The progressive Pakistani poet, Fahmida Riaz, recites a poem to an Indian audience comparing the rise of Hindutva in India with the rise of Islamic fundamentalism in Pakistan. Note the delight of the Indian audience and the “delicious” cultural affinity between Indian and Pakistani political discourse. And forgive my attempt at translation. It’s impossible to catch all the nuance, but I tried.

Turned out you were just like us.

So it turned out you were just like us!

Where were you hiding all this time, buddy?

That stupidity, that ignorance

we wallowed in for a century –

look, it arrived at your shores too!

Many congratulations to you!

Raising the flag of religion,

I guess now you’ll be setting up Hindu Raj?

You too will commence to muddle everything up

You, too, will ravage your beautiful garden.



You, too, will sit and ponder –

I can tell preparations are afoot –

who is [truly] Hindu, who is not.

I guess you’ll be passing fatwas soon!

Here, too, it will become hard to survive.

Here, too, you will sweat and bleed.

You’ll barely make do joylessly.

You will gasp for air like us.

I used to wonder with such deep sorrow.

And now, I laugh at the idea:

it turned out you were just like us!

We weren’t two nations after all!

To hell with education and learning.

Let’s sing the praises of ignorance.

Don’t look at the potholes in your path:

bring back instead the times of yore!



Practice harder till you master

the skill of always walking backwards.

Let not a single thought of the present

break your focus upon the past!



Repeat the same thing over and over –

over and over, say only this:

How glorious was India in the past!

How sublime was India in days gone by!



Then, dear friends, you will arrive

and get to heaven after all.

Yep. We’ve been there for a while now.

Once you are there,

once you’re in the same hell-hole,

keep in touch and tell us how it goes!