Pakistan, India and human values
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By Ali Kapadia
June 26th 2012
We all know how people in Pakistan have had it hard, especially after 9/11. There are so many things going wrong in this country, the new generation finds itself surrounded by this feeling of belonging to the wrongdoer. It’s an uncomfortable feeling, and different people react differently.
I’m a Pakistani filmmaker, who grew up in Pakistan and has also been in to technology quite a lot, working for a silicon valley based tech firm in the US. I recently left everything and moved back to Pakistan to make my dream film project.
We all know how people in Pakistan have had it hard, especially after 9/11. There are so many things going wrong in this country, the new generation finds itself surrounded by this feeling of belonging to the wrongdoer. It’s an uncomfortable feeling, and different people react differently. A lot try to set better standards for the things they do, some say “Pakistan hai, chalta hai”. A lot ask questions about why everything is so wrong. Every terrorist attack brings a deeper feeling of pessimism. Interestingly, we see any small international achievement coming out of the Pakistan being elevated to heroic heights, like winning a sporting event, an international award, students topping in some foreign university, anything will make a headline. These moments of optimism are evidence of the extreme desperation among Pakistanis to be known for something good internationally, to distance themselves from the ugly images of bomb blasts and women abuse etc. The vast majority of Pakistanis do not identify with any of that at all, these are uncomfortable concepts and when they see it repeatedly, a pressing need to escape it develops.
In this subconscious pursuit to make sense of this all, I have seen my friends wrap their heads around conspiracy theories, particularly in the last 5 years or so, to explain the problems of Pakistan. In short, these are low work, quit exit, blame games. Simplified stories containing secret agency names and allegations, that explain why we as Pakistanis are suffering, being trapped in a grand plan. India has been at the center of most of these theories. True or false, this a beginning to a very dangerous road, for two countries with histories of war and now nuclear weapons. Friends I have known to be kind humble human beings, now pass racist remarks about Hindus, quite unapologetically. It’s like they’re unmasking some hidden truth and bringing order to society by being adamant over their beliefs. To them, it all makes sense. I’ve seen similar attitudes grow over time, most believing that war with India is the final solution to counter this “4th generation war”. These are dangerous ideas for a country where 63% of the population is under the age of 25, now occupied with reasons to hate when all was beginning to go well. This is an energetic young lot who will build the shape of this country from their hands. They want to do something with their energy, and so far, our strategy to deal with this has been to hope that they don’t do something stupid.
Aggression, only leads to more aggression. There is no other outcome. Just by the same standard most Pakistanis believe that the American invasion in Afghanistan and the violation of Pakistan’s sovereignty using drone attacks has only resulted in more aggression. Throughout modern history, war hasn’t produced any long-term sustainable solution at all. Not a single one. Two wrongs don’t make a right. Those who call for war for the sake of peace are simply reacting in frustration. The idea of “War for Peace” is clearly fundamentally flawed.
This brings me to the film I am trying to make. There have been many films over the subject of Pakistan and India, some prominent ones from India have focused a lot on the glory of war, vilification of the Pakistani army and inciting animosity in general. For a good time, such films were missing, but the Indian media atmosphere around the Mumbai attacks has been quite damaging again. I believe a time has come for us to consciously make an effort to respond to all of this, and I am tired of viewing the differences, the animosity, the guns and the tanks. These things take lives. Thousands of them, in the case of Pakistan and India. It’s these lives that are at stake here. We hang these lives in the balance with our ideas of war and vilifications. I think in all this media and film atmosphere, we’ve been focusing on the wrong things. The things that kill, not the things that give life, the humans.
With our film, we are trying to make a war film which instead of guns and tanks, focuses on humans, just two of them. Soldiers, from each side of the border, trapped together in a storm with nowhere to go and an incredibly deadly animosity towards each other. At one side, they both are trained to kill each other, on the other, they are emotional beings, with lives, families, and meanings for things. More than the what the deadly animosity makes them do to each other in the film, I am interested in taking the audiences from Pakistan and India through the experience of the human side of a conflict, the emotions and the meaning of human loss, I want them to get to know these to people and the value of each human life beyond some statistical war figure.
There is a lot more to this film, I have a really cool video about it, sketches, paintings and much more content, all on our Indiegogo fundraising page linked below. Help us make this film a reality and take part in this movement to elevate the value of human beings in this region of conflict: http://www.indiegogo.com/peace-film.
A feature film about 2 enemy soldiers trapped together, who discover more than their differences, that leads them to question their pre-conceived animosity.