Being informal, Bilawal quickly made a short comment: “You’re an idiot. Indus River and Sindhu River are the same rivers, they are only called different names. The people of the Indus Valley Civilization lived in all of Pakistan. Then he goes into history about the name “Indus,” and how it is an ancient Persian and Greek word for “Sindhu.” What Bilawal is pointing out here is that there is no one place where the river, and its name, and its history is located..
Fawad’s Counterpunch
Fawad even suggested that the new history was a political maneuver. He said that Bilawal was, in many ways, a bad leader, and that he was just given it—by way of birth/ancestry—not a proper election agenda. That idea made the contest much more personal.
This is key
This contest shows that political discourse in Pakistan is much worse than we think. The Indus River, which is much more than a geographic place but is also a lifestyle, cultural and identity many parts of the globe connect to, it a small comment regarding cultural aspects of politics can take it to heart.
There is also a trend: people are getting angry and things are getting heated on social media. Politicians quickly began to argue about Sindhu’s claim that it’s an old name.
The Main Point
A message that began as a worldwide celebration of a legal victory morphed into a personal attack and a dispute over the past. It highlights how hard it may be to think about who you are when you look at it from a political and social media point of view.
Pakistan has to deal with many tough challenges like regional stability, and its own water rights. When we communicate, we should think about being concise, respectful and contextual; these are tips that we need to be all three.
Fawad and Bilawal’s discussion is still a public political performance at this stage, but it demonstrates the essential nature of individuals being able to communicate about acting on politics peacefully. The person who habitates is as important as what can be saying if a country’s shared history, is that that could define it as a country.
