Can you guess what happened when a group of Pakistanis were promised a cash reward to burn the Indian flag? They refused to do it. One said, “Nahin yaar, izzat karni chahiye.” (No, dude. We must respect it.) Another said, “Yeh hamarey usool kay khilaaf hai.” (This is against my principles.) Yet another said, “Kya mileyga jalaaney say?” (What will I gain from burning it?)These conversations are from the viral Instagram reel “Indian Flag Experiment”, posted by Karachi-based content creators DumbTV on August 14, Pakistan’s Independence Day. The British policy of divide and rule and decades of divisive propaganda by politicians of both countries have failed to poison the hearts of these people. They refer to India as a neighbour (“padosi mulk”), not an enemy, and Indians as friends (“dost”) and brothers (“hamarey bhai”).When governments refuse to talk, cultural diplomacy of this kind provides a way forward. It works because it is dressed in a friendly, even familial, idiom that tears down walls. People abandon the cautious language of official dialogue. They wear their heart on their sleeve and speak as they feel. Respect is offered as a gift. It is not an outcome of a deal between two parties.Listening to them, I was reminded of poet Rabindranath Tagore’s letter to his friend Abala Bose, a social worker, in 1908. “Patriotism can’t be our final spiritual shelter. I will not buy glass for the price of diamonds, and I will never allow patriotism to triumph over humanity as long as I live,” he wrote. Shorn of ornament, this simply means that our love for our country need not be rooted in jingoism. We do not have to denigrate others to feel good about ourselves.Also read: ‘Operation Safed Sagar’ Hints at Fatigue Around Lazy Jingoism, but Eventually SuccumbsIn another reel on DumbTV’s Instagram account, which was posted on August 15, India’s Independence Day, a Pakistani man wins ten thousand Pakistani rupees for reciting ‘Jana Gana Mana’. His friends are struck by the fact that he knows the Indian national anthem. He does not think it is a big deal. He says that he memorised it just by listening to it repeatedly. It seems bizarre, doesn’t it? Why would a Pakistani even want to learn the Indian national anthem?Both these reels are reminiscent of a winter morning school assembly I attended in Lahore, a moment that still gives me gooseflesh. It was February 17, 2012. In those days, I was a teacher at Shishuvan, a school in Mumbai. I got the chance to join a 21-member delegation of students and teachers from four Indian schools, who were visiting Pakistan for a programme called Exchange for Change.A collaboration between the Citizens Archive of Pakistan and an Indian non-profit organisation called Routes 2 Roots, the programme was designed to give the participants an opportunity to visit each other and experience the power of people-to-people contact. Before these trips, the students exchanged letters, photographs and oral history recordings of their grandparents.That was my first visit to Pakistan and I was surprised to see children holding Indian and Pakistani flags to mark the occasion. When a group began to sing ‘Jana Gana Mana’ on stage, none of us could hold back tears. We did not know the words to the Pakistani national anthem ‘Pak Sarzameen Shaad Baad’, written by poet Hafeez Jalandhari, but we really wanted to reciprocate their warmth and hospitality, which had stunned and overwhelmed us.People from a country that India has fought wars with had gone out of their way to learn our national anthem. Fourteen years have passed since that incident and the shock of it hasn’t worn off yet.That was a difficult act to follow. Our response was utterly filmi. We sang “Panchhi, Nadiyan, Pawan Ke Jhonke”, written by poet Javed Akhtar for J.P. Dutta’s Refugee (2000).It seemed apt, because Akhtar writes, “Panchhi nadiyan pawan kay jhonkey, koi sarhad na inhey rokey/ Sarhadein insaanon kay liye hain, socho tumney aur mainey kya paya insaan hokay.” (Birds, rivers, gusts of wind; no borders can stop them. Borders are human; see what we’ve inherited.)People who see India-Pakistan relations only through the lens of geopolitics, defence and security may not be able to appreciate the spiritual truths hidden in these words. The poetry might even sound cringeworthy to those who like to speak of peace in less emotional terms. (Also, with the Indus Waters Treaty in abeyance, one is forced to rethink the bit about rivers.)Also read: Track II Diplomacy Rumours Fade, But Kashmir’s Call for India-Pakistan Dialogue ReturnsThat said, those children demonstrated that grace is possible even when we shoulder the burden of a complicated history. And the adults showed us that teachers can be peacebuilders even if they cannot change the national curriculum or textbooks that sow the seeds of hate. Such efforts might seem inconsequential, given the magnitude of bigotry in our times, but they matter.While watching the DumbTV reels, one cannot help but recall significant moments from our recent past where public figures from both countries used national symbols to emphasise respect.In 2018, when Pakistani cricketer Shahid Afridi was approached by an Indian fan at the St. Moritz ice cricket tournament in Switzerland for a photograph, the fan was holding a folded Indian flag. Afridi told him, “Flag seedha karo apna.” (Hold your flag properly.) Later, when asked to comment on this, Afridi said, “I believe as cricketers we can set examples of how relationships between individuals can be a template for relationships between countries.”In 2023, at the World Athletics Championships in Budapest, when javelin champion Neeraj Chopra noticed that his Pakistani counterpart Arshad Nadeem did not have a flag, Chopra invited Nadeem to join him and take a picture with the Indian flag so that the latter would not feel left out. The kind gesture was applauded in both countries.Every effort to build bridges, however small, is a step in the right direction. The burst of goodwill it accompanies restores the hope that things will get better one day, even if India-Pakistan ties seem to have hit rock bottom on the formal diplomatic front.Chintan Girish Modi is a writer with a background in peacebuilding. He has worked with Insaaniyat, the Kabir Project, the UNESCO Mahatma Gandhi Institute of Education for Peace and Sustainable Development, the Prajnya Trust, the HRI Institute for Southasian Research and Exchange, and Women in Security, Conflict Management and Peace.