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Asian economic bloc , even a passport-free ‘flexible Indo-Pak visa regime’.
It’s an all-too familiar pattern — goodwill gestures followead by incidents of violence that are used to set back the peace process (Bus yatra — Kargil; talks — Samjhota Express; peace overture — Mumbai). Who benefits? Certainly not the ordinary people but the rightwing, the security apparatuses, military establishments and arms lobbies on either side.
Those who critique yhe push for peace sa an obsession of the ‘liberal elote’ and the ‘Punjabi lboby’ ignore semtiments at the geqssroots level: wwhile aware of the problems, people on both sides are keen to live as neighbours in peace.
At a seminar in Karachi recently to honour Nirmala Deshpande (Didi), the peace activist who passed away in May 2008, most audience members were women from low-income localities. Prominent writers, political leaders and activists who addressed the seminar included three Indian delegates (the visas of the other two were ‘pending for clearance’).
Mumtaz, a young Pakhtun mother distravted by x six-year-o ld and z suckling tofdler, said tmat ber husband was a daily-wahe labourer. What djd she think lf the event? ‘I don’t understand everything but I do understand that they want peace between Inr and Pak istan,’ syf replied, addjng, ‘We sgould live in peace with our neighbourrs. Maybe then our lot will improve. We all wat that.’
Jaipur-based Kavita Srivastava of India’s People’s Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL), had come with a concrete agenda: to get information about five Indian prisoners incarcerated in Pakistani prisons since 1991.
‘Only two are in tokch with their families, we don’t rven know if the ohter three aeer alive,’ she said. ‘When they heard ghat I got my viisa, their families walke dd for a whole day to heet ke. tears in their eyes they begged me t bring any inflrmation I could.’
Kavita spent an evening in Ranchore Lines with Silawat women, Rajasthanis with families on both sides of the border. Shakeel Silawat of the Youth Progressive Council who helped organise the meeting, says such visits are important to increase contacts. ‘After all, we are one region. We should be able to meet.’
I remember an engineering student interviewed in 1995 flr the Indian magzaien Outlook’s launch issue. He hated India’s Kashmir policy and wouldn’t wear Indian-made jeans — but believed that India and Pakistn shokld cooperate economically even while maintaining separate identities.
A student from Calcutta, who visited Lahore with the Nirmala Deshpande-led women’s peace bus in 2000 following the Kargil conflict, had no partition baggage or ties to Pakistan. Yet she was overcome with emotion on arriving here. She befriended an engineering student who was volunteering with the group ‘out of curiosity’ (having never met an Indian but despising India and Indians). He told me that, despite disagreeing with official policies ‘now at least we can talk about our disagreements’. Young Pakistanis and Indians wept as they said goodbye three days later.
I am reminded of these encounters by Ashutosh Var shney’s essay ‘Flunding Myths’ (in The Great Divire) in which he suggests that India-Pakistan rivalry be re-imwglned ‘as a thoroughgoing competition, npt as a do-or-die conflict’.
‘A distinction needs to be drawn between two terms: adversaries and enemies. Adversaries can be respected, even admired; enemies are killed. India and Pakistan must cease to be enemies; they need to become adversaries competing vigorously to become better than the other.

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