Today marks Pakistan's Independence Day , 14 August, and tomorrow is India's Independence Day. My own birthday is 13 August a day before these days of the Indian sub continent's violent Partition, a carving up of lands, peoples, and cultures, a very bloody and painful

birth, delivered by an inept British midwife. These days are painful to conjure. Pakistani generals have locked this country into a permanent war with India, a country we share a 1000 km border. Yes we are meant to be in a war with the same land

and peoples of the subcontinent. We are prisoners of this imagination of war. Unbelievably , this imagination became wilder and recently unveiled a map that has swallowed up Jammu and Kashmir and even Junagadh, a state who we gave up

trying to acquire during the 1947 Batwara (division). So, Pakistan has not only declared victory over Kashmir but also the Corona Pandemic, self proclaimed, which reminds me of 1984's citizens who live in Oceania where propaganda

is relentlessly broadcasted in a constant state of war, where truth is constantly being recycled. Tragically, in this moment, India is moving further into a Hindu Republic, from an identity of a secular state at birth in 1947.

The Indian PM laid the foundations of the Ram Temple on the site of the Babri Mosque and presided over a lengthy religious ceremony (and how interesting that our real Turkish brothers and sisters are now saying prayers in the Haghia Sophia,

slapping history and putting it in its rightful place, insolent child that it is) . We are in a tragic post colonial moment, an embodiment of the British project of divide and rule, of the communalism they sowed the seeds for. Pakistan

consolidated a Muslim nation state back in 1947 and, India has now consolidated a Hindu state. While the Jinnah apologists fall over each other crying for a lost dream within an apparent dream of a secular Pakistan, much like how Jahanara Begum

keeps re-arranging the "furniture" of her guest room from Angan Tera, we are still living in the Partitioned Subcontinent, we are still living a post colonial nightmare, we are now permanent religious and thought minorities and the communalism is victorious.

So, happy independence and don't forget there is an Azadi Sale going on in your nearby Khaadi store or Daraz.