Mere hours ago, Hindustan Times posted a story about a Pakistani man seeking to stay in India for life-saving treatments of his two children.

Indians on the internet appear to be divided. Some regard the media as unwittingly playing the fifth column — trying to rouse sympathy for Pakistanis and expecting Indians to maintain a moral high ground even in the wake of Indian, specifically Hindu, deaths at the hands of terrorism sponsored by Pakistan.

Others abide by their humanitarian convictions.

Amid this, a question arises: will India go so far as to ban medical visas for Pakistanis?

I suspect not. The Government of India can be quite benign that way.

A section of Indians, doubtless, wish for the cessation of such benevolence. Pakistan has been obdurate in its anti-India, and more specifically, anti-Hindu, proclivities since 1947. More so since a more pronounced wave of Islamism swept Pakistan during Zia-ul-Haq’s reign in the 1970s.

Such being the background, it would hardly surprise anyone that Pakistan commands a rather low esteem among the Indians.

However, fellow Indians, too, shall be seen passionately arguing that we spare ordinary Pakistanis such punishment as we might inflict on Pakistani terrorists, and their patrons in the Pakistani state apparatus.

The Indians are a warm people. Arriving at this truth is rendered difficult by relentless racism online. Especially since December, there has been a swell in anti-Indian racism on X. But those who are able to look beyond can know better. Ardently pushed stereotypes notwithstanding, Indians are indeed people with empathy.

I referred earlier to the Indian media reporting on the fates of Pakistani parents, currently in India for medical treatment for their children, hanging in the balance. Suspicion that these are calculated to arouse sympathy for Pakistanis would appear to be sustained, given the use of moving images and carefully crafted language.

Could Indians be blamed if they deplore this? A sense of justice in the world would not begrudge a section of Indians the view that every ordinary Pakistani be regarded as a potential terrorist until conclusively proven otherwise. Pakistan would merit so wary an Indian gaze, given decades-long indoctrination into a creed of hate against India in general and Hindus in particular, from which even kids are not spared.

This would not be unprecedented. The world was witness to the celerity with which the West went after anyone and anything Russian after Vladimir Putin began his invasion of Ukraine — blameless Russians abroad included.

Every attempt at rapprochement initiated by India has been met with betrayal. When Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee attempted it, we had to suffer the Kargil War.

(Indians troops after recapturing a peak in Drass, July 1999)

Prime Minister Modi, too, attempted it — attending the wedding of then Pakistani premier Nawaz Sharif’s granddaughter — only to be met with a terrorist attack at Uri.

In addition to terrorist attacks, Pakistan has also been unerringly committed to ceasefire violations along the border.

Yet, to many Indians, their convictions, which spring from the tenets of Hinduism, override such cold national security thinking. Sure, the Pakistanis — or terrorists trained by them — may prefer to use children as shields against the bullets of Indian security forces. To the Pakistani establishment a kid is nothing more than a future ghazi — a religious warrior for Islam.

To Hindus, however, children are not merely godsent, but indeed innocent embodiments of god. The Hindi saying, “bachche bhagwaan ka roop hote hain” (children are the images of god) is perhaps the most popular encapsulation of this old sensibility.

Would the Indian establishment go so far as to deny medical treatments to children? Would it ever operate on the assumption that the child we treat today might tomorrow return as an ingrate and a terrorist? I believe not. It is unlikely to adopt such a hardline view.

Despite what could be called a state of undeclared war between India and Pakistan that has endured for decades, the Government of India has never gone to such extremities with Pakistan as the West did with Russia.

I trust, therefore, that the Government of India will not place a permanent ban on medical visas. And yet it if were to do so, none could justifiably expect India to continue with what many Indians already see as an excess of benignity.

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