Pakistan India: Citizens Push for Peace

KARACHI, Jul 7: The months following the Mumbai terror attacks of Nov 26, 2008 have seen a renewed sense of urgency among peace activists in Pakistan and India to push their governments to resume the composite dialogue process.
India suspended the process after the Mumbai attacks, accusing Islamabad of not doing ‘enough’ to contain terrorism. But activists argue that terrorism is not Pakistan’s problem alone.

“Both countries are going through a critical phase,” says veteran Mumbai-based journalist Jatin Desai.

A frequent visitor to Pakistan, he was here with two other Indians, meeting community based organisations, political leaders and media persons in Karachi, Lahore and Hyderabad to take the push for peace to the people. His proposal to ‘twin’ the press clubs of Karachi and Mumbai was positively received.

“After the Mumbai terror attacks, Mumbai residents sent a clear message - No to war, No to violence, No to terror,” said Desai. “Thousands joined hands for a hundred kilometre long ‘human chain for peace’ on Dec 10, 2008 to say this and urge a resumption of the peace process.”

He was speaking at a seminar in Karachi to underline the need for peace in South Asia and to honour Nirmala Deshpande, a prominent peace lobbyist on both sides of the border who passed away in May 2008.

Former parliamentarian Kunwar Khalid Yunus recalled how during the war hysteria of 2002, Deshpande organised a peace demonstration of several hundred people in Delhi.

“The demonstration was not reported in the papers the next day,” recalled Yunus, who as member of the Pakistan-India parliamentary committee often stayed with Deshpande in Delhi. “She asked some journalists about it and they told her that a demonstration expressing hatred against Pakistan would have made headlines.”

Most seminar participants were women from low income localities whose husbands work as daily wage labourers.
Mumtaz, a young woman discreetly suckling her toddler as she listened, told IPS that this was the second such event she had attended.

“I understand what it’s about,” she said. “They want peace between India and Pakistan. We should live in peace with our neighbours. Maybe then our lot will improve. We all want that.”

Choudhry Manzoor Ahmed of the Pakistan Peoples Party talked about the hostility the 12-member Pakistani delegation had encountered among the Indian political leadership in March this year.

“But the reception we got from ordinary people was very different. The Pakistani High Commission, and Indian politicians, warned us not to visit Jawaharlal Nehru University,” he said. “We went anyway and were met with warmth and love. So it’s clear who wants to keep us apart.”

These visits were a follow up to the ‘Joint Signature Campaign by Citizens of India and Pakistan Against Terrorism, War Posturing and To Promote Cooperation and Peace’ launched in January this year to mobilise public opinion.

But activists are aware that they can only do as much as the governments allow. Pakistan gave only three visas for the visiting Indians, having promised five.

Breakthroughs between India and Pakistan are routinely subverted by violence.

Just four days before the Mumbai attacks, Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari promised a “no-first nuclear-strike” policy against India – Pakistan’s first head of state to do so – commented Iqbal Haider, Secretary General of the independent Human Rights Commission of Pakistan.

In his address to The Hindustan Times Leadership Summit via satellite link from Islamabad on Nov 22, Zardari also talked of a common South Asian economic bloc and easing visa restrictions, even a passport-free ‘flexible Indo-Pak visa regime’.

“He outlined a clear policy that the bureaucracy keeps flouting,” said Haider.

The security establishments and military machines also have vested interests in keeping tensions simmering.

“There will be no peace until the arms race ends,” said Mohammad Ali Shah of the Pakistan Fisherfolk Forum, representing a community severely impacted by the hostilities, with whom the Indian delegates spent an evening.

“There are currently over 500 Indian fishermen in Pakistani prisons, and over 150 Pakistani fishermen in Indian prisons,” Shah told IPS. “Fishermen on both sides caught violating the maritime borders are treated as prisoners of war.”

A consular access agreement of May 2008 aimed at facilitating early release of prisoners requires both sides to exchange updated lists of each other’s nationals in their custody every January 1 and July 1.

Pakistan handed over its list to the Indian government. “But India defaulted both times this year, and has been unable, for unspecified reasons, to provide Pakistan with a list of Pakistani prisoners in Indian jails,” reported Indian daily The Hindu of Jul 2.

The lists in any case are incomplete, with many prisoners unaccounted for.

Jaipur-based Kavita Srivastava of India’s People’s Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL), on her first visit to Pakistan, wanted information about five Indian prisoners incarcerated in Pakistani prisons since 1991.

“Only two are in touch with their families, we don’t even know if the other three are alive,” she told IPS. “When they heard that I got my visa, their families walked for a whole day to meet me. With tears in their eyes they begged me to bring any information I could.”

She was unable to ascertain their whereabouts but left with a promise from the provincial Minister for Prisons that ‘next time’ she would be allowed to visit the prisons and find out for herself.

“Such visits are important to increase contacts. After all, we are one region. We should be able to meet,” Shakeel Silawat of the Youth Progressive Council told IPS, after arranging a visit for Srivastava with girls and women from his community. Silawats are Rajasthanis who often have families on both sides of the border.

“If there was dual citizenship for Indians and Pakistanis, believe me, many would take it,” asserts award-winning social activist Sandeep Pandey from Lucknow.

Pandey participated in the 2005 peace march from Delhi to Multan in the south of Pakistan’s Punjab province. The marchers had also received enthusiastic welcomes from Pakistani villagers along the way.

“We presented our demands,” said Pandey. “First, resolve all problems through dialogue. Second, de-weaponise and remove armies from the borders. Third, end visa restrictions. I remember this cyclist who said, ‘Make the third demand your first. Once that happens, the rest will sort out’.”

Karamat Ali of the Pakistan Peace Coalition which organised the visit said that the Indians left with “a sense of the urgency for peace with India which appears to be greater among Pakistanis”.

“They realise that they need to push the Indian government to change its attitude towards the elected government of Pakistan, go beyond pressurising the Pakistani government to ‘take action’, in order to break the grip of the establishment here,” he told IPS.

Such visits may not yield immediate results. But the fact that the governments allow them to take place is in itself a step, if not forward, then at least not backwards. And in the context of India and Pakistan, that can only be seen as positive.