Dangerous Borders - A Journey Across India and Pakistan

Episode
Episode 3
Broadcast Info
2017 (59 mins)
Description
Journalists Adnan Sarwar and Babita Sharma are on the second part of their epic journey taking them both through the province of Punjab, along the volatile border that divides India and Pakistan. This lush, densely populated region was split in two at Partition and nowhere is the division more keenly felt.
Adnan begins at the Quaid-E-Azam Solar Park, a hugely impressive solar farm covering 6500 acres and part of a massive £35 billion investment programme in Pakistan by the Chinese. Whilst this is going to go some way to solving the country’s power shortage, it risks upsetting Pakistan’s neighbours who have a fractious relationship with China. Babita first visits the city of Chandigarh which became the new capital of Indian Punjab at Partition. Designed by the pre-eminent Modernist architect, Le Corbusier, this was the vision of what the Indian Government wanted the new state to become - modern and progressive, but the ambitions don’t seem that they’ve stood the test of time. A local resident, graffiti artist Sarwan, shares his bleak view of the continuing animosity between India and Pakistan.
A hundred and fifty miles away across the border in Lahore, Adnan meets a couple who, in 1947, spent over two months walking from India to the safety of Muslim-dominated Pakistan. Adnan hears of the unimaginable acts of brutality that they witnessed on the journey - it’s the first time he’s ever heard this firsthand and it has a hugely powerful emotional impact. He goes on to meet local rock star, Salman Ahmad, whose songs have become political anthems, criticizing the endemic political corruption.
Genre
Economics; History; Philosophy and Ethics; Social Science; Politics

How to cite this record

The Open University, "Dangerous Borders - A Journey Across India and Pakistan". https://learningonscreen.ac.uk/ou/search/index.php/prog/228613 (Accessed 10 Jan 2025)