Islamabad, Feb 3 (IANS) India and Pakistan are “siblings” and have “more in common than we appreciate”, slain Pakistani leader Benazir Bhutto’s estranged niece Fatima Bhutto says.
“Our countries, India and Pakistan, are sister nations. We are one half of each genetically and physically,” Fatima Bhutto said in a signed article in the News Sunday.
“We have, like siblings, more in common than we appreciate and our differences, though vast, are not impossible to overcome. They are barely visible,” she maintained in her article titled “A hundred beats”.
“Siblings, though stymied by rivalries at times and shadowed by each other’s ghosts, are still siblings,” maintained Bhutto, who was in Rajasthan capital Jaipur for a literary meet last month.
“They have to protect each other in order to survive. We can’t help our pasts, but we have an amazing opportunity to push for radical change in our futures,” she added.
Bhutto also recounted her impressions of her Jaipur visit.
“I had gone to India to speak on Pakistan and to be a conduit for a message other than what we see reported on our country every day – hate. I wanted to speak for what a majority of Pakistanis truly want, inside our borders and outside, peace,” Bhutto wrote.
Thus, she noted, “in Pakistan, we greet brothers with a hand on the heart or a palm cupped towards the sky. ‘Adab’ we say, respect. Or salam, peace.
“In India, friends and strangers alike are met with two hands pressed together at the base of the heart. Namaste in Sanskrit, a joining of the fingers and skin, recognises a counter divine. I bow to you it means,” Bhutto added.
On the drive from Delhi to Jaipur, she wrote, “the only thing that broke the interminable voyage were fields of sarson, yellow buds alive with colour, just like we have in Lahore.
“Papaya plantations marked a patch of land between the green and yellow of the grassland. I thought of Sindh’s mangoes. I have a sweet tooth myself. India’s batsmen, Pakistan’s bowlers – can you think of a mightier team? Take that, West Indies,” Bhutto wrote.
Noting that “in all journeys away from our loved ones we discover certain truths”, she added: “On my last night in the Pink City, I was watching television. The US secretary of defence was ready to send ground troops into Pakistan the headline blared. At that point, our differences became pointless.
“It was no longer us against each other; there were larger threats now,” Bhutto wrote.