A moment frozen into history
By Tarlochan Singh

TO have lived a moment that turned into history is too overwhelming an experience to be kept close to one’s chest. My reference is to my bus-ride to Lahore as a member of the non-diplomatic team that accompanied Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee. It is a lesson how an insignificantly small contingent of 18 old men helped the Prime Minister to conquer Lahore, nay the heart of Lahore. It is a diplomatic coup par excellence.

Why do I say so? Not that anything tangible has resulted from this bus-ride. But the intangible that it has yielded is so massive that it far outweighs anything that has happened in the Indo-Pak relations over the past 51 years or so. It has not only breached the solid crust of ice that embittered relations between the two people, it has brought a thaw in the frozen emotions that chilled the hearts on either side of the man-made Wagah border. It can again be asserted that Indians and Pakistanis are still much closer than any two neighbours known. That they are eager to share each little facet of each other’s life is the message that Lahore Declaration so eminently stands for. How come a mere busload of passengers from India appeared to the people of Pakistan as if the whole of India, in a swell of emotion, was reaching out to them?

It is for the second time that Atal Behari Vajpayee has done it. He has demonstrated that he has the knack to undam the bottled up emotions of the people of Pakistan. When he did it for the first time in 1977, he was a member of the Janata Government as its External Affairs Minister. Most unexpectedly, he released visa restrictions unilaterally, thus enabling the people of Pakistan to visit India. This time, Vajpayee himself was the master and could play his own tune in the manner he liked best.

Watching him closely, I can say that our Prime Minister waved no magic wand. And yet if the results is about as magical, it is due to the fact that he was most direct and forthright. He was little diplomatic in his manner and speech when he bluntly told the people of Lahore that his party was wholly against the formation of Pakistan or that it was he who ordered the Indian atom bomb to be exploded. Hence, when he also told them that it was not against them, the people for once, wanted to believe him. His language was simple and chaste idiomatic Urdu or Hindi as one would like to call it and his oratorial skills of the highest order.

Perhaps the people there were dying to hear this orator par excellence from India because nothing moves a Muslim crowd more than an orator (because the art of pulpit oratory, came to India with Islam) and he did not disappoint them at all.

But Vajpayee’s inherent skill and diplomacy lay in selecting the non-diplomatic team that accompanied him. For each one of them had a ready audience there; they were just dying to interact with them. For example, modern Islam is a subject so close to the heart of the people of Pakistan and Vajpayee had taken along with him A.M. Khusro — a former Vice-Chancellor of the Aligarh Muslim University the seminary which had shaped generations of Muslims in the sub-continent as the vanguard of modern Islam. The name Aligarh still has a halo for the people of Pakistan because, but for the Aligarh movement, Pakistan would not have come into being. And strangely enough, Khusro is no maulvi; he is every inch a modern Indian Muslim — enlightened to the core and playing his role in various ways in making India strong and efficient.

People in Pakistan are most concerned about the role and future of Urdu which is the official language of Pakistan. To satisfy them on this score there was in the team Javed Akhtar, the poet who to most Indians is no more than a film lyricist or a script writer.

Hockey and cricket are two other areas which excite a lot of interest, even jealousy, between the two countries. Hockey was represented by Zafar Iqbal and Pargat Singh, two former Indian captains and Olympians and two best exponents of sub-continental hockey. Cricket was represented by Kapil Dev whose home-spun genius made him one of the best all-rounders of the world cricket as also the World record holder as wicket-taker. Kirti Azad another famous cricketer was also with us. All of them were icons of their time and had a fan following in both the countries.

There was Dev Anand, the ever-green hero of the Indian screen who has dominated for more than half-a-century the Indian film industry and still refuses to either age or bow out. His visit to the Government College Lahore, his alma mater, certainly struck a sentimental chord in the heart of all the Ravians (the alumni of this great institution are known as Ravians, drawing their name from the river Ravi, the lifeline of Lahore.) Many Ravians are still around as leaders in various walks of the life in both India and Pakistan.

Two senior journalists of Punjabi extraction, namely Kuldip Nayar and Arun Shourie, had a very busy schedule, meeting their counterparts and interacting with them, both socially and professionally. Kuldip Nayar, a protagonist of Indo-Pak friendship and Arun Shourie, a strong critic of the two-nation theory are among those who are avidly read both in India and Pakistan for whatever they stand for.

The team also included three top-most captains of India’s trade, industry and commerce namely — Sudhir Jallan, Rajesh Shah and K. Poddar chiefs of FICCI, Assocham, and CII, respectively. All the three of them were highly sought after because Pakistan’s leaders of trade and industry have always been keen students of the Indian scene.

Mohinder Kapur, the famous ghazal and playback singer found himself as popular in Pakistan as Mehdi Hasan and Ghulam Ali in India. Wherever he went, there was an impromptu demand him to sing one or two pieces of his songs.

It was for nothing, therefore, that it turned out to be one of the greatest media-events of, (you can say) the decade. Pakistan and India alone accounted for at least 500 mediapersons of varying seniority and standing. There were representatives of international media set-ups the whole crop of them. Hence, this bus-ride not the maximum possible exposure, placing India and Pakistan wholly centre stage for a time. I say this because both the countries are, as yet, just minor players in media terms.

Vajpayee was always a step or two ahead of the media in creating news. Pakistan had arranged for him to pay homage at the mausoleum of poet Iqbal and Meenar-e-Pakistan. Vajpayee, of his own, also chose to pay visits to the mausoleum of Maharaja Ranjit Singh and Gurdwara Dera Sahib built in the sacred memory of the martyrdom of the Fifth Sikh Guru Arjan Dev.

Pakistanis had wholeheartedly joined in giving such a hearty welcome to the Indian Prime Minister and his entourage, in spite of the boycott call by the fundamentalist Jamait-e-Islami Party, is proved by the fact even while staging black flag demonstrations against the bus and its passengers, the Jamait volunteers were often found waving to us with one hand while carrying the black flag in the other. Their heart stood for peace with India, even if they protested otherwise. Perhaps they too realise that in the post-Pakistan scenario, peace is the biggest compulsion, no one can afford to go to war. Hence, peace must be given a chance.