The other day I was scrolling through all the recommendations on YouTube, and I landed on the trailer of Kaafir. Kaafir is a ZEE5 original series about a mother and her kid who are imprisoned in India and are looking for hope to get back to their home, Pakistan.
The trailer hit me hard, and I was left with deep thoughts about the things that are happening around us. It made me realise how we have been taking the independence that we have with us for granted. The trailer made me look for more such stories in real life where people have longed to return back to India from Pakistan.
Here are some stories from India and Pakistan that will incite your human nature, giving you some major #HumanityIsMyReligion goals. Spoiler Alert: Unlike most movies, not all the stories have a happy ending, so I would advise you to keep some tissues handy.
Fatima and Hina Rehman
There is a reason as to why I put a spoiler alert in the intro because the story of Fatima and Hina is sure to bring tears to even those who are stone-hearted. Fatima and her sister Mumtaaz were given a 10-year jail sentence for drug trafficking in India. During that time, Fatima gave birth to her daughter Hina, who was kept in the Amritsar Jail till she turned 11. Despite her being born in India, the Pakistan government assured to grant citizenship to Hina in 2017.
After covering a sentence of 10 years, Hina finally got to meet her dad and family for the first time, all thanks to the charity club that could pay the fine of four lakh rupees on their behalf. I can’t imagine what that little kid might have gone through all these years. But despite all her struggles, the girl aims to become a doctor so that she helps as many as she can. The story of Fatima and Hina is up for reading on the BBC website.
Kulbhushan Jadhav
Pakistan calls him a spy from India but India maintains that he is an ex-Navy officer who isn’t in touch with the government for years. Either way, Kulbhushan Jadhav’s life is on the line after he got arrested in Pakistan on charges of espionage. While the discussion of him being a spy can go on and on, his case has been in the limelight for a while now, especially when he was supposed to be sentenced to death. Besides, Indians were highly annoyed the way Pakistan ill-treated his visiting family. War and espionage set aside, can’t we be human enough to let a family meet their loved one in peace. For all they knew, it could have been the last time.
Sarabjit Singh
He is yet another Indian national who was convicted by the Pakistan Government for terrorism and spying. Though he was sentenced to death by the Lahore High Court, the sentence was repeatedly postponed by the Pakistan Government. While his death sentence was still at the fence, he was brutally murdered by his fellow inmates and died after six days at the Jinnah Hospital at Lahore. After his body was sent back to India, Indian doctors did a postmortem on him which revealed that most of his vital organs were missing.
As soon as the news of Sarabjit’s death hit the headlines, it caused an outrage in India. From public to politicians, everyone wanted India to take steps to not only bring justice to his death but also to safeguard the lives of other Indian prisoners in Pakistan. A biopic titled ‘Sarabjit‘ was released in 2016, highlighting his and his family’s struggles.
Gajanand Sharma
This was quite a mystery tale I tell you and a great one at that. The tale of a man named Gajanand Sharma who was released from the Pakistan prison after 36 years shook the world to its core. The strangest part was that his family did not know his whereabouts and thought he was dead for so many years. He was imprisoned in 1982 and was kept captive at the Lahore Jail for 36 years. Of all the people, it was his son Mukesh who was very happy to see his father again. He was just 12 years old when his father went missing. Just thinking about how his family would have felt to see him after so many years is enough to leave most of us sobbing.
It is stories like these that compel us to relook at all the things that separate us as humans.
At the end of the day, humanity is the only evident religion that deserves to exist in today’s society. #HumanityIsMyReligion
