HVK Archives: Wagah: Traffic jams, lathis mar festivities
Wagah: Traffic jams, lathis mar festivities - The Asian Age
Asit Jolly
()
17 August 1997
Title: Wagah: Traffic jams, lathis mar festivities
Author: Asit Jolly
Publication: The Asian Age
Date: August 17, 1997
As the clock ticked towards midnight on August 14, there were traffic
snarlups and lathicharges at the Wagah Border, midway between Amritsar and
Lahore.
Enthusiastic Indians had reached the border on tractors, buses, trucks,
cars and scooters. Some had even walked to the checkpost where dusk to
dawn curfew is a norm. From across the border came seven Pakistanis who
were fortunate enough to get travel visas to Amritsar.
Fifty metres from the point called "zero line." people danced to the music
of local Punjabi folk singers, including the highly popular Hansraj Hans.
The lyrics had been changed to include references to places and people in
what is now Pakistani Punjab. "This road goes to my beloved Lahore, where
Ghulam Ali, Nusrat Fateh Ali and brother Shaukat sing loudly. Let's go to
Lahore, Let's go to Lahore ..." The overcrowded stage collapsed three times.
A flaming torch slipped from the hands of the chief of the Citizens For
Democracy organiser, Kuldip Nayar, and lit up the turban of Punjab Cabinet
minister Manjit Singh. Fortunately, the fire was extinguished before it
could cause any damage. Across the border, loud speakers blared old
Noorjehan and Mehdi Hassan numbers. But there was not a single visitor. A
group of Hindu college students who had come in the hope of meeting some
Pakistanis for the first time in their lives were disappointed. "We
decided to come, not out of any grand sense of patriotism, but to shake
hands with some Pakistani guys." said a third year student.
Indian BSF soldiers who worker hard to control the crowds were equally
disappointed. "This is a completely futile effort. Our people keep coming
every day to stretch a hand of friendship, but those fellows are just not
interested. I think it's an insult," said a BSF guard. Said Mr Kuldip
Nayar, the man behind the Wagah midnight vigil: "I am told that there was
an official Pakistan government order warning citizens from going to the
border."
But he was not disappointed.
"We will keep coming every year. They (the Pakistan government) will have
to relent one day and permit their people to join the celebrations," he
said. At 30 minutes past midnight - midnight in Pakistan - Mr Nayyar lit a
candle and walked to the "zero line" and placed it there as a symbol of his
conviction that the two governments must relax restrictions and allow
people to meet each other.
Members of Citizens of Democracy and South Asian Fraternity, who finally
edge their way onto the thrice broken stage, then read out a formal
declaration condemning the "stubborn stance of the bureaucracy and the
hostile postures of the fundamentalists on both sides of the fence."
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