Could Punjabi provide the idiom to rescue India-Pakistan relations from the leaden grip of diplomatic jargon? Could joint celebrations of Punjabiyat catalyse a breakthrough that’s eluded decades of confidence-building measures? This week, as artistes and sportspersons from East and West Punjab congregate in Patiala to “revive the spirit of Punjab, Punjabi and Punjabiyat”, a qualitative change is tantalisingly within sight. Border crossings are of course always good news. They add depth to dialogue conducted by the political class, and expand public ownership of the peace process. Punjab as the site of engagement, however, is particularly interesting. For so long memories of 1947 — of those mass migrations and senseless violence — have sustained demonic projections of the Other. They have provided a subtext to bilateral suspicion that the Other is out to settle scores. With the people of the bifurcated state now reclaiming a shared Punjabiyat, the source of so much inherited animus will hopefully run dry.It is unfortunate that the Indo-Pakistan peace process has tended to remain caught up in a procedural bind — with people-to-people contact routinely considered desirable only in the event of diplomatic deals. But consider the anomaly between the two foreign offices’ agenda and popular demands. New Delhi and Islamabad are struggling to finetune the terms of engagement to address problems that could be tractable only to slow, patient and considered dialogue. The people, on the other hand, want little more than the freedom to visit their ancestors’ homes, to complete religious pilgrimages whose circuit has been snapped by Radcliffe’s line, to just cross the border and satisfy their curiosity about each other. The ludicrousness of holding the second hostage to progress on the first is obvious. More importantly, it reflects a refusal to accept that people-to-people contact could provide a breakthrough, by gathering a critical mass of trust and sincerity.In the last year and a half, a matrix has been carefully constructed by New Delhi and Islamabad to accommodate an exchange of views and demands on problems like Siachen, cross-border terrorism, Kashmir and nuclear protocols. There has been a perceptible willingness to accept that we live in a common neighbourhood. It is this sentiment that’s visible in increased contact between the two Punjabs. Fifty-seven years after Partition, it also demonstrates a desire to bury the hurts of the past — to realise that a 57-year-old border need not hinder claims to an older cultural heritage.
