Hahaha I love how you pointed that out, because despite any anti-India sentiments some Paki folks have, you can guarantee they’re still going to tune in for the next episode of Pavitra Rishta (or at least if they’re anything like my grandma).

Yeah I guess the level of ignorance is the same as the way alot of westerners probably think of muslims as a bunch of hat-wearing prayer-freaks who blow themselves up all the time.

well personally I don’t think it’s fair to say that because pakistan is such a poor country so people’s access to the media and higher education is very limited. Lack of exposure to other cultures naturally breeds ignorance. Here in America we don’t have much of an excuse for being ignorant about the rest of the world (not saying all Americans are like that but some of us are).

Indians would naturally interact mostly with the pro-Indian Pakistanis’ anyway. The feeling you get interacting with the locals in a major city like Karachi is completely different than you would get in a small Balochi village where as far as the locals are concerned, they live in Balochistan and India is just some faraway land with people of a strange cow-worshipping religion. You’d be surprised how little some Paki’s know about their neighbors to the East.

http://www.nation.com.pk/pakistan-news-newspaper-daily-english-online/Opinions/Editorials/10-Dec-2010/Indias-true-face

The whistleblower website WikiLeaks, which has ruffled many a feather for exposing the inner feelings of important personalities on the world’s political stage, has put its seal of confirmation on the genocide of the people of Pakistan Occupied Kashmir struggling to get out of the stranglehold of Pakistan’s illegal occupation of their homeland. Leaders of the liberation struggle in Pakistan Occupied Kashmir, in particular Hafiz Saeed, have been raising a hue and cry against the inhumanities the Pakistani security forces are committing freely to suppres the voice of freedom.

As I say, I haven’t been and it is all anecdotal but just thought I would throw it in there.

First article: Top Test Scores From Shanghai Stun Educators (NY times) The result of the most recent PISA stun the educator of the world and command much attention in western media. Somehow, Indian media/blogs seem to avoid reporting this report, you cannot find any Indian news outlets that report and analyse this result. I tried it, TOI, Rediff, Outlook, The Hindu, ………… none of them report a word of it. For a country that obsesses about China, that is a rather odd response, it feel like Indian media try to ignore this news and shield Indian from insecure feeling and pretend it didn’t exist. But without knowing what we are up against, how can we improve. American don’t lack the courage to face it. Indian want to bury their head in the sand.

Second article: Tata’s Nano, the Car That Few Want to Buy The game-changer, pride of India, great invention, somehow flame out. Like the $10 laptop, it turned out quite different from what was promised.

The habit to look the other way when we encounter problems and only report feel good news seem to be alive and well.

I agree with this – I have noticed this in Balochistan, in Karachi, in Multan, amongst Paki immigrants in the US even…

They should realize that India has outgrown them by so much; India’s infrastructure is much superior; the HUMAN CAPITAL in India is much more superior; and Masjids/Sufi shrines are NOT getting bombed in India. Also, Pakistan, in the psyche of our mind’s, is equated to terrorists and trouble-makers with little regards to progress. India, in our collective consciousness, is that fun-loving, peace-loving, and studious student who is a loyal and secular friend.

The stereotype you mentioned about terrorists/trouble makers vs progress was further cemented in my mind after visiting Pakistan, and discovering it is very much like its neighbor to the West…I don’t feel hopeful about Afghanistan or Pakistan. The impression I got there was that they (I mean common everyday Pakis, not the Govt) distance themselves from Indians, and tend to ally themselves culturally with all the Muslim countries to the west. They regard India’s rapid progress as Westernization, while they admire the Sunni fundamentalism of places like Saudi Arabia. In regards to what you said about Bengladeshis being ok with their Indic culture; well Bangladesh benefits from its location between India and East Asia, regions which are rapidly modernizing, whereas Pakistan borders Iran and the shit-hole that is modern day eastern Afghanistan.