Its been nearly 60 years since the horrific Partition, and we continue to live under its shadow - and burn in it.
One year ago, on February 18 2007, almost at the famous Midnight's Stroke to add insult to injury, 67 passengers on the Samjhauta Express were burned alive as fire broke out on two carriages rumbling on their way from Delhi to Lahore. Whether a terrorist attack or sabotage, people died not just because of the fire, but because India and Pakisan maximized the damage because they are so damn insecure about each other. No culprit has as yet been identified, let alone captured or brought to justice.
The world has moved on, we hear quite often. But India and Pakistan seem to have been trapped in a perpetual time warp. Many of the passengers could have been saved had the carriages on fire not been locked from outside and with wrought iron rods barricading the windows!
The rationale for the padlocks and window bars, you ask? We Indians and Pakistanis are so ridiculously paranoid about each other, we 'd rather that an accident trap passengers and take innocent lives than risk the danger of a loner trying to embark on or disembark from the train enroute. Forget the fact that the Samjhauta Express and its passengers go through unending scrutiny as they cross the international border.
The Samjhauta and Thar Express trains that run at erratic schedules between India and Pakistan are the sole means of transport between the two countries for the poor. For us previliged people, acquiring a visa is perhaps the only debilitating obstacle should we have the nerve to take a peep of what's across the border. Once we have a visa (whose application, of course, we have dutifully backed up with a brimming bank account and perhaps a high-up source or two), the elusive mysteries of India and Pakistan are a 45-minute airline flight away.
But for those who have to bleed to cough out a few thousand rupees for the battle with fate in getting a visa and bracing up for a struggle to get across Sir Cyril Radcliffe's Line, the trains are the only option. But we consider all that to be a bit too convenient for these poor people, so we lock them like cattle or corn in the bogeys and send them off in the stifling heat. After being harassed enough at immigration, the wretched beings are thrown about at the border crossing into another train (ahan, yes, we cannot trust train wheels that have touched the unholy soil of the other side to be free from threats to our national security). Finally, the ragbags are disgorged at Delhi or Lahore, from where they persist onto their final destinations.
Inhuman is an understatement to describe the process these passengers have to endure to travel to family who were lost to the other side through no fault of their own. The fight between India and Pakistan has always been more about prestige and self-respect than survival. Yet these two countries ensure that their paranoia of each other shower enough humiliation, and perhaps even fireballs, upon their poorest and most powerless people, and make life even more miserable for those who have nothing but misery to speak of.
After more than 60 long years, even saying "shame on us" sounds shameful.
