What growing up Pakistani taught me about India and how those feelings changed in Canada

Zahra Khozema · for CBC First Person

· Posted: May 15, 2025 4:00 AM EDT | Last Updated: 8 minutes ago

This is simply a First Person file by Zahra Khozema, a Pakistani Canadian writer who lives successful Toronto. For much accusation astir CBC's First Person stories, delight spot the FAQ.

I was nine, lasting successful the dusty courtyard of my schoolhouse successful Karachi, Pakistan, yelling decease to India, on with my different classmates. 

"India murdabad, India murdabad." (Death to India, Death to India.)

It was a chant I didn't afloat understand, but I did it anyhow due to the fact that it earned nods from teachers and cheers from classmates.

Nationalism similar this ever would typically highest successful Pakistan during cricket matches with our neighbour oregon erstwhile a caller Bollywood movie, yet again, portrayed Muslims and Pakistanis arsenic a bloodthirsty villain who privation to bargain the honour of a Hindi queen oregon detonate bombs to harm civilian beingness successful India. It besides surges successful times similar now, erstwhile governmental tensions are precocious and the anticipation of different full-out warfare looms overhead.

A deadly militant onslaught successful Kashmir, successful which 24 Hindu tourists, 1 Christian tourer and a usher were executed, sparked this peculiar conflict. Pakistan denies India's claims that it was down the attack, and the militaries of the 2 countries were engaged successful 1 of their astir superior confrontations successful decades. 

War is ever devastating, but what makes hostility successful this portion worse is that India and Pakistan are some atomic powers. 

Despite a fragile ceasefire, tensions stay high. My telephone keeps buzzing. Non-South Asian friends are "checking in" and asking if my household backmost location is harmless as disinformation is propagated and debunked. Some forward memes mocking the situation. The remark sections of these posts reek with racist remarks similar "the smelliest war" when anti-South Asian sentiment successful Canada is already connected the rise. Others privation my "thoughts," arsenic if I'm the designated spokesperson for Pakistanis.

WATCH | Ceasefire is fragile, adept says: 

What bash you accidental erstwhile it feels similar truthful galore radical are waiting for you to spew hate?

I can't bash that. 

After my household immigrated from Pakistan to Toronto successful 2005, immoderate of the radical who made maine consciousness astir invited were Indian. I didn't talk English then, truthful my teacher paired maine with a classmate who could construe — a Kashmiri Indian miss who spoke Punjabi. 

I spoke Urdu, not Punjabi, but it was adjacent enough. That miss — my archetypal brushwood with idiosyncratic who I thought was an "enemy" — was 10 and wore pigtails. She sat with maine erstwhile nary 1 wanted to subordinate with the caller kid who went to English arsenic a 2nd connection (ESL) class. We didn't speech overmuch due to the fact that of the connection barrier, but I'll ever retrieve her arsenic my archetypal person successful Canada. 

By the clip I'd gained the assurance to convey her successful English, I had moved schools.

Soon enough, the thought that Indians hated us, oregon that Hindus hated Muslims, had already started to unravel successful the look of lived experience. I spent the remainder of my simple schoolhouse years dancing to Bollywood bangers astatine endowment shows and trading my samosa lunches for khaman dhoklas with Gujarati friends. The lines that erstwhile felt truthful rigid backmost location had begun to blur here.

BBC Asia Network's Haroon Rashid said it best: "In the satellite of the West … we were each one. We were often seen with the aforesaid lens, abused by the aforesaid words, treated, successful immoderate cases, with the aforesaid consciousness of otherness." As South Asian immigrants, we are "united by nutrient and manner and films and euphony and civilization and connection and upbringing," helium added.

But I started to spot past the propaganda when, astatine property 16, I became 1 of the fortunate fewer Pakistanis granted a visa to sojourn India. 

The animosity betwixt the 2 countries seldom allows for cross-border travel, truthful connected this visit, my ma insisted we spell to Siddhpur, a tiny municipality successful Gujarat. It's wherever our household lived for generations earlier Partition successful 1947 — the convulsive and chaotic part of British India into 2 abstracted countries that triggered wide migration and ongoing conflict. My grandparents were each calved connected the "other side" of the borderline and we inactive person immoderate distant relatives who unrecorded successful India. 

My mother's eyes lit up arsenic we drove past our once-ancestral location — the 1 her ma had described successful stories — connected a thoroughfare lined with the city's iconic colourful bungalows. It seemed truthful acquainted to her, adjacent though it had been 3 decades since her past visit. I, however, felt conflicted. It felt disloyal to the state I was calved in, and I didn't admit that my ma was trying to link maine to the 1 her parent had near behind.

We besides visited the graveyard wherever my great-grandmother was buried, but we couldn't find her due to the fact that the tombstones were etched successful Gujarati, a publication we couldn't read. We were excessively tense to inquire for help. I was told you don't admit you're Pakistani determination – it's conscionable not done. But we inactive felt strangely astatine location since we spoke the connection and blended in.

That's wherefore I can't springiness successful to this forced binary of choosing sides. I emotion my state and person opinions. I spot the rise of Hindu nationalism successful India, the erasure of Islamic practice and the brutal crackdown connected Kashmiris. I spot it and I grieve it deeply, conscionable arsenic I grieve the increasing spiritual extremism successful Pakistan, the increasing censorship and the crackdown connected governmental deviation that mirrors the precise forces we assertion to oppose. In trying to decision each other, we've go a bitter symmetry.

And I'm not the lone 1 feeling this way. While governmental tensions and cricket rivalries often predominate headlines, galore Pakistanis bash not harbour animosity toward Indians. The hostility seen online is often amplified by echo chambers and doesn't ever bespeak the nuanced perspectives of mundane people.

Years later, I crossed paths with that aforesaid Kashmiri Indian miss from simple school. We worked unneurotic astatine a fast-food associated successful precocious schoolhouse and often bumped into each different connected our assemblage campus. 

A fewer years ago, she invited maine to her wedding. It was my archetypal clip witnessing a Hindu ceremonial that wasn't connected a TV screen. Indian soap operas had made them look truthful melodramatic with aggravated camera zoom-ins and excessive crying. But successful reality, it was quiescent and intimate — conscionable a lad and a miss sitting with a priest, surrounded by loved ones.

That person and I support weaving successful and retired of each other's lives, mildly dismantling the narratives we grew up with. And successful those mean moments of seated silence, post-work vent sessions and shared celebrations, I'm reminded however overmuch much determination is that connects america than divides us.

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