What divides us in today’s ‘global’ world?

The obvious replies tend to be race, religion, nationality, caste, and creed.

What if two individuals belong to the same race, religion, nation, caste and creed? What can further divide them?

How about the place of living? Well, for argument sake, I am from British Columbia (BC) and you are from Ontario, so you are “different”. Does this “difference” mean you have no right to be in BC or have ties back to Ontario?

That’s precisely the question India faced the past week when a politician from the central state of Maharashtra, Raj Thackeray, questioned the work being done by a leading Bollywood actor in his northern home state, Uttar Pradesh.

Mumbai city in Maharashtra is home to the Indian film industry, commonly referred to as Bollywood.

The actor, Amitabh Bachchan announced his plans to open a girls’ school in Uttar Pradesh. Thackeray wasn’t happy. “Are there no girls in Maharashtra”, the politician questioned. Within moments, his ‘party workers’ were out on the streets, targeting Bachchan’s house and assaulting ‘migrants from north’ on Mumbai streets, stating they had no right to be in Mumbai.

Media and politicians from different parties were quick to denounce Thackeray’s comments and started a nationwide debate about “belonging”.

All Thackeray, an admirer of Hitler, was trying to do was – get attention for his party he founded a couple of years ago. He did get it and a police complaint against him.

Like in my previous post, ‘What’s violence chasing in Kenya?

’, I looked at how political aspirations have led to violence on ethnic divide.

Politicians always find fissures that seemingly divide us. Erase one and you find another one. Then you use that divide to bring people together, as a vote bank.

Things seem to be under control in Pakistan. So it seems if you agree with Pakistan’s President Pervez Musharraf.

I couldn’t help but get amused at Musharraf’s statements on his recent Europe tour.

He said everything was fine.

Mr. President, what about the political instability in the country? Calls to step down by retired Pakistani army officers? How about fair elections? Putting judges back to court? And finally answering – who killed Benazir Bhutto?

How do you answer that? Or do away with these questions without hiding?

Pakistani government seems to have found an easy way out, at least, at home. A recent news report on BBC.com talks of the “missing TV presenters”. After the emergency rule was lifted, the TV channels are on air, minus the presenters who expressed opinions or could do so.

As President Musharraf continues to try and build an image of a leader-in-control, shaking hands with leaders all over Europe, he forgot the first stop of public relations – the media, especially the homegrown media.

Allegation of poll rigging in last month’s presidential election started the spate of violence in Kenya. The clashes between members of Luos and Kikuyus tribes in Kenya’s Rift Valley have claimed lives of close to a thousand people.

Opposition and some independent observers say that elections were rigged to ensure that President Mwai Kibaki is re-elected to the office. Kikuyus are loyal to Kibaki and are now being chased by the Luos.

But there was something about the images coming from the violence-hit areas that struck me. Not the images of burning property or men wielding weapons in hands or people running to shelters, but an image of a mother bathing her toddler in a place of refuge.

The mother’s face was weary. But she went on to perform life’s daily routine with the same duty and devotion, as any mother, in any part of the world, in normal circumstances would do.

For a woman trapped in violence, life’s most mundane things are perhaps the most difficult to get by. The next most difficult task would be to feed herself and the toddler till the government finds a way to restore peace and order to the nation.

Afghanistan’s Sayed Parwez Kambakhsh got death sentence for doing something we take for granted in the western world.

From one website to another, from one link to the next, we share links, download information, post on social networking websites and print it. That’s precisely what the 23-year-old did.

A student at Balkh University, Kambakhsh writes for a local newspaper, the Jahan-e-Naw (The New World).He downloaded an article, printed it and distributed it in his class. The article, reportedly, asked questions which many found offensive to Islam.

Some were quick to point it to authorities, and he was arrested. Accused of blasphemy, he was sentenced to death by a three-judge panel.

