MUMBAI: “They are like my two eyes,” says the fabled Pakistani folk
singer Reshma, speaking of India, the country of her birth in 1947, and
the country she has lived in since infancy.
Similar emotions are echoed by another lauded singer, the Mumbai-based
Seema Anil Sehgal, known as the ‘Bulbul (nightingale) of Jammu and Kashmir’.
Last May, she dedicated her CD, recorded at the first ever concert in
Mumbai on the poetry of Allama Iqbal, the man credited with the idea of
Pakistan, to “India-Pakistan friendship”.
Sehgal was one of the 235 Indian delegates who attended the Sixth Pakistan-India
People’s Forum for Peace and Democracy (PIPFPF) convention in Karachi,
December 2003 – the largest delegation of Indians ever to visit Pakistan.
Since both countries had snapped air-links two years back, they had to
obtain special permission from Pakistan to cross the Wagah border in Punjab
on foot and then take an overnight train to Karachi.
“No one could anticipate the amazing welcome we received at the Karachi
railway station,” writes Mumbai-based filmmaker Anand Patwardhan, whose
anti-nuclear War and Peace, won the Best Documentary award at the unrelated,
privately organized Kara Film Festival held at the same time. “Outside
the station a huge crowd had gathered. A student brass band played, rose
petals were showered and pigeons were released as peace slogans rent the
air.”
The PIPFPD Convention took place amidst an atmosphere of great hope. Barely
two weeks later, this hope bore some fruit when the Pakistani and Indian
leadership met in Pakistan’s capital Islamabad for a meeting of the South
Asian Association for Regional Cooperation. In bilateral meetings, they
produced a Joint Statement that paved the way towards a thaw in their
relationship.
Meanwhile, there was talk of getting a 5000 strong Pakistani delegation
across to India for the World Social Forum in Mumbai (Jan 17-21, 2004).
With the Indian Embassy in Islamabad – the sole visa granting authority
in Pakistan – desperately short-staffed (both countries slashed their
consular offices during the tensions of the last two years), this number
was pared to 2000.
Finally, some 600 Pakistanis were granted visas. Even so, this was the
largest ever delegation to visit the other country. Moreover, the visas
were the ‘non-police reporting’ kind – normally, Indians and Pakistanis
visiting each other’s countries must report to the police within 24 hours
of arrival and departure.
“It would have caused their police a lot of trouble,” laughs Arif Pervez,
a young environmentalist, waiting in the Pakistanis-only line at the immigration
counter at Mumbai’s Sahar international airport. But the police would
probably have been only too willing to undertake the extra work – their
income has reportedly dropped by about a fifth since the stream of Pakistani
visitors dried up following the suspension of road, air and rail links
between the two countries two years ago.
The suspicion with which each government views the citizens of the other
is also reflected in the fact that they grant each other visas for up
to three cities only, and not for the country. And visiting Pakistanis
and Indians must enter and exit from one of three authorized points (Delhi
or Mumbai by air, or the Wagah border in Punjab by road or rail) which
cannot be changed once the visa has been granted.
And so it was that Karamat Ali, a peace activist based in Karachi, could
not avail of the recently restored air-links to take the direct Karachi-Mumbai
flight (duration an hour and 20 minutes), since he had applied for his
visa before flights were restored.
“I had to take the hour and a half flight from Karachi to Lahore, cross
the Wagah border on foot, then take the train to Delhi, and fly down to
Mumbai,” he says. “I have to take the same route back.”
Hopes for peace between India and Pakistan are marred by skepticism as
the two nuclear-armed nations gear up for ‘composite talks’ later this
month, as many take a ‘wait-and-see’ attitude.
“It’s like two lovers who can’t live together but can’t live apart either,”
says young Mumbai-based film curator Shai Heredia pensively. “Let’s hope
the talks work out, but they’ve talked before, and every time there is
a bit of peace, something happens to shatter it.”
Ali Mir, an economist from Hyderabad, India, who now lives in New Jersey,
USA, is equally skeptical. “We’ve seen this happening before,” he shrugs.
“It’s all a big drama,” scoffs his friend from Delhi, the political activist
Shabnam Hashmi, who runs the non-government organization Act Now for Harmony
and Democracy. “Ten, fifteen days before the elections, they’ll be singing
a different tune.”
