Malala’s Dream is to see India and Pakistan, ‘True Good Friends.’

New Delhi, Feb 28: Nobel laureate Malala Yousafzai said on Sunday, my dream is to see India and Pakistan become ‘true good friends’.

Malala was speaking on her book ‘I Am Malala: The Story of the Girl Who Stood Up for Education and was Shot by the Taliban’ on the concluding day of the Jaipur Literature Festival-JLF. (virtual mode).

Malala Excerpts…

People in India and Pakistan want to live in peace.
Minorities need protection in every country, be it Pakistan or India.
The issue is not related to religion but to the ‘exploitation of power’ and must be taken seriously.
People of India and Pakistan become true good friends and that we can visit each other’s countries.
You can continue to watch Pakistani dramas; we can continue to watch Bollywood movies and enjoy cricket matches.
You are Indian and I am Pakistani, and we are completely fine, then why is this hatred created between us?
This old philosophy of borders, divisions and divide and conquer… they just don’t work anymore, as humans we all want to live in peace,’
Every girl would get to go to school and have access to quality education.
Minorities across the world and said they are at ‘risk’ and need to be protected globally by governments and human rights organizations.
Minorities are at risk. Minorities’ rights are not given to them. Be it Hindus and Christians in Pakistan, Muslims, Dalits and other minorities in India, Palestinians, Rohingya refugees. It is not religion, it is the exploitation of power, it is just elite’s vs the poor and minorities.
Indian girls and young women fighting for human rights, ‘speaking out’ for farmers in India, climate change and protection of the minority rights, and called their work ’empowering and inspiring’.
The news of the internet shutdown and arrests of activists protesting peacefully in India is ‘worrying’, she claimed.
You may not like their political opinion, but it does not mean that you put them in jails and arrest them.
It is a democratic right of every individual — including women and girls — to highlight their political opinions.
So, I hope that the government makes sure that people can protest peacefully and ask for their rights, and that they are heard,’