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Comment by kamakazizuru | Hacker News Reader

great read - but in the process of painting a peachy picture for the future, he glosses over a huge core problem that pakistan has. The fact that a significant part of its identity is based on being the anti-india.

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You know, I am reading a lot of comments like this lately on HN. It is always about the same group of countries too. Whether it is the "I hate to be a hater.." comment I read last week in the article about some random Arab nation introducing better schools, or this article about Pakistan. You will notice it also in articles about Israel or other "politically charged" areas too. In short, glossing over the entire article, and then dropping in some negative meme about the area in question. Please stop it.

Anti-Other-ism is not a Pakistani-only phenomena, as anyone here can attest to. An example I had was a physics professor in CEGEP who was horrified that I didn't drink. He proceeded to tell me that he "knew all about that Pakistan-India" business - through his Hindu Indian wife. Truth mixed with bigotry was the kindest way to put his newfound opinions. (Even then, it would not be fair to say that /her/ identity was based on being Anti-Pakistan or even a bigot)

Really, the concept of reducing a nation's entire identity to a strong negative emotion is ridiculous. It would be about as fair as saying that the American identity is about being "Anti-Brown" or the Japanese identity is about being "alien from the rest of the world". Nonsense, except for the smallest fraction of crazies that you could find in any sufficiently large population.

I'll take the critical-but-fair opinion of a third party such as Eric Schmidt over a compromised local like MJ Akbar any day.

Pakis have been brainwashed since birth by "education" to hate Indians and Hindus. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pakistani_textbooks_controversy

Interestingly, here in India too we have had controversies with textbooks. Our current ruling coalition has been accused of pandering to Muslims to tap the votebank!

The past few decades show that when Pakistan has some problem (no food production, etc), they will solve it by attacking India. Lets see what the future holds, history tends to repeat itself. India has bee under external attack for thousands of years.

Dude, I assume you don't know it, but "Paki" is a pretty horrible racial slur for many cultures. Please don't use that word unless you want your point to be completely lost.

Or, we could just flag articles like this and leave them to other sites.

Yeah, like we organise a crowd-sourced taboo and censorship?

I thought the mods alone do that pretty well already?

"The fact that a significant part of its identity is based on being the anti-india"

Isn't that a relatively common situation for countries - especially those with a historical connection to a much larger neighbour?

For example in the UK there is the well known "Anyone but the English" thing where people in Wales/Scotland/Ireland support teams in major sporting events based on this selection criteria. And the "unofficial" Scottish national anthem is about a war 700 years ago against the English.

I'm not sure I know enough about Scotland / Wales / England / Ireland to fairly comment here. The key difference as I understand it at least, is that India and Pakistan did not exist as nations - ever - they were both nations created "artificially" out of the greater Indian sub-continent. India walked away with the history of the ancient indian civilization and everything from then on as its own story - Pakistan emerged as "we're not India, we're a muslim nation". I see where you're coming from - but the problems here run significantly deeper than sports rivalries!

Scotland is currently preparing for a referendum on splitting from the UK (which really means, as far as Scots are concerned, splitting from England).

In what I'm sure is a complete coincidence, the referendum is going to be in the same year as the 700th anniversary of the climactic battle of the Scottish War of Independence at Bannockburn.

The divisions between Scots and English really do go quite deep - at least from the Scottish side, not sure that the average Englishmen cares and if they do it's probably to wish us good riddance.... :-)

>The divisions between Scots and English really do go quite deep

OK, but the divisions are unlikely to lead to open warfare like they have 3 times between Pak and India.

Are you aware of "The Troubles", the 25-ish year campaign of insurrection carried out by Northern Irish separatists? I would suggest that's closer to "open warfare" than it is supporting a football team.

Were the Troubles a conflict waged between the Scots and the English?

us vs. them is a common situation, but you need to read about why Pakistan was created and what the concept for the new nation was, because that is not a garden variety "us vs. them." Comparing the India-Pakistan split to support of sports teams seems superficial.

That's true for the military complex he mentions and the government. The middle class is less about 'anti-India' and more about keeping up with the Joneses. There is often a feeling of "we could be where India are right now" if we simply weren't embroiled in internal corruption scandals and government overthrows.

Of course, when it comes to a cricket match between the two, you're spot on.

Similar to Bangladesh, the anti-Pakistan (e.g. the anti-anti-India). All Pakistan's problems (except the bloodshed) are worse here :(

I won't compare but Bangladesh is not in a very bad shape. Compared to 20 or even 10 years back, we've made great progress. Sure everyone will talk about corruption, cost of living and power problem but the economic and industrial activities are showing sound resistance and never slowing down.

This alludes to it:

> The press are generally hyper-critical of the United States policies in the region and take the view that the India-US relationship is driving much of our countries behavior.

It's put in diplomatic terms, but anyone from a western country will recognise it as saying that the public discourse about India (and the US) is far from rational. Your other comments are a lot more precise, so thanks.

Historically, isn't the USA kinda based on being anti-British? Wasn't there some war thingy where you chaps booted us out? We get on now, don't we?

precisely my point - Pakistan needs to get to that point as well, but the Indo-Pak history is significantly more complicated than the British American history. Saying - we should all get along, is simple, try telling that to the israelis and palestinians. I'd like to invite you to read up a bit about the history of India and Pakistan and their problems and the massive difference between them and the US/UK. It's easy to throw a reddit style comment on there without much understanding of the situation itself I imagine. Here's something to get you started: http://www.openthemagazine.com/article/nation/pakistan-s-pro...

The colonies were an ocean away during the age of sail. I imagine things would have turned out quite differently if Britain was on our southern border.

You don't even need to imagine!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_of_1812

Though I'm not sure whether this supports or refutes your point... because we did start to get along pretty swimmingly once it was all over.

No. It is based on getting out from under British colonial control, not being anti-British. India and Pakistan aren't analogous in that India does not play the role of the British Empire. They were both parts of the same British colonial possession and the circumstances of the split and the constitutional nature of Pakistan are what is at issue here.

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