It has been more than a month since Pakistani terrorists attacked India’s Parliament Complex in New Delhi, heightening the long-standing conflict between India and Pakistan and leading many international leaders to fear the countries may be headed to war.
But members of Students of the Indian Subcontinent, a University group comprising students from India and Pakistan, say that although the governments of the two countries may disagree, the average Pakistani and Indian citizens have good relations.
Three SIS members who have family living in Pakistan and India said they believe a war between the two countries is unlikely, but Pakistan and India need to resolve their 54-year political conflict over the state of Kashmir.
“War is simply not an option,” junior Aashim Tyagi said. “Both countries want to resolve the conflict on a diplomatic level and cannot afford a full-scale war because of their nuclear power.”
The conflict between India and Pakistan began when the two countries split after gaining their independence from Britain. Both countries staked claim to the state of Kashmir. Recently, political conflict has intensified after an attack on India’s Parliament Complex in New Delhi by Pakistani terrorists on Dec. 13.
Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee equated the attack to Pakistan blaming them for supporting terrorists. Pakistan’s president, Pervez Musharraf, wants to ban two organizations linked to the Dec. 13 attack — Jaish-e-Muhammad and Lashkar-e-Taiba — while the Bush Administration has been orchestrating peace talks between the countries.

Tyagi said Pakistan should not be considered responsible for the attack on India.
“It was a terrorist group who could be from any country or have any religious background; it has no direct relation with Pakistan,” he said. “Pakistan and India are one culture, one language — and for the new generation, the conflict concerning Kashmir is becoming trivial. Personally, I feel we all get along.”
Tyagi compared the Dec. 13 attack in India to the Sept. 11 attacks in the United States.
“It does not matter if thousands of people are killed from a terrorist attack or just one. It was still a terrorist attack, and it demonstrates that every country has terrorists,” Tyagi said.
Sophomore Gibran Azamali said that he, too, believes Pakistan and India will not go to war, and he does not see a problem with the Bush administration’s peace efforts. He said a mediator between Pakistan and India would help the countries resolve the conflict more quickly. However, Azamali said dividing Kashmir’s land between the two countries would not be a viable option.
“I think that the only solution is if neither India nor Pakistan get Kashmir,” Azamali said. “Both countries have origins there, and no one could say that Kashmir should belong to one country over the other.”
Senior Haseena Vaswani said the conflict between Pakistan and India is at the political level and is not a part of an average Pakistanis’ or Indian’s daily life. Tyagi and Azamali agreed and said the average citizens in Pakistan and India have good relations with one another.
“It is something they see on the news, but nothing that affects them in their daily lives,” Azamali said.
Azamali traveled to Pakistan during winter break to visit family, while Vaswani visited India. Both said life was normal in their countries.
“I went to Delhi; nothing to me seemed to be changed from any of the other times I had visited,” Vaswani said. “My flight was
delayed because of the attack,
but other than that things were like usual.”
Tyagi said he believes that the union of Pakistanis and Indians in one organization, SIS, at the University is just one example that camaraderie does exist between the two countries. SIS began at the University in 1999 to promote cultural, economic and social awareness about the countries in the Indian Subcontinent.
“We work together. Culturally we all have the same root. The countries are different, but it does not stop us from getting along with each other,” Tyagi said.