[Reader-list] A teacher from India reflects on his Pakistan visit

[Chintan Girish Modi]

>From http://www.teacherplus.org/interventions/crossing-the-border

*Crossing the Border*

By Chintan Girish Modi

"Dear God, Who draws the lines around the countries?” asks Nan, one of the
many children whose utterances are gathered in a book called *Children’s
Letters to God* compiled by Stuart Hample and Eric Marshall. It is such an
innocent question, and such a poignant one. I wish more adults were asking
this. They would, perhaps, if they felt the futility of borders.

I was in Lahore recently, as part of ‘Exchange for Change’, a programme
jointly run by Routes 2 Roots, a Delhi-based non-profit organization and
the Citizens Archive of Pakistan (CAP), which has offices in Karachi,
Lahore and Islamabad. We were a 21-member delegation from India, comprising
students and teachers belonging to four different schools – Shishuvan and
Gandhi Memorial School from Mumbai, and Sanskriti and St. Paul’s School
from Delhi.

Nan’s question is one that I too asked as a child, when like many other
children, I was being raised to think of Pakistan as enemy country and
Pakistanis as terrorists. I continued asking all through school, college
and university, and through terrorist attacks, bomb blasts and cricket
matches that were made to look like wars. I earned a mix of flak, suspicion
and incomprehension. I was told I was being too optimistic, ridiculous
even, worse, a traitor. I continue to ask.

I am glad, however, that things might be different for my students, three
of whom got the opportunity to cross the Wagah Border near Amritsar and
spend five days in Lahore. All three of them – Siddharth Gopal, Mahesh
Sakhalkar and Aditi Shah – are ninth graders. The other two who went from
Shishuvan were Kavita Anand, the director of our school, and I.

This visit to Lahore (Feb. 16-20, 2012) was only one in a series of
interventions planned under the Exchange for Change programme. The
reciprocal visits of students and teachers from Pakistan to India and from
India to Pakistan were preceded by an exchange of letters, picture
postcards, photographs and oral history recordings with grandparents having
memories of Partition to share.

The idea was to help students from both sides of the border appreciate the
possibility and merits of sustained dialogue in order to gain a clearer
understanding of their shared history, culture and lifestyles. This
material was exchanged, hoping it would clarify misconceptions and dispel
misinformation about historical events. It would hopefully also empower
children to reject inherited prejudices and form their own opinions based
on personal experience. It was a year-long programme that involved 2400
students from Karachi, Lahore, Delhi and Mumbai. Did it make a difference?
This is what Aditi thought of Lahore before she crossed the border. “I
expected a lot of women walking on the streets wearing burkhas. I also
thought it would be ancient, with all those lovely tiny lanes and I really
didn’t think there would be a church in Lahore.” After the visit, here is
what she writes, “Well, Pakistan is a lot like India. Lahore has a little
bit of both Mumbai and Delhi in it. They are like us. They aren’t
terrorists. That is just stupid – saying one particular country is filled
with terrorists. It’s not like people don’t get killed at all in India, you
know! Also, Lahore has amazingly delicious *naan*! And their newspapers are
very interesting.”

We are back from Lahore but the conversations continue, in school, with
family and friends. It is important that they do. People want to know what
things look like on the other side of the border. They are full of
questions. When we walked on the streets, did we come across as foreigners?
How did local people like shopkeepers and rickshaw drivers respond to us
when they got to know that we came from India? Does Pakistan have people
from non-Muslim communities? Does one find vegetarian restaurants there? Do
women work? What is the general level of education? Do they have freedom of
expression? Do they have offices and modern infrastructure? What are their
views about India and Indians? These are just some of the questions that
came up in a discussion with a colleague. I am sure there are more. I love
questions. They keep dialogue alive.

Our duty as teachers is to encourage such dialogue. That might go a long
way in building bridges. Most of our students may never visit Pakistan or
meet a Pakistani. What they know and how they think will be largely based
on what they pick up from school, hear or read in the media, and what they
are told at home. What we can do, however, is to provide alternative
perspectives, or at least build the skills to question and interpret images
and information thrown at them. It is important to find a balance between
the two extremes of ‘they-are-all-terrorists’ and
‘we-are-all-brothers-and-sisters’. The real stuff is somewhere in between.
Not at the border but in that space where we find the courage to shed the
skins we wear too comfortably.
The author teaches at Shishuvan School, Mumbai.