The problem was not that Indians and Pakistanis did not wish to behave like good neighbours. The real trouble was that they do not know what it means to be neighbours, that they were still too involved with each other to act simply as neighbours. For most part of the last 60 years, Indians and Pakistanis behaved like two communities within the same country rather than citizens of two different countries in an international community of nation-states. Hence the baffling love-hate relationship that is so familiar to Indo-Pak encounters.

The Indian Express-Dawn News-CNN-IBN poll, the first-ever simultaneous Indo-Pak opinion poll, detected a subtle change in this complex and often schizophrenic attitude that the people on the two sides of this artificial border have displayed vis-à-vis each other. It finds them trying to share a present despite a divided past, struggling to find common symbols outside the contested political terrain, trying to invent roots for themselves in a possible future. They are learning to build a difficult relationship.

They have not quite freed themselves of the burden of history and inherited models. If you ask them about whether Partition was justified, you still get answers that echo the official ideologies. A majority of Indians reflect the official position of Indian nationalism that Partition was avoidable. A majority of Pakistanis endorse Partition, the very condition of the existence of the state of Pakistan. But if you turn the question around and quiz them on whether the Partition should be annulled, as in the case of Germany, you realise that they have learnt a lot. Indians too have begun to make peace with Partition. Only one-fifth of the urban Indians — obviously much less in urban Pakistan — support the idea of Indo-Pak unification. They are also beginning to realise that the idea of unification does not sound like a friendly gesture to a Pakistani. The idea of two separate but friendly countries has begun to gain ground after two generations.

A similar and painful learning marks their view about the relationship with the other country. On the one hand, a majority is willing to blame the government in the other country and even the people of the other country for the unfriendly relations between India and Pakistan. Indians are keen to assert their proprietary rights over Kashmir. A little reminder of India’s role in the creation of Bangladesh can push the Pakistanis into saying that the two countries can never be friends. The other country and its people as an abstraction are still an apt object of distrust and enmity.

On the other hand, once you ask them about concrete situations, people and policies, you realise how far they have moved from the spirit of 1971. The idea of a war as the final solution of Indo-Pak disputes is completely rejected on both sides of the border. There is an overwhelming support for putting the past behind and building a friendly relation in the future. And this is no abstraction. There is virtually a consensus across the border that the people-to-people contact should be encouraged, that visa regimes should be relaxed and that Indo-Pak trade should be increased. If you thought all this was easy, just think of this: as many as three-fourth of the respondents in both the countries agreed with the proposition that the nuclear race was pointless, now that both the countries have exploded their bombs. Except a tiny minority, urban Indians and Pakistanis are convinced that the relations between the two countries are going to improve in the years to come.

Yet this is not the real measure of the growing Indo-Pak relationship. Citizens on both sides of the border are learning to explore each other in domains other than politics. Pakistani love of Mumbai cinema, Indian love of Pakistani ghazals and their mutual obsession with each other’s cricketers is too well known to need the statistics thrown up by this poll. But the extent of the desire to visit the other country — every two in five Indians and Pakistanis express this desire — is less understood. Interestingly, the places people wish to visit most are not the shared symbols of our old and shared traditions — Agra, Ajmer Sharif, Taxila or Nankana Sahib — but the modern urban centres like Delhi, Mumbai, Lahore and Karachi. Perhaps this symbolises the desire to search for roots not in the past but in the contemporary and the future. One can detect a similar preference at work in their choice of icons. The political icons of the twentieth century — Jinnah, Nehru and even Gandhi — continue to divide the people in the two countries. What unite them are the cultural icons from cinema, music and cricket.

So, are the Indians and Pakistanis rejecting the divisions imposed by nation-states and their official nationalisms? Perhaps not. There can be little doubt that the Indians and Pakistanis we have talked to are proud Indians and proud Pakistanis. Rather than reject the model of nation-state, as Ashis Nandy would want them to, they are discovering softer ways of being nations. Or rather, now that they the bloody history of the last 60 years has given them the walls necessary to become neighbours, they can begin to learn how to be decent neighbours.

India’s favourite Pakistani cricketers…

(Top Five)

Wasim Akram 18

Shoaib Akhtar 18

Shahid Afridi 16

Inzamam-ul-Haq 14

Imran Khan 12

Note: All figures in column percentages. Rest named other cricketers.

