HOW THIS BORDER TRANSFORMED A SUBCONTINENT | Vox | Reaction | Jaby Koay & Achara

hello people i'm jaby kawai joined by acharya the kirk hello and we're going to look at how this border transformed a subcontinent india and pakistan this is from vox's youtube channel and um wow this is going to be an interesting video the story of how a hastily drawn line divided one people into two who drew that line of tire kirk uh who drew that line it's probably my peoples i'm sorry i apologize [Music] okay [Music] wow that's pretty this is the golden temple oh my god people come here from all over the world to bathe in its waters to look at the holy book that is inside of this middle golden temple and to just experience the holiness of this place wow this place is the epicenter of sikhism it sits right here in northern india in a city called amritsar close by there's another important site called katarpur it was established by the founder of sikhism 500 years ago it's the place where he spent the last years of his life and it is the second holiest place in sikhism wow for centuries sikhs have been able to make pilgrimage between these two sites to move freely throughout their heartland but in 1947 a british lawyer drew a border here turning what had been british india into two new countries india and pakistan i can only call it the most sort of bizarre lines which were ever drawn across a map it went right here with the golden temple on one side and qatar on the other thanks to this border sikhs in india are now cut off from their holy site jesus so many come here to a platform that the border patrol set [Music] up oh that's so sad oh they can only look at it the platform looks across the border where with the help of telescopes sikhs can look at their holy place just like crying [Music] in addition to cutting off communities from their sacred sites this border separated families cut across rivers forests farms railroad tracks today this border is heavily fortified with nearly all 3 000 plus kilometers fenced it's lit so well that you can see it from space wow and barely anything or anyone crosses over it when we talk about the drawing of the line what was the most painful was a division of families which took place and that is a very big reality this is the story of a violent separation one of the most traumatic events of the 20th century it's the story of how a hastily drawn lying on a map separated one people into two this is a horror story what we saw was the town soaked with the stench of death in the trail of murder and arsenal come the refugees their suffering is the new tragedy of india many will never reach their new land these are the things that are setting the heart burning on either side of the line [Music] the sun is setting and i'm walking along one of the oldest roads in asia one that used to connect this region but today a border runs through it and instead of connection and trade what you see here is this [Music] there's barbed wire there's fences there are officers everywhere and yet there's also ice cream and popcorn and paraphernalia this feels like a sporting event [Music] you can buy keychains of machine guns [Music] thousands of spectators file in filling this stadium that looks down on the border that's where they do the dance on the other side pakistanis are doing the same [Music] then both sides start their different [Music] show two hours of chanting dancing [Applause] then the finale a face-off between the two sides yeah oh wow they strut back and forth in this coordinated choreography and it all ends with the lowering of each flag and the closing of this gate [Music] this bizarre border show plays out every evening but this ceremony this fence this intense nationalism if you were whined just a little in time none of this existed [Music] the british controlled parts of india for nearly 200 years but by 1947 a strong movement of independence was swelling across the subcontinent while back in britain the country was in massive debt after fighting world war ii and didn't have the resources to hold on to their colony so they started making plans to leave india british officials thought that a proper transfer of power would probably take around five years but when the british leader in charge arrived in early 1947 he hastily decided to shrink their exit timeline and so what needed five years would now need to be done in just four months wow british india was to be split into two independent nations a mostly muslim pakistan and a hindu majority but officially secular india to do the actual drawing of the border the british brought in a lawyer from london he arrived the month before the british were supposed to leave india jesus christ been to british india before and didn't know much about the region he had no idea about india no idea about indian geography no idea about indian politics and yet he was the one drawing the lines on the map that would affect millions of lives that's so so stupid jesus lawyer looked at maps and census data focusing on the maps that showed religious identity of people in india india has a wide variety of religions and based on these census maps you can see that people of all religions lived amongst each other all over the region so to draw the line the british lawyer looked at individual districts putting any district that had a muslim majority population into the new country of pakistan while