Now that the breathless television extravaganza of the 50th anniversary of Independence of India and Pakistan is over, we can perhaps take a more sober look at the past half-century. Satellite television proved once more that the medium is the message with its up-beat look at the anniversary – carefully glossing over the fact that what we were really commemorating was 50 years of Partition. Other than a big bash of Indo-Pak businessmen and celebrities in London to kick off the jamboree and New Delhi´s The Asian Age remembering that there was also a Pakistan, the anniversary was marked separately in the countries that gained independence by cutting themselves apart. In India, there was a celebration of India, and in Pakistan it was a celebration of Pakistan. Not for another 50 years, it seems, will these two nations separated at birth learn to think of each other as twins and celebrate a birthday together.
What of the other South Asians who had no 50th celebration this year, who were all taken along for the independence ride by satellite tv programmers in mid-August? Sri Lankans are, actually, gearing up for their own 50th bash on February 1998, while Bangladesh marked its 25th anniversary of independence from Pakistan earlier this year. Nepalis preen at never having been colonised, but they too had to gain ´independence´ from the Rana prime ministers in 1950 and from the Shah kings in 1990.
And so, as part of the golden jubilee, we were treated to the astounding sight on regional satellite broadcasts of multinational companies and their wannabe desi counterparts falling over each other to wish happy birthday – mostly to India because that´s where the market is. True, there was Macleans toothpaste claiming that it was "spreading smiles across Pakistan", but most went with Nokia, the Finnish cellphone company, which was "proud to connect the people of India on the 50th year of their independence". And so it went: paint companies, detergent manufacturers, ball-point pen wallahs – all subsidising Rupert Murdoch in order to wish clients on their side of the border a happy anniversary.
It all proved what was evident all along: for more than half the populations in Pakistan and India who live in poverty 15 August was a mere reiteration of unfulfilled promises. Promises of an end to a life in squalour, promises of communal harmony, promises of true grassroots democracy, and promises of alternative development models and decentralised decision-making. For about half a billion people of the Subcontinent, the real tryst with destiny is the daily struggle for survival. In the final analysis, it hasn´t mattered much for them whether the ruler sitting in New Delhi is a viceroy or a khadi-clad, Gandhi-capped, Nehru-jacketed politico.