It's time to turn a new leaf

If one were to draw two graphs, one showing the pace of friendship between India and Pakistan, and the other unfriendliness, the latter would indicate a slight dip. Progress of friendship may not be perceptible. But the absence of war since the Shimla agreement in 1972 is a plus. If the General-made Kargil misadventure is seen as an aberration, the two countries have never enjoyed such a long period of peace, 37 years, since they won freedom on August 1947.

The Independence Day of the two countries within 24 hours confused me. I did not celebrate India's Independence Day on August 15 in 1947 because I was a refugee. Nor did I celebrate the independence day of Pakistan on August 14 because the shadow of partition had already cast gloom all over.

News of killings and migration of people from their homes had spread to my hometown, Sialkot, itself.

We, too, were leaving the house. And many outsiders, who had been living in India, were pouring into the city, creating tension.

Yet I felt a strange feeling of elation and depression. Elation was because we had freed ourselves from the clutches of the British after the 150-year-long rule of authoritarianism and untold atrocities.

Depression was because I was uncertain about the future that confronted me. I did not know what to do next. I had just passed out from the Law College, Lahore.

Indeed, I heard Jawaharlal Nehru's midnight speech on the All India Radio - one could still catch it in Pakistan - "Long years ago we made a tryst with destiny and now the time comes when we shall redeem our pledge, not wholly or in full measure, but very substantially..."

I had earlier listened to Pakistan Radio broadcasting Qaid-e-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah's speech, not emphasising that Hindus and Muslims were two separate nations but declaring: "You are free to go to your temples, you are free to go to your mosques or to any other place of worship in this state of Pakistan ... you may belong to any religion or caste or creed ... that has nothing to do with the business of the state..."

Both speeches evoked hope but sounded like distant beats of drums, heralding a new era at a time when Hindus and Sikhs from the Pakistan Punjab and Muslims from India's Punjab were in the midst of travel to other places from where they had lived for generations. Loud cries of their suffering at the hand of assailants had muffled the drum beats. In fact, they rubbed salt on the wounds of the refugees.

Was the "tryst with destiny" or "freedom to go to temples" meant a fresh start or destruction of our identity? Were the promises made by the leaders on both sides false? A new dawn was supposed to herald. People, particularly women and children, were victims of the fury of those who saw people of other religion as their enemy. How and why did the leaders imagine a peaceful transfer of population when the venom of hate was injected many years before partition?

Transfer of population

I do not know on what grounds the proposal of transfer of population was rejected. But records show that at the time of partition the proposal was seriously discussed and discarded.

It would have made sense if the two countries were to follow democratic and secular policies. But even before the advent of independence, the fanatics and criminals came to occupy key political and administrative positions with the sole purpose to exterminate members of the opposite community.

It would have been ideal if the people had stayed back at their homes. But could they have? There was no visionary in both the countries to tell them - millions of them - that you should prepare yourself to stay at your homes because bias and alienation would go with time.

Still when we left, we thought we would return after things had settled down. They never did. Even after 62 years they have not. People who were earlier pitted as Hindus and Sikhs against Muslims today confront each other as Indians and Pakistanis. The same enmity is there. Was independence the real independence?

This is what Urdu revolutionary poet Faiz Ahmad Faiz said. I translate it in English:

This stained light, this night-bitten dawn/
This is not the dawn we yearned for/
This is not the dawn/
For which we set out so eagerly.

Tragedies can never be treasured. Nor should they be. They scratch wound every time it begins to get crust, to heal. Peace and friendship are important, but they do not have to blot out the memories. Can we give the whole thing a new, positive turn and consider what happened during partition as a lesson for the next generations that religious bigotry can blind people to the basic values of respecting a human life, to whatever religion it belongs?

Madness overtook us at that time. Some time I fear it can happen again.

The case in point is the joint statement which the prime ministers of the two countries has signed in Egypt.

The hostility that India's Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has faced in his own country may well be because of the opposition's joint criticism of the statement. Pakistan's Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani is only stoking fires of differences and playing up to the gallery in Pakistan.

Coming back to partition, certain steps need to be taken to stop the blame game that each one is bent on playing on the 1947 holocaust.

My proposal is to have a museum on partition. This is not to glorify the killings but to stir the conscience of people in the subcontinent to seek forgiveness from one another.

Museum

I do not want the museum to show the killings by one community of another, but to highlight the loss of one million people and the disruption of the life of 20 million. I expect Pakistan to participate in this venture. People controlling the board jointly should be eminent in their country, above the pull of politics or religion. The main purpose of the museum is that to make the people on both sides feel humble and humane. Both have seen murder and worse; both have been broken on the rack of history; both are refugees.

Still, the two countries continue to be distant neighbours. There is no conflict, no settlement. Even if there is no hatred, there is no harmony. Even if there is no war, there is no peace. Can the new generations turn a fresh leaf? They can embark on the path of peace and normalcy today or tomorrow. But they have no other option. They are wasting their time unnecessarily.

Kuldip Nayar is a former Indian high commissioner to the United Kingdom and a former Rajya Sabha member.