hindu and sikh majority districts would be kept within india based on this method the lawyer began to see what a border might look like he only had five weeks to do this he later wrote that it would have taken years to settle on a proper boundary and that's because this method of drawing the line conceals that within these districts there were sizeable communities of all religions that had been living side by side for centuries all throughout india august 15 1947 independence day for india and pakistan but gandhi is not present the british lawyer left that day he would never return to india again two days after independence the borders were made public prompting more than 14 million people to leave their homes their lives for what was now their side of the border we were told that you have to cross the border india hindus and sikhs from pakistan moved into india and many muslims in india moved into the new these pakistani people who were indeed forced to lose their entire homes their memories their childhood and the things they saw it was one of the largest forced migrations of people ever and it was chaos a chaos that led to widespread unspeakable violence cities on fire sexual violence against women trains full of dead bodies the survivors i talked to were just children when all of this the division of the subcontinent became known as the partition of india a phrase synonymous with trauma fueled by the reckless mismanagement of an imperial power [Music] i'm in a small village right near the border on the indian side that used to be a muslim community before partitioning [Music] and in the middle of town is this shrine where residents would conduct ornate muslim burial practices on these graves [Music] if you look at the original maps that the british drew up when they were trying to draw this line this town was actually in pakistan in most of the maps but in the end the british lawyer decided to draw the line here the people here discovered that they were now a part of the new country of india and so many of them fled just across the border to the new state of pakistan and they left this place empty but just as muslims were leaving this village for the new pakistan hindus and sikhs from pakistan were coming across into india and some ended up here the hindus and sikhs that now live in this community have taken it upon themselves to continue the muslim traditions that this community was based off of they continue to maintain these graves and these symbols even though they don't necessarily pertain to their own religions [Music] this is a sign of respect of common identity in spite of the border but this is just one side of the story the subcontinent echoes and shutters to the sounds of a full-scale undeclared war within just a few months of drawing this border india and pakistan were fighting an all-out war one that centered on this region in the north which both sides claimed as their own the new countries would fight several more wars over the years a border fence would eventually fortify the majority of this boundary and both countries would acquire nuclear weapons turning up the tensions and deepening the division [Music] but if you take away the geopolitical bluster the nukes the barrier the trauma of partition you can still see how much these two countries have in common i'm at a school in delhi students are skyping with a school in pakistan that's nice [Music] [Music] these kids are speaking a similar language and it takes them just minutes to dive into the common roots of their culture [Music] this shared identity that these kids are feeling isn't uncommon in india or pakistan same language same taste same food whereas hindus and muslims and sikhs used to live together attend each other's social functions marriages everything and why this divide now if you stand in the wall city in amritsar and you stand in the wall city in lahore believe me the smells which is a kind of giveaway are the same [Music] [Music] i'm visiting a group of sikhs coming off the train they were able to get a visa to go visit this religious site that most have to see through a telescope so with all these cultural similarities all these happy faces shared interests how do you explain this you see it is a politician who poisons people's minds [Music] nurtured fostered because it suits a certain politics over the years politicians on both sides have exploited tension with the other side to stoke feelings of nationalism [Music] back here at this viewing platform there's construction vehicles everywhere for years the sikhs have lobbied for easier access to their holy site and after years the two governments finally agreed to build a little notch into this border a corridor that will allow sikhs to freely access their site without a visa these fourth kilometers will restore a small part of what was once the scene there's a lot of security around that though but for millions of indians and pakistanis who continue to live with the repercussions of the traumatic events of 1947 this fortified and volatile border remains unchanged if anything it's getting thicker 70 years later the shadow of partition continues to divide families help trade cut connections stop cooperation instill fear promote hatred and the people who live in its shadow on both sides old and young continue to live with this division that superimposed upon their history of deep connection [Music] yeah that was really emotional oh my god i'm done oh yeah goddamn brits yeah that was a whole messy situation and like obviously i don't know all the history to it but it seems like had they been able to do it over five years or a matter of years as they had intended originally then maybe something better could have been figured out i don't know why the timeline changed to four months uh money or maybe that he didn't want to be there the guy who was in charge of that whole situation he was like five years ah four months you know he just wanted to get out it's either that like impatience or money one or the other would inform that like why else would you cut the timeline so hard why was it so necessary to be so hasty they brought in a dude who didn't have enough time to like really investigate the situation and would probably draw i don't know why they wouldn't have added someone from the indian side too but maybe that's just because it's an imperial mindset of like we can do it better when really they should have had someone or a team of people who really deeply understood the the country the geography and the culture and just kind of been able to give their two cents a while back we tried to put out a reaction from aib with indians and pakistanis talking about each other and to each other yeah and i thought it was a very interesting video and i wanted to put it out but like the affiliate company with aib blocked it and we might do another reaction to it uh at some point and try to put it out again it was so long ago i thought it was a nice video i'm all about peace i'm all about like uniting people i get the tension that exists today and i get the the vitriol that some people feel even for me this is before the whole indian thing when i found out that osama bin laden was like just hiding out in pakistan i'm like what there are lots of videos that i don't know how valid or how accurate these videos are that i've watched but they talk about the terrorists that are harbored within pakistan and how the military it's a military-controlled country and then pakistan is right to me and they're like no that's not true that's all like hysterical media and uh what do you call it propaganda basically you know it's it's all lies according to pakistanis that right into me and i'm like well i don't i don't know what to believe but this is what india is telling me this is what the american media is telling me those are two data points so to speak yeah i mean i mean i guess the truth is always somewhere in the middle i just wish that there was a way to patch things up because when you see stuff like this you're reminded that indians and pakistanis are essentially brothers and sisters like they're from the same family and it's like it's such a deep-rooted fight between people that are of the same blood when someone is from a wildly different country from your own like let's say america and afghanistan right you know even though we all come from the same primordial soup you go far back enough you can sort of understand that tension a little bit more there's not overlapping blood as much but whereas indian pakistan is like yo just like a grandmother ago you guys are the same people oh you still have relatives who go back and forth and it's like you can't see them that's the thing that really distressed me the most and just made me really sad was just watching the news footage of partition i mean like when we watched the movie bharat and we saw that and that was traumatizing that really hit me and just to watch that like real footage of that happening and hearing firsthand those accounts it's horrifying to think like to have to leave your home where like your ancestors grew up and you like home is such an important concept you know and to then have to be like oh no like we don't even have time to pack you have to go now right and like looking at these old people who are telling these stories and going like oh i remember seeing these bloody bodies and like trains full of dead people and they were kids and that stays in your mind forever yeah and it's just so disturbing and distressing and just so so sad and and watching the sikhs be so close to their holy site they can't they can only look at it and yeah and not be able to go and it's like obscured in construction and stuff like that yeah although i mean that might have something to do with the little path that they're building which is positive i imagine there's going to be so much security around that it's going to be damn near uncomfortable that level of security that's a breach in your wall yeah and you're trusting people to tell you the truth and be like okay yeah i'm definitely sick it just takes one person with bad intentions to mess all that up to ruin it forever and that's that's what scares me is that one selfish individual who's going to ruin it for everyone i don't mean this like in a fun sense but like ruin the party for everybody that is really sad it was very interesting the the bit where they're maintaining the temple that isn't even of their religion that was so beautiful to me like i feel like the more i learn about seek religion the level of altruism that is so intrinsic in the religion and in the culture and the respect for other people who don't necessarily believe the same thing as you i'm like wow like mad love and respect for this religion that champions that i know that