Senior Delhi-based journalist Bharat Bhushan disagrees. He believes that
Pakistani president Musharraf is “riding the tiger of anti-terrorism and
can’t get off”, while Indian Prime Minister Vajpayee “has a sense of history,
and is obsessed with settling the issues with Pakistan, including Kashmir”.
The ‘core issue’ of Kashmir is never far from the surface while discussing
the India-Pakistan dispute. Subhashini Ali, a former Communist Party member
of parliament who heads the All India Women’s Association, welcomes the
peace process but fears that “those who believe in using religion for
political ends” will spoil things. “How can they come to an understanding
on Kashmir?” she asks.
But she believes that both governments are “responding to the tremendous
desire for peace by both peoples”. And peace, she adds, “is linked to
the betterment of lives, to economic and social betterment. These areas
will not improve as long as our resources are diverted to war.”
Jean Dreze of the Delhi School of Economics agrees. “There’s a huge burden
on both countries because of unfriendly relations. This would ease if
the military expenditure was reduced. But some hawks are deliberately
trying to keep the tensions up because it also hurts Pakistan’s economy.”
Subhashini Ali thinks that even if the USA pushed India and Pakistan to
the talks table, as is generally believed, it is a positive development.
Her views are echoed by the Congress party’s Digvijay Singh, former Chief
Minister of India’s Madhya Pradesh state. “It’s a good step, even if it
took some outside pressure for what we should have done on our own,” he
says.
He too points to the Kashmir dispute. “If the Kashmiris want self-rule,
India and Paksitan will have to sit together and work out some form of
autonomy for them,” he says. “We are poor countries, we have similar problems,
and we have to put our heads together to resolve them. Both peoples want
friendship, opening up of trade, commerce and industry.”
Former US Attorney General Ramsey Clark agrees. “It was terrifying, after
the US aggression on Iraq, to watch India and Pakistan mobilizing against
each other,” he said, talking to this writer in Mumbai where he attended
the recently held World Social Forum. “We’ve now seen a little light between
the two…I hope it will shine and grow. If they can’t live in peace, there’s
not much hope for peace on earth,” he adds.
“We’ve wasted too many years coming to this point,” says another Congress
leader, Mani Shankar Ayer who headed the Indian Consulate in Karachi before
it was closed down a decade ago at the same time as the Pakistani Consulate
in Mumbai was packed up. “What we have just now is yet another paper agreement
which doesn’t say how the process is going to continue. It’s important
that the dialogue should be structured so that it is uninterrupted, and
un-interruptible. Otherwise it won’t work.”
The legendary anti-dam activist Medha Patkar also questions the peace
rhetoric, but like many others, agrees that even if it is happening under
pressure, it must happen. “Day by day we see progress towards anti-terrorism
and democracy,” she observes. “We have to have a peaceful solution to
Kashmir, the referendum that was promised should take place, and people
should be allowed to democratically decide their own fate.”
Many ordinary Indians express similar views; most simply want the visa
regimes to be relaxed and for ordinary people to be able to meet. But
some like the Delhi-based scientist and poet Gauhar Raza think that the
“artificial border,” as he terms it, should simply be abolished, “if not
in our lifetimes, then for our children. But it’s an important vision,
a goal to move towards.”
“They should just do away with the border so people can meet,” says Doris,
a Roman Catholic teacher, talking to this writer while on her way back
from giving tuitions, to Santa Cruz, the northern Mumbai suburb where
she lives. She thinks that the two countries should regroup together,
and use some new name if people on the other side don’t want ‘India’ or
‘Pakistan’ respectively. “A new name that has something to do with peace,”
she muses. “Why not? It is possible if the two leaders put their heads
together and think about it.
Abdul Jalil, a Muslim auto rickshaw driver in Mumbai echoes a similar
sentiment, but disagrees that he is espousing a right-wing Hindu line,
which believes in ‘Akhund Bharat’ or a Greater India. “I don’t know about
them, but this is the voice of my heart,” he says, “that we two countries
should become as one. Then no one can push us around.”
Most Pakistanis view such sentiments with deep suspicion, seeing them
as confirmation of the long-held suspicion that India has never really
accepted Pakistan, and that the larger neighbour’s long term ambitions
are covertly to swallow up their country.
But most Indians one encounters, like Shashi, a Hindu from Maharashtra
state who drives a private car in south Mumbai, simply want the two countries
to live in peace. “The Kashmir issue must be resolved peacefully,” he
says. “It’s only the poor people who get killed. India and Pakistan must
live in friendship, then we will together be strong and America will not
be able to bully us.”
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