Hyderabad: The success of Mangalyaan has found resonance with an unexpected quarter: Pakistan.
Pakistanis on Wednesday congratulated India’s maiden and successful interplanetary mission and lamented their government’s misplaced priorities.
“Congratulations to India. We, however, are still struggling with basic social issues. The overwhelming mullah influence. The issues relating to faith, corruption, and nepotism have completely halted progress. When will we wake up? Really, we need to look at our neighbour and gauge where and how we have fallen behind,” said Hussain in his comments on the website of Pakistan newspaper Tribune Express.
Commenting on Pakistan’s oldest daily, Dawn’s website, Taufik Mansoori felt proud of the first successful Asian mission. “This is an example of supreme expertise of Indian scientists and technology. Hats off to you all. We should feel proud as India has broken the superiority of the West in space,” he wrote.
Though there were some negative comments that tried to highlight India’s poverty, most messages and posts were congratulatory.
Zahid Mehmood wrote: “Pakistan congratulates you! May sanity prevail in this part of the world and we start competing in these areas!”
Meanwhile, Mohammad Shafique felt Pakistan too “could have been indulging in these glorious exploits , if our ruling oligarchy had not been squandering our resources using our corrupt Army.”
Mr Muhammad commented: “Proud of you India, you beat China in the Mars race, I feel ashamed of our political class.”
Some Pakistanis have also mooted collaboration with India for mutual benefit.
A person from Pakistan’s Hyderabad city wrote: “Pakistan has a lot of talented engineers who don’t find opportunities. Instead of working alone, we can create a talent pool that India can reap for commercial reasons until it reaches a size when these folks will fuel Pakistan’s commercial (space) activity. But we need unfortunately the mullahs’ and politicians’ concurrence (for this).”
Criticising the Pakistani establishment, Farooq Ahmed wrote, “I am sure all the dharna parties, fatwa-hurling mullahs, master-minds of suicide bombings, current ruling parties, and negative news-seeking media will have no time to think and understand the reasons why India is making such a spectacular progress in almost all areas of science, technology and commerce.”