there's a lot of people in our audience who are very very strong modi supporters so please take what i'm saying with a grain of salt i'll just use america as my jumping off point into this bit in the conversation but war is profitable conflict is profitable and there is a lot of profit in patriotism somehow it's made its way into the zeitgeist that you can't say anything bad about the military here it's like everyone's like oh yeah you know and praise our troops even colin kaepernick taking a knee right that was so disrespectful right but even though that was told to him as far as i know from a soldier as a respectful way to protest even bill burris called it i was like not all of them are good you know some of them are jerks if you don't praise the military here you are anti-american yeah you're not a patriot and so you'll get outcasted for that kind of talk and that's just crazy to me like we're supposed to be a free country with free speech but you can't say anything about the military at all now i'm in support of people putting their lives on the line and in effort to like maintain my freedoms i totally respect that and appreciate that it's not something i've done you know it's other people are doing it on our behalf what concerns me is the overlap into extreme patriotism jingoism or you know it's like that freaks me out just a little bit because we end up having that our clubs you know our tribes and it's like your tribe is bad and then we end up wanting to like murder the other tribe and throw stones at them to knock them out you know it's like that freaks me out a little bit i get [ __ ] from pakistani fans sometimes just because like of the things that i believe pakistan is doing maybe i'm wrong i just feel like there's a lot of weird [ __ ] going on over there and maybe it would have been different if the brits handled that differently if they handled it with a little bit more patience and diligence like they basically ran the [ __ ] place for 200 years and they're just gonna up and leave overnight that's really stupid like that's inconsiderate to the people who you've basically been hemorrhaging for all their resources and pillaging them it's like yeah and i'm not sure why exactly they decided to do the two countries i i seem to have to do with the leaders something about like they wanted to separately it was it had to do if i'm not mistaken it had to do with gandhi yeah and he was approached by muslim leaders and they said they wanted their own territory so they somehow made a deal for the muslims to have their own area the way that was all divided was [ __ ] because like there was east and west pakistan it's like you're just trying to make this awful that's why the other pakistan became what was it became wrong with us bangladesh it's like what are you doing yeah the country is separated by a wide area of land yeah it's so strange to me that this one dude made this decision and then millions and millions of people have to deal with the repercussions of that and no one can fix this the one glimmer of hope that i really enjoyed with this documentary when they showed the children from new delhi and lahore having the conversation that like that melted my heart because they're so innocent right they have a lot of curiosity and this great capacity for love and acceptance and i think it's really great that the schools are like reaching out in that way and teaching the children like hey you know we're not that different after all look at how much we have in common like see them hear them talk to them show them your food and your culture and yeah we're literally just brothers and sisters it's an effort to instill empathy before the rest of the world gets its hands on your mind yeah on on these innocent malleable minds because that's what will happen between stuff that's put out on youtube and the news and whatnot a lot of information is thrown your way and they're just gobbling it up like a soaking it up like a sponge yeah because they're like a fresh hard drive with information to just dump on them and so it's great that these teachers are doing that i wish that there were more programs in place to continue that stuff into adulthood so that people maintain that empathy for one another even um i was on the live stream that you were helping out with i was just randomly talking to fans who were chatting with us i was doing uh youtube and instagram at the same time youtube live instagram live so that people from youtube live could do a face chat with me on instagram that everyone can watch and one of them was a pakistani dude who lives in like chicago or something like that and immediately someone in the comments was like get this pakistani off of here it's like he's a nice guy he's not even doing anything wrong he's a fan of indian movies like don't you want indian movies to be loved everywhere like why do you have such an issue with this guy who has nothing to do with any of the problems that you've experienced from pakistanis so it's just interesting like that kind of deep rooted vitriol i do hope that there's a way someday that there's more unity you know and less vitriol but one can only hope

Channel: jaby koay

Views: 453,126

Rating: 4.7801557 out of 5

Keywords: anthony alba, jaby koay, jabykoay, jaby, achara kirk, achara, trailer, reaction

Id: 7_ZLMndhopc

Length: 26min 39sec (1599 seconds)

Published: Sun Aug 16 2020