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Comment by deepGem | Hacker News Reader

Couldn't agree more. However, for Pakistan and it's people, hatred towards India is a way of life. That's their inspiration, that's what they live up to. They possibly don't have any economic, social or technical goals to look up to. In such a scenario they naturally turns to religion and religious leaders feed this hatred mantra. Hence hatred becomes their living breath. Of course, this is all hearsay and I haven't personally been to Pakistan to witness any such feelings.

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I am 4 short of 500 karma, so I can't give you a downvote - instead, I make this comment. I'm an Indian, and I find it very hard to believe that an entire nation unequivocally hates another country. Firstly, there are plenty of educated, curious and free-thinking Pakistanis who bear no such hatred toward India - just read the blogs in the Dawn website. Second, among those who aren't educated nearly well enough, I imagine that the preoccupation with day-to-day survival is far more important to them than the hatred that they are told they should feel toward a remote enemy.

On a meta note, why is this still on the front page? This is worse than politics - any discussion of this will devolve into vague statements(in the absence of actual knowledge or data) about how one country is better than the other and then rapidly into name-calling and jingoism. I hope we can keep this type of story away from HN.

I echo spiffworks.

Well, to put things into perspective, a couple of years back I asked a pakistani cab driver if this 'anti India' sentiment is prevalent in Pakistan and he gave an unequivocal yes. He belongs to the free-thinking tribe. What I've said here is based on his anecdotes and that's why I said it's hearsay.

"Second, among those who aren't educated nearly well enough, I imagine that the preoccupation with day-to-day survival is far more important to them than the hatred that they are told they should feel toward a remote enemy" - For a majority of such people, day to dy survival is nothing but breathing and showing hatred towards India. How else does militancy grow and survive ? India is right next door to Pakistan, nothing remote about that.

hear hear

You seem to be disagreeing with Taseer's article, yet you give no concrete reasons or evidence -- only anecdotes. Do you also find it very hard to believe that Pakistan's hugely wasteful military is an artefact of its drummed-up animosity toward India?

I don't disagree with the article per se, I disagree with this method people seem to have of painting a large and diverse country with a single brush. I am entirely ignorant of Pakistan's inner workings, so I don't have an opinion on the article itself, other than noticing the obvious logical flaw and the fact that this article and its discussion are entirely inappropriate for HN.

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