Pakistan and India share common culture

By Tahir Ikram and Y.P. Rajesh

ISLAMABAD (Reuters): Despite years of enmity that have plagued relations since their troubled partition over half a century ago, India and Pakistan still have more in common than they have differences.

Hundreds of thousands of lives were lost in the violence that swept the subcontinent when Muslim Pakistan was carved out of mainly Hindu India after British rule abruptly ended in 1947.

And after three bloody wars and constant hostility, the two nations are still grappling with what some call the "unfinished" agenda of the partition -- particularly the dispute over who should control the Himalayan territory of Jammu and Kashmir.

But on other levels the two share a great deal -- particularly music, poetry, art and food.

Even some of their leaders -- who will meet in Agra later this month at the first Indo-Pakistani summit in more than two years -- have roots across the border.

Pakistani military ruler Gen. Pervez Musharraf, who India blames for the undeclared war the two sides fought on the snowcapped peaks of Kashmir after the last summit, was born in India's capital, New Delhi.

Indian Home (Interior) Minister Lal Krishna Advani, a hardliner when it comes to Kashmir policy, was born and brought up in Pakistan's Sindh province.

Musharraf will visit his ancestral home in the old walled city of New Delhi on the day he arrives, July 14, and Advani too would like to revisit his childhood home.

"The languages are similar, the culture is similar and the diversities are also similar," said former Indian Prime Minister Inder Kumar Gujral, who was born in the fertile heart of Pakistan's Punjab province.

"Though the partition was done on religious lines there are, in fact, more Muslims in India than in Pakistan."

Many Pakistanis still believe life under a Hindu-majority India would have meant subjugation.

But Gujral -- whose father was a member of the constituent assembly of Pakistan before independence -- told Reuters that given a chance, the cultural similarities could boost grass roots relations between the two countries.

Cricket is one of the most obvious areas.

The two nations share a passion for the game. Emotions rise when they compete in international tournaments or -- politics permitting -- the occasional games between themselves.

"Though it is not a sport born in India, our passion for it is common and in both countries it is no longer just a game but a religion," Indian writer Khushwant Singh said.

The passion for cricket is so intense that on at least two occasions soldiers from the losing side have opened fire across the cease-fire line dividing Kashmir after an India-Pakistan match.

While India's Bollywood films and their Hindi-language soundtracks are extremely popular in Pakistan, India adopted Sare Jahan Se Achcha (The Best Place on Earth), penned by Pakistan's national poet Iqbal, as its national song.

Older Indians still crave the lilting songs of Pakistani vocalists such as Ghulam Ali and "melody queen" Noor Jehan, while one of Pakistan's most famous cultural exports to India in recent years was the late Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan.

Khan, a Pakistani vocalist who popularized traditional Sufi religious music by blending it with modern pop tunes, is a rage with young Indians. More than two years after he died, Indian music television channels regularly air his music videos.

The death of the portly Khan -- who composed music, sang for several Indian movie blockbusters and performed at packed concerts even in culturally different southern India -- was mourned across the subcontinent.

In Pakistan, many youths worship Indian screen heart-throbs as much as their peers in India and posters of scantily clad Indian heroines adorn many a teenager's bedroom.

Similarly, viewers across northern India sit glued to their TV sets when Pakistan Television runs acclaimed soaps such as Dhoop Kinare (By the Sunlight).

"The people of the two countries have not been divided despite more than five decades of partition," said Gujral. "The Punjabi language spoken on both sides of the border is just the same."

Singh, whose enduringly popular 1950s novel Train to Pakistan graphically captured the trauma of the partition, told Reuters the literature of the two countries showed little difference.

The cuisines of the two foes, he said, was much the same except that Pakistanis eat more meat than Indians. Northern Indians' culinary preferences are certainly closer to those of Pakistan than those of their southern compatriots, who eat lighter, rice-based dishes.

Gujral said the warmth of the Pakistanis "overwhelmed" him whenever he visited the country.

"Which is why track-two diplomacy works so well whenever given a chance," he said referring to parallel efforts by academics and artists to bridge differences between the nuclear-capable neighbors.

Many Pakistanis would maintain that Islam, their official religion, has given them a separate cultural identity, but Gujral emphasized the essential unity: "We may be two nations but we are one people."