And he was not even the author. Online news reports state a Europe-based Iranian journalist wrote the article. All Kambakhsh did was share the article.

So why was he given such a harsh punishment? Institute for War and Peace Reporting says, not for his “crime” but for the “crimes” of his older brother – crimes of fair and fearless reporting, of exposing the truth. Of exposing abuse of the law that governs the land.

Kambakhsh was targeted to “silence” what his journalist brother was doing.

I can sit back in this comfy chair and type my free thoughts for anyone to read and share with a single click. I don’t sit in fear of officials buzzing my apartment and taking me away.

But it doesn’t happen like that in Afghanistan. You think twice before you click.

It’s no longer Britney Spears.

It’s the French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, and his ladylove, Carla Bruni, who have kept the tabloids busy.

And it’s just not the tabloids. BBC and The New York Times have been following the President-in-designer-wear and former supermodel and now a pop-star Bruni vacationing in Egypt. But what eventually found its way into the international media were the “morality” questions raised by the Indian media over Sarkozy’s upcoming visit.

Sarkozy is chief guest for India’s prestigious Republic Day parade on January 26 to celebrate India’s Republican Constitution that came into effect in 1950. The question the local media raised – how to make sense of President’s girlfriend?

The question made headlines in India when apparently Indian officials couldn’t find answers in the protocol book detailing how to seat, greet girlfriends of the visiting head of states, a first for Indian officials.

And now imagine Indian president next to Sarkozy – Pratibha Patil is the first woman president of the world’s largest democracy. Draped in a sari, her head covered, with a red-dot on the forehead, a symbol of a married woman; Patil is representative of the largely conservative-by-western-standards and cultural-by-Indian-standards woman population of India.

As officials scrambled to find answers, international media was quick to point the protocol dilemma in front of the “largely conservative” India, but failed to find the humour in the process.

The India media didn’t. An editorial in The Hindustan Times suggested that the nation direct the two lovers to the greatest monument of love – Taj Mahal and a Times of India columnist supported the two lovers in the “land of the Kamasutra, the world’s best known love and sex manual”.

The new reports say that Bruni is not traveling to India with Sarkozy. At last, now the French and the Indian can talk about investments and trade and not matters of heart.

Benazir Bhutto assassinated.

A few days later, a suicide blast killed more than twenty people in Pakistan’s Lahore city.

Governments and media pulled together pieces, and all I could think of was – Food Street in Lahore.

Sounds bizarre to think of a street that sells kebabs and Pakistani delicacies when a nation is embroiled in political turmoil, but the Food Street means more than a vending street to me.

As an Indian who grew up listening to political rhetoric and Bollywood movies spewing hatred at the nuclear-armed nation, Pakistan was the “neighbour” I was told to be wary of.

I kept that in mind.

A reporter with The Hindustan Times newspaper in India, I entered Pakistan for the first time in the spring of 2001 to cover a cultural conference in Lahore.In the evening came the trip to Food Street. Open to traffic during the day, the street is closed at both ends in the evening and sells Pakistani treats late into the night.

Reminding myself of being on the “neighbour’s soil”, I was taken aback when a group of women surrounded me. The word of “guests from India” had spread around town as media had run stories complete with my photograph. I had a mini-celebrity status.

And then came a request that still haunts me. “Baaji [sister] can I touch you?” asked a woman dressed in black. “Well, yes,” I hesitantly replied.

She stroked my arm, emotion overpowering her and then managing between gasps of joy and surprise, she said, “You are just like us,”and between tears, we hugged.

In that one powerful hug, I forgot where I stood.

I don’t remember her name or what she did but I remember her as the face in Food Street that helped me discover a nation and my self.

I am now a Canadian citizen, but every time I hear of political strife in Pakistan, the fresh aroma of spices, warm chatter of people, women posing for photographs with me, vendors not charging me, all come haunting back.

There is a pulse that beats beneath the bomb blasts and is ready to stroke arms and hug you back.