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| A friendship train that kept peace on track | | | New Delhi | Feb 19
The Samjhauta Express, that literally exploded into news headlines Monday morning after the twin blasts killed 66 people in northern India, began its maiden journey 32 years ago when it became the first trans-border train between India and Pakistan to keep the peace on track between them.
Samjhauta Express (meaning agreement or understanding), since its first journey Sep 22, 1975 as a daily train link between Amritsar and Lahore, has been invested with high symbolism as a train of peace and friendship and has been often mentioned as a high value target for terrorists.
The train derived its name from the historic Simla Agreement of 1972 between the then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi and her Pakistani counterpart Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto to start a rail link, among other confidence building measures, between the two neighbours whose ties have been shadowed by a decades-old dispute over Kashmir.
The train has been the vehicle of emotional reunion for millions of people with relatives living across the border and has carried over 10 million people during its run over the last three decades.
Many Sikh pilgrims have also used the peace train to visit the historic Dehra Sahib and Panja Sahib gurdwaras in Pakistan and for visiting Lahore for Baisakhi.
The train, whose two coaches became a deadly inferno for over 66 people trapped inside them, connects people boarding from the Old Delhi Railway Station here with Attari, near Amritsar on the Indian side of the border.
The 4001 Up Delhi-Attari link train leaves Delhi on Sundays and Wednesdays at 9 p.m. and arrives at Attari at 4:40 a.m. early the next day.
The passengers then board the 4607 Samjhauta Express, bound for Lahore, around 1.30 p.m. after rigorous checking by security personnel and Indian immigration authorities, officials of the Indian Railways said.
The train was interrupted for about a fortnight following Operation Bluestar at the Golden Temple in Amritsar in 1984 against Sikh militants and later for a similar duration after the demolition of the Babri Masjid at Ayodhya in December 1992.
It was a daily train when the service started, but changed to a bi-weekly schedule in 1994 after reports of the train being used for smuggling contraband and fake currency surfaced.
The train service was cancelled indefinitely from Jan 1, 2002 following the terror attack on the Indian Parliament on December 13, 2001.
It was resumed Jan 15, 2004 as part of the confidence building measures initiated by then Indian prime Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Pakistan President General Pervez Musharraf after the Jan 6, 2004 joint statement on the sidelines of the SAARC summit in Islamabad to restart the stalled peace process.
It's not just emotions; hard economics has also kept the train on the tracks. The peace train has managed to bring in revenues worth Rs. 576 million for the Indian Railways in the last fiscal.
It was also a train of prosperity for hundreds of small and medium scale importers and exporters from both India and Pakistan in the late seventies until General Zia ul-Haq imposed stringent laws to curb bilateral trade.
The Samjhauta Express was the sole train link connecting people of the two countries till the Thar Express connected Munabao in Rajasthan and Khokrapar in Sind (Pakistan) last year.
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