India and Pakistan

Salil Tripati compares the two uneasy neighbors who began self-rule at the same time 60 years ago, in an IHT article:

One could argue Pakistan had little choice, once it had chosen to be a theocracy. The more Pakistani society modernized, the more its people sought freedom, the more Pakistan would begin to look like India. But being like India was not the point of the Partition: The point was to create a home for the subcontinent's Muslims, who were presumably unsafe in India. But while India has a shameful record of riots in which many Muslims have died, and many Muslims lead lives of utter destitution (but then so do many Hindus and others, too), it was also electing Muslims as presidents, appointing them to head the air force, to the supreme court, and Muslims dominated Bollywood, played cricket for India, and founded multimillion dollar companies. In Pakistan, the record of advances for minorities was poorer.

Faith alone could not bind Pakistan, in any case. East Pakistan went its own way, becoming Bangladesh in 1971 after a civil war that killed over 300,000 civilians. In 1984, the astute British author of Pakistani origin, Tariq Ali, raised pertinent questions about his former home in a book called "Can Pakistan Survive?" A year later, M. J. Akbar, an Indian writer, wrote a sobering yet sunny book about India, called "The Siege Within," suggesting that despite its internal turmoil, the country would hold together because its democratic form permitted dissent.