Doing Good and Do-Gooders

"It's all very well for do-gooder Scandinavian types to try to nudge them together, but it's not going to mean much. It's just symbolic, with protocol gestures."
Burzine Waghmar, South Asia Institute, School of Oriental and African Studies, London

"The Nobel Committee regards it as an important point for a Hindu and a Muslim, an Indian and a Pakistani, to join in a common struggle for education and against extremism."
Nobel Committee declaring winners of the Nobel Peace Prize

"Alone, Malala [Yousafzai] and [Kailash] Satyarthi are both great individuals whose work in education with young people links them. But it's too simplistic to boil down their identities to Hindus, Muslims, Indians and Pakistanis -- and makes them part of their national jingoism, which neither have chosen to do."
Nikita Sud, associate professor of development studies, University of Oxford

"It is a nice gesture, but I don't think this will have any real impact."
"This does reflect in the seriousness of the problem, but the malice between the two countries is too deep for such symbolism to carry much weight."
N. Bhaskara Rao, chairman, Centre for Media Studies, Delhi

Hindu-majority India's indigenous Muslim population stands at a whopping 138-million, out of an entire population of 1.252 billion, while the total population of 182-million Pakistanis holds 2.5-million Hindus, most of them lower-cast Dalit who at with partition in 1947, were unable to make the journey to India, a relocation that saw millions of people, both Hindu and Muslim, migrate from one country to the other, to live in the majority-religious country reflecting their religion.

During that historical partition of India when Pakistan was born and the exchange of people took place, a paroxysm of religious hatred took centre stage as Hindus and Muslims attacked one another crossing into the new border when British rule came to an end in India, resulting in the deaths of millions of people. Now, 80% Hindu-dominated India and 97% Muslim-dominated Pakistan both possess nuclear weapons stockpiles and the bitter relations that led to three wars still dominate.

Relations between Hindus and Muslims in each of the countries remain restive, to say the very least. But it is India and always has been India that has made the effort to ensure that relations not be strained from within their populations. And it has been Pakistan, always Pakistan, that has encouraged the rise of Islamist groups to terrorize their neighbours, around the flashpoint of Kashmir as each country aspires to 100% the territory in Kashmir.

AFP Photo

"We want India and Pakistan to have good relations, and the tension that is going on is really disappointing. It's very important that the countries have peace. This is how they are going to progress."
"This award is for all those children who are voiceless, whose voices need to be heard. I speak for them. And I join them in their campaign. They have rights. They have the right to receive quality education, they have the right not to suffer from child labour, not to suffer from child trafficking. They have the right to live a happy life."
Malala Yousafzai

The lesser-known Mr. Satyarthi has devoted his life to freeing thousands of children from slave-labour conditions, and as leader of the rights group he founded Bachpan Bachao Andolan, and director of the South Asia Coalition Child servitude, he strenuously advocates for child-labour reforms. As a vigorous campaigner for human rights he has faced down threats whose scope can be imagined by the fact that at least two people who worked alongside him have been murdered.

"Child slavery is a crime against humanity. Humanity itself is at stake here. A lot of work still remains but I will see the end of child labour in my lifetime", the 60-year-old stated with conviction.

Kailash Satyarthi has fought child labour for decades. Khannachandan Khanna/AFP/Getty Images

India's new Prime Minister Narendra Modi invited his Pakistan counterpart to his May investiture. This was yet another time when it seemed to the world that relations between the two countries might finally warm. Yet the Nobel announcement came at the time of still another number of skirmishes between the Pakistani and Indian armies over their unending competition respecting Kashmir. Each claiming the other provoked the violence.

For his part, Pakistan's Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif an Islamist, made an effort to cool down the situation, stating that "war is not an option". His office released a statement that went a little further: "It is a shared responsibility of the leadership of both countries to immediately defuse the situation." Yet it is never India that provokes hostility and violence against Pakistan; rather Pakistan encourages Islamist militias to attack India, as Lashkar-e-Taiba, with connections to Pakistan's military attacked Mumbai in 2008.

So, from the Nobel Committee's wish that conferring such a prize on members of each country whose outstanding humanitarian work to give a voice to vulnerable children, would somehow have a magical effect on lifting the pathologies at play between two countries living beside one another as restive neighbours harbouring suspicion and rancour against one another, hope, it seems, really does spring eternal.

Whether the 'feel-good' moment will last more than a week is another story. India's Prime Minister Modi offered his congratulations to both Nobel Peace Laureates. Pakistan's Prime Minister Sharif congratulated Malala alone, as he text -messaged reporters from his office.