a cousin's nikah coming up in two weeks. Yay!!!