The seventh river of peace

Rajan Kapoor

India and Pakistan can sink their differences and live in eternal peace. But the precondition is that the seventh river of love and friendship starts flowing between the two nations. What else would be a better occasion than the opening up of the Kartarpur corridor for making the seventh river flow?’ a speaker stated hopefully at a college seminar hosted on the occasion of the 550th birth anniversary of Guru Nanak.

I pondered over the seventh river.  Curiosity engulfed me.  I approached the speaker and asked him which was the seventh river he had referred to. Was there even a sixth river?

He suggested that I read Fikr Taunsvi’s The Sixth River to find the answer. I read the book, which was an indictment of those who made innocent people go through the traumatic experience of the Partition. Taunsvi narrated a tale of his three-month long miseries on account of his stay in Pakistan — how friends turned foes; how the silvery waters of the Ravi turned into poison in a trice, described vividly as the ‘sixth river’. Punjab that was once the land of five rivers was devoured by the newborn sixth river of hatred and violence. How his two-and-a-half-year-old daughter was killed by his friend and neighbour, simply because she   belonged to another religion. How religious fanaticism blunted the power of reasoning. The most touching part of the incident was when the accused realised his mistake, and went to Taunsvi with his three-year-old son, asking him to smash his boy’s head against the wall to square the account. 

Another small but arresting incident that shakes the conscience of readers is when Taunsvi’s friend, who was a progressive writer, gets consumed by religious hatred and in a fit of fanaticism calls Taunsvi a Hindu and an enemy of the Muslims. This was the worst jolt for Taunsvi, as his friends were never divided into binaries before the Partition. They were now cut into two camps — Hindus and Muslims. The sixth river flooded the centuries-old friendship and contaminated the bonds of love, camaraderie and peace that once existed between two communities.

Now, Baba Nanak has provided us an opportunity to wash the contaminated waters of the river with the seventh river of love and peace. The opening of the Kartarpur corridor can act as the seventh river; its pure waters washing away the hatred that has kept the two nations into its venomous grip for over seventy years. Let us hope and pray to Baba Nanak that the corridor acts as a harbinger of peace and usher in a new era of love and affection between the two nations.