ON INDO-PAK BORDER RESTRICTIONS





When God created the Garden of Eden, he unwittingly anticipated the Westphalian concept of nation-states by demarcating the territory over which his writ was sovereign. By delineating borders between his own kingdom and the darkness around it, he devised an obstacle in the way of Man's inherent freedom of movement. To enter Eden, Adam needed divine sanction; to exit, he had to incur the wrath of God. God may have breathed life into Adam and Eve, but he denied them free access in and out of Eden.


Movement nowadays between India and Pakistan is similarly fraught with impediments. The softening in relations that followed Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee's bus yatra in 1999 has been accentuated by CBMs [Confidence Building Measures]. These have gradually but perceptibly warmed the fingers of diplomats in the high commissions in Islamabad and in New Delhi. Visas are being issued at a pace that would have been described ten years ago as frenetic, almost foolhardy.


The Pakistan High Commission in New Delhi, for example, issues between 300 and 400 visas a day, and there is a similar volume of traffic from the Indian High Commission in Islamabad. In such exchanges, it is often not the number that matters but the type of visitor. Pilgrims with an eye on the next world outnumber businessmen concentrating on the present. Both these categories exceed the number of students from each country, and that is sad. No-one needs to learn more about India than a Pakistani student, just as no Indian student can claim to have been truly educated unless he has seen Pakistan. What is even sadder is that there is no visa category for students. Pakistani students should not need to ask who Subhas Chandra Bose was, no more than Indian students should need to enquire [as one Indian MBA did on arrival at Lahore's new airport] who Allama Iqbal was. In this sense, history may well be the best teacher. One has only to look at the Sinai Peninsula to realise the enduring effect the Exodus of the Israelites from Egypt millennia ago is having even today on the politics of that still troubled region. In our own context, the mass movement of population across Radcliffe's incision of the Punjab in 1947 has left tensions that are still unresolved.


One instance of it occurred a while ago when a visiting British minister had to cross the Indo-Pak border at Wagah. Every effort was made to expedite his transfer as he had a crowded schedule arranged for him at Lahore. The eleven suitcases borne by the Indian porters were handed over to their Pakistani counterparts and duly stowed away. Suddenly, the minister's secretary asked where was the minister's suit? It had been left behind in the car on the Indian side. The conducting officer rushed to the white line dividing the two countries and shouted into India: "The suit, the suit!" The suit was hurriedly brought from the other side, and handed over to the secretary. She opened the jacket and enquired: "And where are the trousers?" The officer went back and again his voice reverberated from Wagah to Kolkata: "The trousers, the trousers!" Speedily, these were retrieved and reunited with the jacket. The minister enquired about the delay. The officer responded: "Minister, just a microcosm of the traumas of partition. Trousers on one side of the border and its jacket on the other!"


Volumes could be assembled of the experiences of travellers from both countries crossing the border. It might be difficult though to match one narrated by a very senior and responsible official involved in this incident. A group of Indian Sikh yatris had crossed the border into Pakistan on a pilgrimage. One of them died, and his body was taken back to the border for repatriation. The corpse was refused entry into India on the grounds that the visa stipulated that the yatri was crossing "on foot". Being carried across in a recumbent posture was contrary to the conditions of the visa.


There is only one cure for such inanities. It should be made mandatory for immigration officers on either side of the border to visit their neighbours. Only then would they experience the true joy of visa restrictions.





[COVERT magazine, New Delhi, 1-15 December 2008]