India’s favourite Pakistani singers…

(Top Five)

Adnan Sami 21

Ghulam Ali 18

Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan 18

Mehendi Hasan 5

Abida Parveen 5

Note: All figures in column percentages. Rest named other singers

Pakistan’s favourite Indian cricketers…

Sachin Tendulkar 49

Sourav Ganguly 12

Rahul Dravid 11

Virender Sehwag 5

Mahendra Singh Dhoni 4

Pakistan’s favourite Hindi film actors…

Shah Rukh Khan 38

Salman Khan 12

Amitabh Bachchan 12

Ajay Devgan 7

Sanjay Dutt 6

Pakistan’s favourite Hindi film actresses…

Aishwarya Rai 26

Rani Mukherjee 13

Madhuri Dixit 13

Kajol 12

Kareena Kapoor 5

Pakistan’s favourite Indian singers…

Lata Mangeshkar 33

Mohammed Rafi 14

Himesh Reshammiya 11

Sonu Nigam 9

Kumar Sanu 5

Indians would like to visit…

Karachi

31

Lahore

29

Islamabad - Rawalpindi

10

Pakistanis would like to visit…

Mumbai

32

Delhi

27

Agra

9

Survey methodology

THE Indian Express-CNN-IBN-Dawn-CSDS “State of the Nation Survey” was designed and analysed by the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, Delhi. The findings are based on a purely urban sample of 2,030 respondents in India and 1,011 respondents in Pakistan. The findings represent the views, opinions and attitudes of urban India and urban Pakistan and not a cross-section of population in the two countries.

In Pakistan, the sample was drawn from the top 10 cities in terms of population, while in India the sample was drawn from the top 20 cities. The number of interviews conducted in each city is in proportion to the population of the city. There were more interviews from bigger cities such as Mumbai, Delhi, Karachi and Lahore than in cities like Lucknow, Patna and Quetta. In Pakistan, the interviews were randomly conducted in 40 locations in the sampled cities, and in India the respondents were randomly interviewed across 136 locations. Keeping in mind the diversity within the urban population, the locations were selected in order to get a representative sample in terms of gender, economic classes, age groups and caste-communities. Muslims were over sampled in India, as their number in a probability sample would have been too small. But the findings presented are based on a weighted data set, which adjusts for the over sampled cases. The sample comprised 43 per cent women in India, and 50 per cent women in Pakistan.

In India, apart from the national sample, 523 additional interviews (booster sample) were conducted among members of families affected by the Partition. The booster sample was drawn from Delhi, Hyderabad, Amritsar, Calcutta, Lucknow and Mumbai. A special survey was also conducted in Jammu and Srinagar to assess people’s opinion on issues and problems related to the state. A total of 255 interviews were conducted in Jammu and 226 interviews in Srinagar. The sample in J&K included 40 per cent women respondents, 40 per cent Hindus and 60 per cent Muslims.

The fieldwork was conducted from July 25-August 6. More than 150 investigators and supervisors in both the countries conducted face to face interviews at the place of residence of the respondent using a standard-structured questionnaire in the language spoken and understood by the respondent.

Sanjay Kumar of the CSDS directed the survey. AC Nielsen conducted the fieldwork in Pakistan. Nielsen’s involvement was limited to data collection and processing.

In India, the field work was coordinated by K C Suri (Andhra Pradesh), Rakesh Ranjan (Bihar), Kinjal Sampat (Delhi), Priyavdan M Patel (Gujarat), Rekha Chowdhary & Gul Mohammed Wani (Jammu & Kashmir), B S Padmavathi (Karnataka), Ram Shankar (Madhya Pradesh), Nitin Birmal (Maharashtra), Ashutosh Kumar & Jagroop Sekhon (Punjab), Sanjay Lodha (Rajasthan), G Koteswara Prasad (Tamil Nadu), A K Verma (Uttar Pradesh) and Suprio Basu (West Bengal). The team that designed and analysed the survey at CSDS comprised Yogendra Yadav, Sanjeer Alam, Praveen Rai, Dhananjai Joshi, Vikas Gautam, Himanshu Bhattacharya, K A Q A Hilal and Kanchan Malhotra.