Today marks Pakistan's Independence Day , 14 August, and tomorrow is India's Independence Day. My own birthday is 13 August a day before these days of the Indian sub continent's violent Partition, a carving up of lands, peoples, and cultures, a very bloody and painful birth, delivered by an inept British midwife. These days are painful to conjure. As a child of Pakistani diplomats, I grew up attending receptions hosted by my parents, polite annual functions attended by other Ambassadors , representation of statehood in foreign capitals. My siblings and I knew all the popular national songs and broad strokes of the Pakistani narrative of evil Hindus, great Jinnah, the wrongful annexation of Kashmir, and the dying need to sever from India during the Indian freedom movement. However now as a free thinking Pakistani adult, I can't reconcile any of these ideas, much less stomach the idea of belonging to a state that is an extreme ideological security state run by generals and a parasitic elite, controlling a public which proudly shows up for lynchings of religious minorities or anyone who dares to speak up. Pakistani generals have locked this country into a permanent war with India, a country we share a 1000 km border. Yes we are meant to be in a war with the same land and peoples of the subcontinent. We are prisoners of this imagination of war. Unbelievably , this imagination became wilder and recently unveiled a map that has swallowed up Jammu and Kashmir and even Junagadh, a state who we gave up trying to acquire during the 1947 Batwara (division). So, Pakistan has not only declared victory over Kashmir but also the Corona Pandemic, self proclaimed, which reminds me of 1984's citizens who live in Oceania where propaganda is relentlessly broadcasted in a constant state of war, where truth is constantly being recycled. Tragically, in this moment, India is moving further into a Hindu Republic, from an identity of a secular state at birth in 1947. The Indian PM laid the foundations of the Ram Temple on the site of the Babri Mosque, a 16th century Mughal structure demolished by BJP /RSS mobs in the early 1990s and presided over a lengthy religious ceremony (and how interesting that our real Turkish brothers and sisters are now saying prayers in the Haghia Sophia, slapping history and putting it in its rightful place, insolent child that it is) . We are in a tragic post colonial moment, an embodiment of the British project of divide and rule, of the communalism they sowed the seeds for. Pakistan consolidated a Muslim nation state back in 1947 yet the naivety of Pakistani secularists is so endearing , they continue to believe that Jinnah wanted a secular Muslim state, this idea held together by a few threads based on a few speeches and so-called intentions of Mr. Jinnah. And India has now consolidated a Hindu state. While the Jinnah apologists fall over each other crying for a lost dream within an apparent dream of a secular Pakistan, much like how Jahanara Begum keeps re-arranging the "furniture" of her guest room from Angan Tera, we are still living in the Partitioned Subcontinent, we are still living a post colonial nightmare, we are now permanent religious and thought minorities and the communalism is victorious. So, happy independence and don't forget there is an Azadi Sale going on in your nearby Khaadi store or head over to the Daraz online store and knock yourself out going on a spending spree!
