Private Opinion

Ramadan Blogging: Day 24

I think I am a nice dinner guest. I remember a lot of witty anecdotes, have a decent sense of humor and am respectful to others point of view. Unless I am on a table full of Pakistanis.

So, I went to this birthday party thrown by my good friends, a couple actually, one of which is a Pakistani Canadian married to a Pakistani American. Obviously there were a lot of Pakistanis at the dinner and as luck would have it, I was the only Indian. One thing led to another and soon three of us were having a full-fledged argument in a fully crowded cafe. First of all, I am amazed at the absolute necessity of most Indians and Pakistanis to tell the other side how wrong they are. May be they just want an audience to get their message across. I agree that we have come a long way since the time my Indian class-mates kept asking if there was a punishment for rape in Pakistan and my Pakistani cousins wondering if there were mosques in India. That was during the time of Doordarshan and PTV. Thankfully we have moved beyond that. But not by much. Here is a sample from the long argument.

India is not really secular.
It is funny to hear it from a Pakistani whose country constitutionally discriminates on the basis of religion and a non-Muslim can’t be the head of state.
Yes, but it is an un-written rule in India that there will be no non-Hindu head of state.
We just had Kalam as our President.
Yes, but there will be no PM.
But we have a Sikh PM who is a non-Hindu. Then we have Sonia Gandhi who almost became the PM.
There will be no Muslim PM.
Do you know anyone who was capable and discriminated against?
And so on and so on.

A&F, I am sorry for ruining your birthday party, even though I was no more than a 33% culprit.