A great feeling indeed. The annual candlelight vigil at the Wagah border, which started 16 years ago with a handful of people coming forward with a message of peace, has gained popularity over the years. A gathering in thousands at the musical show held at Attari on the night of August 14 to mark the event may go a long way towards persuading the governments of Pakistan and India to provide momentum to the initiative by relaxing visa restrictions and allowing increased people-to-people contacts.
Crossing the border on foot was quite an experience for the delegation which visited Amritsar on the eve of the Independence Day to participate in the candlelight vigil. How much success this initiative has achieved and what needs to be done was the issue that featured at the seminar and discussions organised by South Asia Free Media Association in collaboration with Hind Pak Dosti Manch and Folklore Research Academy. Full marks to SAFMA for continuing the peace mission despite being subjected to foul-mouthed rants.
The Indian media accorded prominent coverage to the views expressed by the Pakistani delegates who stressed the need for rising above ideological differences and building better future for the people on both sides of the border. Each moment spent in Amritsar was characterised with a strong sense of bonhomie. The tales of blood and gore and the trains running between Amritsar and Lahore carrying women and children with their throats slit are now consigned to the pages of Mumtaz Mufti’s Alakh Nagri.
Come Natak 1947 – a beautiful play performed by school and college students of Amritsar at Punjab Naatshala – giving the audience a flashback to the partition days when the Sikh and Muslim youths were massacring the followers of each other’s faith on the streets of Amritsar and Lahore with impunity. The play for its realism and powerful depiction caused every eye to shed tears. But that was all from the olden days. The feeling has changed with both sides now reiterating their commitment to celebrate each other’s happiness.
The entertaining musical show gave expression to their mutual love and friendship where Pakistan’s pride Shaukat Ali and East Punjab’s heartthrob Harbhajan Maan enthralled the audience with beautiful folk songs. During the event, the crowd swayed to the music and even danced and shouted pro-Pakistan and pro-India slogans. Shaukat no longer likes himself to be associated with the war songs which once shot him to prominence; he joined the SAFMA delegation as an ambassador of peace.
The 15 volunteers who launched the peace mission way back in 1995 had struggled really hard to keep their initiative from being dogged by the military adventures and intransigence of the two establishments over the past 16 years. These peaceniks were pleased to see the musical event draw bigger crowds than they would have ever expected. They might have also realised that artistes from the two countries can play an important role in strengthening the bonds of friendship between the people on both sides of the border.
Those who were in their adolescence 64 years ago have grown old regretting the massacre of the people migrating from either side of the border at the time of the partition. They want their younger generation to learn to live in peace with their counterparts across the border rather than getting stuck in the hostilities of the past. The message they have been trying to put across to the youth is loud and clear: devote your energies to defeat poverty, illiteracy and the rising tide of extremism – your common enemy, posing a serious threat to your future.
The visit to Amritsar is more like a homecoming to many Pakistanis. Lying in the closest neighbourhood of the Golden Temple and Jallianwala Bagh is the older part of the city. The area around the long stretch of a road with Namak Mandi at one end and Hindu Sabha College at the other once formed the largest Muslim enclave in Amritsar before the partition. It was after the bloodiest migration of the last century that the local population demolished mosques and the houses owned by Muslims. However, it’s not difficult to trace the grandeur of Kucha Faqir Khana from its majestic remains.
But there you can meet people who are haunted by the horrors they had witnessed during the partition days. Lala Ram Das, now in his eighties, is one among them. Like many others, he believed in religious and communal harmony and did what he could possibly do to save Muslim men, women and children from the sword-brandishing Sikh youth of the time. He still has the nightmares of the tragic events of the past. But what might give him a soothing relief at the fag end of his age is the realisation that the younger generation is ready to shed the hatred their elders had nurtured against other communities.
While Pakistan and India are busy building their arsenals, it is the youth on both sides of the border which has to keep searching for the ways to normalise relations between the two countries in a bid to restore peace in the region.
The writer is Executive Editor, Pakistan Today