Will Indians and Pakistanis trust each other again?

Indian and Pakistani bloggers had a 'date' in the virtual world to figure out if trust between the people of the two countries can ever be restored after the Mumbai carnage.

The e-date, organised by Dawn newspaper, had Rehan Ansari, a Pakistani journalist closely associated with India, and Mukul Kesavan, an Indian author who teaches history, taking questions from bloggers from both sides of the border.

"From saber-rattling to joint investigations, Indo-Pak relations are ever in flux. Here, Dawn.com invites Rehan Ansari and Mukul Kesavan to live blog on all cross-border conundrums - social, political, martial, monetary, and fashionable," the note on the Dawn website announced.

The question prominent on the mind of bloggers was if trust between the people of the two countries can ever be restored after 26\11 attacks.

Ansari, who has lived in Mumbai, attempted an answer: "During the attacks in Mumbai, it was horrific, and I was obviously shocked and fearful for friends, and frankly, even personal safety."

"I could not help thinking that the attack had a very clear goal: to disrupt Pakistan-India relations at all kinds of levels."

"Another thought, or more of a horrible realisation I had, was that my feeling that Indians of all kinds and communities know very little about Pakistan and Pakistanis and this attack aims at that faultline." 

"So I was so relieved that Rajasthan and New Delhi rejected the BJP in state elections in the immediate aftermath of the attack, though I have heard almost no comment about that in the Pakistani print or TV media," Ansari wrote.

Kesavan took the argument forward stating that there's another class of people in India, pluralist and broadly non-sectarian, neither hostile to Pakistan nor especially sentimental about it, but who find the Pakistani state both puzzling and threatening.

He said shortly after the Mumbai attacks in November last year, he was emailed Youtube videos of Pakistani television talk show hosts talking about the attack and India's allegations against Pakistan.

"I'm used to jingoism on Indian television, but those videos were really, beyond comic. They seemed to embody a sort of cosmic denial," said Kesavan, who has never been to Pakistan.

"This business of being liberal is interesting. In India, being liberal generally means being pluralist and 'secular'. I use scare quotes because the Indian construction of secularism is different from the Western distinction between church and state. And I'm sure in Pakistan, being liberal means much the same thing," he wrote.

He pointed out the difference in the circumstances of Pakistani and Indian liberals. "In India, however resurgent majoritarian Hindus might be and however beleaguered liberals might feel, all the best lines in the Republic's founding document, the constitution, were written for us."

"I think the equivalent legitimising statement for Pakistani liberals would be Jinnah's famous constituent assembly address where he declared the state had no interest in the faith of its citizens."

The statements kicked off a debate in cyberia with a blogger named Suleiman stating that he doesn't think there is "a Indian or Pakistani people".

"I think there are many. There are, for example, many Indians who support the BJP and its affiliated parties who think of Indian Muslims as Trojan horses and Pakistani Muslims as congenitally hostile."

Sarat Kumar Dash, who joined in the debate, said he would like India and Pakistan to be one nation and fight poverty together. "Unless they are united, we would be spending endlessly for defence."

Track II diplomacy and people-to-people contacts were also discussed to improve the relations between the two countries. Raj A, another blogger, was happy to note that Indians waved Pakistani flags to cheer a cricket team.

"While watching the recently-held Indian Cricket League (ICL) tournament, I noticed a high level of support for the Lahore Badshahs team (made up of Pakistani players). Fans at the Indian stadiums were even waving Pakistani flags."

But Raj wondered if open support for Pakistan was common and accepted? "Or is it viewed with suspicion?" he asked.