I remember how my father would feel excited about door-darshan transmission on black and white television and he loved to watch it because it would remind him of his adolescent and teenage years. Throughout his whole life, my father never forgot memorable events of his friends and family in Aligarh; India. However, he was not rightly called a Muhajir because his migration was not for the sake of preservation of his faith but he came to find work and live in a perfect Muslim society, where he could practice Islamic doctrines with complete freedom.
For those who had migrated to the newly born state of Pakistan, memories of India would linger on in their minds of the friends, relatives and places they were familiar with whilst growing up. They would even remember and miss the various dialects of Urdu language across India, especially Utter Pradesh.
it isn’t possible to forget the sights and various experiences you witness in your native place? Nostalgia provides sweet pain reminiscent of the past and every man loves to dwell in it.
There are researches about nostalgia that support the claims of modern scientists of what they believe is good for increasing human memory and overall mental health. But this sentimental association of the past; the nostalgia… has a darker side to it as well.
I am not the only one who suffers from nostalgia but as per my observation, every other person of my age, or older than me likes to reminisce and indulge into any discussion that reminds them of their past. It is this; our nostalgia that helped India to captivate almost three to four generations of ours since partition, through its motion pictures and lingual propagation. Particularly, Urdu speaking immigrants who populated most parts of Sindh and Karachi had been projected as fuel for the soft-war against Pakistan.
There have been many movies that seem to tell migrated Muslims and their very next generation that Pakistan is not the country for them because Punjabis, Pashtuns and Sindhis are their enemies. Karachi has been a cosmopolitan comprised of various races, religions, and political affinities. I remember there used to exist a feeling of terror and anxiety due to an Indian propaganda among my teenage friends. It felt as if we were surrounded by enemies and had no friends. However, I never believed this racial heresy. I always believed in peoples’ diversification, difference of opinions, tolerance and harmony in multi-ethnic society which is the pure sign of a cosmopolitan city.
Under the lingual racism propagation, India used Muhajirs’ fear to make them defiant against Pakistan. Not only did the Indian government spent oodles of money on Bollywood but she also invested into Pakistani media professionals, anchor persons as well as political representatives secretly, to carry out her nefarious designs.
The consequence of continuous Indian interference has brought us to the point that where we have been left with no other choice but to exact a belligerent assault on every channel that is causing us to be divided and killed. Today we are in a state of war, without arms and ammunition, without bullets and shells or even bombs and tanks. Battlegrounds are bleak with no army deployment but the fierce battle noise can be heard. It is the modern world where war is fought using man’s emotion, his faith, ideologies, likes, dislikes, love, hate and human devotion. The enemy that can be inside your loved one, your motherland, your friend, your own home. In this soft-war between two or more countries, the modern armies control human minds by awarding titles, false admiration and advocacy. The modern tool for capturing the human mind is the media which is the weapon of mass deception.
It is this weak nostalgia of ours that has been used as ammunition for WMD (weapons of mass deception) by India. Pakistani citizens Yusuf Khan a.k.a. Dilip Kumar and Muhammad Rafi both become the source of expression for those who had migrated.
In Pakistan, newly immigrants from India would watch Indian movies because of Muslim celebrities. It was an excuse for both to entertain them and to drift into their past life for the moment. This propensity was inherited by the next generations, who were not Muhaajir at all since they were originally born in Pakistan.
When I came up with the online research; I found a very old picture of former Indian Premier Jawaharlal Nehru. He was standing proudly in the retinue of stalwart Muslim and Hindu actors, gazing towards me, jeering; mockingly, asking me the heinous question; “India’s weapons… What can you do now?”
Through Muslim actors, India found a way to infiltrate Muslim hearts and minds. The ideologies of greater Hindutwa or Hindu imperialism had been propagated by these Muslim stars to followers of Islam living in India and especially in Pakistan. Thus pure Islamic values and simplicity were targeted using Muslim actors and our forefathers loved to watch it. They were proud of Muslim artists in India without even noticing that in the avatars of their favorite actors, their minds were being conditioned.
Almost five decades have elapsed during which India has been winning the battle to change the mindset of Pakistanis.
