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| Indo- Pak: Ritualistic greetings not enough | | |
Early Times Special
JAMMU, August 16: For those who have to keep track of India-Pakistan relations, October 23, 2003, heralded a new era as the two neighbours decided to observe ceasefire on the international border (IB) and the Line of Control (LoC).
The news sounded too good to be true at that time and the mediapersons in Jammu were not too confident that the ceasefire will hold. For years, they had seen the soldiers of the two nations sniping at one another, constantly, without fail. Dozens of villages on both sides located near the borders had got uprooted and thousands of kanals of land lay fallow.
It was not only the men from the uniformed forces of the two sides who suffered. The civilians, particularly farmers, suffered too as they lost crops as also cattle. Reporters needed to call up the Police Control Room (PCR) for getting details on the incidents of firing along the IB and LoC, every day.
Humans and cattle getting maimed or killed due to firing by the Pakistani troops on the border areas was a regular news item appearing in the local newspapers. With a regular and sickening monotony.
The firing happened along hundreds of kilometers of border the two neighbours share with one another in the state of J&K. If it was Paharpur in Kathua one day, it was Bainglar in Samba afterwards, with Pallanwala in Jammu being targeted on another. Jhangar in Nowshera, Sawjian in Poonch, Uri in Baramullah, small hamlets of Kargil were also regular datelines from where news of human/cattle casualties came in.
The Akhnoor tehsil was one of the worst hit areas of this wanton firing by the two sides and thousands of people were uprooted from the forward areas. It was almost a ritual for the newspapers and TV channels to, off and on, carry the stories of miseries of people living in camps like Naiwala, Devipur et al.
Two Congress legislators of the Akhnoor tehsil then, Mr Madan Lal Sharma and Mr Tara Chand, were virtually always talking of the miseries of the border area farmers. Since the Bharatiya Janata Party-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) ruled the Centre, for them to get any sops for these voters was an uphill task indeed.
They worked tirelessly for bringing into sharper focus the plight of these border people who bore the brunt of enmity between India and Pakistan. Both used their positions in the Mufti Mohammed Sayeed-led government to good effect to bring succour to the border inhabitants.
In October 2003, the ceasefire by two perpetually hostile neighbours was announced on the eve of Eid. It was the result of back channel diplomacy pursued by then Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee and Pakistan supreme General Pervez Musharraf.
Border Security Force (BSF) manning the border posts at Suchetgarh in R S Pura decided to present sweets to their Pakistani counterparts on Eid. A white flag was raised, a couple of bravehearts volunteered to go near the fence and then some men came over from the other side. The two sides agreed to exchange sweets after years of sniping and they were both relieved.
On Eid, sweets were exchanged and the process was repeated at many border outposts. On Diwali, the Pakistani soldiers opposite the Suchetgarh post stepped ahead and exchanged sweets with their Indian counterparts.
The same process was repeated on some other festivals like Independence Days (August 14 and August 15) of India and Pakistan, respectively, too and it almost became a ritual thereafter. The ritual has continued and a couple of days ago, for two successive days, on August 14 and 15, the Indian and Pakistani soldiers exchanged sweets.
At several places along the border, including Chakan Da Bagh, the troops exchanged sweets and wished another well. For the mediapersons present on the occasions, the officials from the two sides said that good neighbourly relations between India and Pakistan will benefit the whole of South Asia.
Nice sentiments. But the people of J&K are waiting for the day when these ritualistic greetings and exchange of sweets will become real and the two sides will have genuine goodwill for one another.
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