I think my idea of him may have been spoiled by this throwaway sentence, on the mood in Lahore after Pakistani independence.
my remembered Lahore, the city of forty years ago, was easy-going and accommodating towards its significant, mostly Catholic, religious minority; and I think even a Jew would have been acceptable, indeed welcomed as a curiosity. Shia and Sunni Muslims tended to despise one another, but no more than Protestants and Catholics did, in the good old days of our Orange parades. Shias, realizing they were in the minority, merely tended to avoid exhibitionism. Hindus and Sikhs had to be more positively discreet about themselves -- the few who had not joined the exodus to India at Partition. But that was the fallout of Partition.
davidwarrenonline.com
Ignoring the fact that Pakistan and India actually went to war - a war which is basically only paused even now, in Kashmir - is somewhat coloured memory, at the very least. 'Discreet' indeed...
But the bolded sentence is also ludicrous. the Orange parades are perhaps more of an artificial flashpoint now, since the Ulster Protestants no longer dominate so overwhelmingly: but nevertheless, they were the jingoistic triumphal marches of a ruling people over its subjects, displays of power designed to bully and cow. That's why they have such symbolic substance now. Don't believe me? ask most NI Catholics...
And the phrase 'tended to despise' lacks something of the feeling of - say - the IRA and UDA for each other. If the feeling in Pakistan betwixt Shia and Sunni really was akin to the split in Ulster, then 'murderous hatred' runs closer. If the Catholics showed it less, pre 1969 (in his 'golden age'), it was probably from fear of the independent - but purely Protestant - paramilitary police, the old Black and Tans... remember they were very much a subject people under Stormont rule. |
