War Peace and Haider

While the Indian and Pakistani troops were shelling each other's borders in the Kashmir region last evening (9th Oct); I was busy watching "Haider" - a film by one of my favourite movie makers Vishal Bharadwaj. It's a screen adaptation of Shakespeare's "Hamlet" that's been very well melded into the strife of the Kashmiri disturbance in the 90's, to set up the Indianized plot and characters. I am not about to write this film's critique barring that each actor played his or her role to near perfection - with the moral of the story coming out quite clear that revenge begets revenge and not a closure to anyone's pain. I think the leaders on both sides of the border should pay heed to this as the only people getting brutally affected by the events on the border are innocent citizens.


I must praise the openness of my own Nation's people for the screening of this movie, as it has shown the excesses of the armed forces in trying to control a situation. Pretty sure that a movie like this would have been banned in Pakistan had a Muslim film director made it showing excesses by the Pakistani army against its own people in the NWFP and Baluchistan. The Indian armed forces too have taken a pragmatic approach in not censoring it, given the artistic license that a filmmaker has to tell his story as he interprets it. There were no demonstrations on the street either in Kashmir or any other State in India protesting on how various Indian communities were portrayed. In fact people have praised the movie on all counts.

Unfortunately, the army (armed forces)  does not receive praise that it deserves unless it fights an external battle. Unlike the police that battles internal elements on a daily basis, the army knows only friend or foe and when it is instructed that it's own are foes - it does not discriminate in its dealing with them. It is this same unidirectional machinery that unquestioningly puts every resource it has at its disposal including lives of its soldiers at stake in dangerous conditions that challenge even the might of nature to rescue and rehabilitate its own people - and many a times even those that throw stones and abuses at it. The army is not known to betray its own - it only follows orders.

But; Haider is a story of betrayal by his own and the exaggerated disgust that he felt by the same - enough for him to take harsh steps of reprisal. I think the trouble on the border is being attributed to the internal problems that the Pakistanis are facing with their own system and rulers and the situation with India has been "created" by the latter to divert attention. But politically, India is not too far behind Pakistan in this sentiment; even though the reasons may be some what different. The way Indian politicians have betrayed the trust of their own people - time is not too far when India may look like the streets of Paris in the French revolution. I hope I am as good in my prediction as Rev. Malthus was in economics.


Ironical as it may be - when the two nations are fighting a quasi WAR; it was fab to hear (this morning 10th Oct.) that the Nobel PEACE Prize 2014 was being shared by a deserving Pakistani and an Indian - Ms. Malala Yousafzai and Kailash Satyarthi.

http://time.com/3489223/malala-yousafzai-and-kailash-satyarthi-win-nobel-peace-prize/