Step across those lines

The terminals for this train being Delhi and Lahore creates the impression that it represents some durable system of sustaining people-to-people contact between the two countries. People-to-people, in the Indo-Pak context, would conjure up images of a burgeoning Hindu-Muslim jamboree. This is a huge misunderstanding about the Samjhauta Express, attacked by the terrorists on Sunday night killing almost 70.

Most of those killed were Muslims, both Indians and Pakistanis, returning from relatives in India or travelling to relatives in Pakistan. Some Hindus died too but these were mostly jawans of the Government Railway Protection Force. Their death sheds further light on the Samjhauta Express tragedy.

One of the oozing sores Partition left behind were divided Muslim families. As far as Hindus and Sikhs are concerned the transfer of populations was bloody but total.

The tragedy of Muslims has been of a different order, particularly the Muslims from UP, Bihar and Hyderabad. These families did not migrate en masse. Most were torn apart: parents in India; children in Pakistan. Brothers in India; sisters, married to men with a future on the other side, in Pakistan. An uncle of mine, a captain in the British Indian army actually placed a measuring tape on a map of undivided India to see if Bombay where he was posted and Karachi were the same distance from our village of Mustafabad, near Rae Bareli. They were. He moved to Karachi where generals and brigadiers of his acquaintance promised him the moon in the new Islamic state.

Mohajirs or immigrants were trapped in all sorts of ironies because this rather ambitious uncle of mine retired and died with no higher rank than that of a major! I am not for a moment suggesting that he would have made it as the army chief had he stayed on in India. The point I am making is that the destination as El Dorado soured as a dream for many Muslims who crossed over. Muslims from the most effete enclaves of India had to make the near impossible adjustment in the hegemonic hold of the energetic Punjabi.

It is largely these Muslims, poor souls, who populated the Samjhauta Express both ways. In a sense it is not a 8216;samjhauta8217; but a sort of 8216;majboori8217; or a 8216;compulsory8217; express. The Monabao-Khokrapar route in Rajasthan-Sindh and the Attari-Wagah train in Punjab have been in operation since soon after Partition, subject to the usual stoppages conditioned by fluctuations in political temperatures between the countries.

Initially, those who had crossed over to Karachi and Hyderabad in Sindh imagined as did some of the earlier Congress leaders that Partition was a temporary inconvenience and soon folks would move to and fro like in some imaginary Schengen visa regime. The opposite happened. Attitudes hardened as the two new nation states secured the contours of their distinct nationalisms. The two nations fought several wars, transforming that magical vale of Kashmir into a continuously muffled wail. Since 1989, not so muffled either. It was against this tragic backdrop that the poor on both sides clutched onto the only valuable, they had been left with 8212; relatives on both sides of the border. This is where the Samjhauta Express comes in handy. And now is this thread too being snapped?

There are various categories of people who travel between India and Pakistan. The seminarists, track-two professionals and the rich fly. This costs Rs 15,000. The Delhi-Lahore-Delhi bus costs Rs 900 each way. Both these methods of transport are beyond the means of those for whom relatives are the primary emotional anchor in life 8212; the poorest Muslims on both sides. The Samjhauta fare is Rs 120.

It is these poor lives that have been lost in a macabre incineration of the two coaches.

The Godhra train tragedy had a political consequence. After the tragedy and subsequent mayhem, Narendra Modi won the elections in Gujarat. Before the tragedy, the BJP was routed in UP.

What consequences might one expect from this tragedy? Either the authors of this ghastly act have been so subtle as to leave us all totally baffled. Or, they have been so foolishly transparent as to make their target crystal clear: the Indo-Pak peace process. Pakistan Foreign Minister Khurshid Kasuri was to arrive the next day. The pundits, of course, will get down to sequencing 8212; Baghliar, Sir Creek, Siachen, Kashmir, the joint mechanism 8212; each one of them sunk in deep thought.

Time was when one could consider New Delhi-Srinagar, India-Pakistan as one complex of issues. The lens now pans a much wider canvas. Americans are stuck in

Iraq, Afghanistan. Heaven knows what is in store for Iran. Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, India is

one contiguous belt. Is Indo-Pak peace possible in the midst of such regional volatility?

If this bilateral matter is not extricated from the blazes, then what hope for the great Indian surge? Under this huge canopy of strategic issues is being played out an existential drama in the life of Salma whose husband is buried in her UP village, father in Karachi. Where should she turn for the burial of her sister? And what of those poor constables, escorting the train, who were charred along with the passengers whose security they were supposed to oversee. How could they have escaped when the coaches of the Samjhauta are sealed in Delhi and unsealed in Attari 8212; the quest for security resulting in its exact opposite.

Naqvi is a Delhi- based commentator