| A Dusty Road out of Amritsar
By Rajni Anand Luthra
A
trip to the Wagah checkpost along the Indo-Pak border.
It
is almost five o’clock. The show is about to begin.
My camera and video camera are both ready.
We have driven along a dusty road out of Amritsar, Punjab,
to reach the Joint Checkpost along the India-Pakistan
border at Wagah, to see the ceremonial lowering of the
flags at dusk.
A motley crowd has gathered here; people have done the
customary round of the place and posed for photographs
with the sentries of the Border Security Force (BSF)
who guard the international border. The soldiers are
smartly dressed: they were khaki uniforms, ornate red,
yellow and black cummerbunds and matching collars, turbaned
and tassled headgear, and badges of the BSF. Their marching
shoes are covered with spotless white over-socks into
which their pants are tucked.
On the India side of the border, the large gates are
painted brightly in the colors of the national flag,
saffron, white and green, and the national symbol, the
three lion heads, bright and shiny in brass, are mounted
on the centre of each. Along the green band at the bottom,
one gate reads INDIA and the other, Bharat, in Hindi.
Above the left gate flutters the Indian tricolor. This
is my view as I take a quick last shot of the gates
on my video camera, before the ceremony begins.
The gates are closed but on the Pakistani side, I can
see a woman, video camera to her eye. About my height,
she is wearing a salwar kameez like me. She would be
about my age, I reckon. She has a little boy beside
her.
The ceremony is about to commence. My four-year-old
daughter Devna and I are ushered back to our seats.
She has been holding on to my chunni just as I have
instructed her.. As we settle down, I crane my neck
to see if I can spot the Pakistani woman across the
divide.
The curious marching style makes for
quite a spectacle.
The view she would have had through her video camera
lens would perhaps be similar to the one I had through
mine. A motley crowd has gathered on their side. Their
gates are exactly the same in dimensions as ours, except
of course the colors are different. They are green and
white, and they carry their national symbol, the star
and crescent, silvery bright and shiny. Along the green
band at the bottom, one gate reads PAKISTAN and the
other, the same in Urdu. Above the left gate flutters
the Pak flag.
The Pak Rangers are smartly dressed too: they wear green
salwar kurtas, but have the same ornate cummerbunds
and collars, and turbaned and tassled headgear.
The troops do a ceremonial parade to mark the start
of the proceedings. The display is eye-catching. There
is a lot of stomping and pushing out of the chests;
the marching is unusual in that the limbs, particularly
the legs, are raised extraordinarily high. The rushed
marching makes for quite a spectacle. It makes the soldiers
look like charged-up roosters preparing for a fight.
(Exactly the same show is being carried out on the other
side of the gates). The crowds applaud. Devna’s eyes
light up with wonderment and she joins the applause
wholeheartedly. A lone sentry then marches up to some
sort of officer-in-charge and seeks permission to open
the gates and lower the flag. His request is a loud
shout. “Izazat di jaati hai (permission granted)!” barks
back the officer. (We hear exactly the same words from
a distance). The jawan then stomps back to his post.
Along with a handful of his mates, he then marches forward
towards the gates. One of them rushes forward, unlocks
the gate and with a loud cry and great force of strength,
swings the huge gates back in one swift movement each.
The crowds cheer. Devna claps her little hands and laughs
gleefully at the sheer spectacle of it all.
Cheers are heard from a distance too. The Pakistanis
are applauding the opening of their own gates.
The Indian and Pakistani gate-openers, standing on what
must be no-man’s land, greet each other with a handshake.
The Indian sentries take positions on either sides of
the gates and stand arms akimbo, as if they are ready
to indulge in a bout of some eastern martial art. After
some more commands of “Saavdhaan and “Vishraam” (attention,
at ease) are barked, the flag is lowered by a sentry
who pulls its cord from the opposite end at a diagonal.
The Pak flag, lowered at exactly the same moment, meets
the Indian flag half-way. Cameras flash. Both flags
are then neatly folded and then carried away from the
gates, held aloft at shoulder length.
The deference accorded to the Indian flag by the soldiers
transfers to the crowds who applaud reverentially as
the treasured icon passes by. Even little Devna takes
on a look of grave solemnity as she stands up and claps.
Meanwhile, the “enemies” on no-man’s-land shake hands
again and shut their respective gates with ferocious
movements. I have seen this scene on TV many times,
particularly during the days of the Kargil war. But
now I have my own video version. As the ceremony ends
and the crowds disperse, I am filled with sadness at
the sheer sameness, the oneness, of it all. The futility
of the exercise of dividing a nation that has so far
been peacefully pluralistic, baffles me. The dividing
line, it suddenly occurs to me, could have fallen anywhere
along the dusty road we have traveled out of Amritsar.
History of the Checkpost
Today, there are elaborate gates, giant gateways, viewing
galleries, beautiful gardens, and professional photographers
roaming the spot with their gear round their necks —
everything seems to scream “this is a great tourist
spot, folks!”
Yet Wagah was not always like this. Reading The Falcon
in my Name: A Soldier’s Dairy by Maj-Gen (Retd) Bajwa,
I learn more of the history of the place.
Bajwa was a young lieutenant in the Indian Army in 1947
when a centuries-old civilization was divided into two
separate nations. Serving with 1 Dogra, a brigade stationed
at Amritsar responsible for the newly created international
border, the young sardarji began his career in turbulent
times indeed. He writes of the sentries guarding the
Wagah border:
The Pakistanis were brusque and aggressive. The Indian
resolves were tinged with bewilderment and sorrow. Amongst
a cluster of tents on both sides, the newly consecrated
pride and dignity of the two nations flew atop impoverished
flag poles stuck in earth filled in 40-gallon drums.
… Lt Col Gurdeep Singh, commanding the battalion, (was
saddened at) the sorry plight of the Indian flag on
its precarious perch. This set into motion a comic opera
of one-upmanship, which both sides are still engaged
in even today. Welling with national pride, he ordered
me to provide a pedestal befitting the dignity of the
national symbol … (He also ordered) that while constructing
the pedestal, the flag must not be lowered during the
day. That night, after the customary lowering of the
flag at the time of the retreat, my sappers lovingly
constructed a handsome concrete plinth on which we erected
the flag mast.
Working in the headlights of five Dodge weapon carriers
with engines running and the “enemy” curiously watching
from across the divide, had the air of a dramatic adventure.
In the morning, the Indian flag was proudly towering
over the surroundings atop its new mast … higher than
its neighbor. We too glanced across the divide with
an added lift to our shoulders … The next night the
Pak Military Engineering Service descended on the place
and fashioned an even more elaborate plinth. In the
morning their soldiers strutted around casting disdainful
glances at our flag mast … The game had started. We
vied with each other to add very visible flourishes
…
Bajwa was posted back to the region in 1972. The game,
he was saddened to learn, was still on.
A large man with a six-foot-three-inch frame, “enhanced
considerably by my turban,” Bajwa easily towered over
everybody else around him.
Imagine his amusement when a few days after he got there,
his counterpart in the Satluj Rangers of Pakistan was
replaced by a soldier who was a good four inches taller
than himself! And, believe it or not, the man’s nameplate,
Bajwa reveals, read’“Aslam Bajwa.”
Visiting Wagah in 2001, I could see some heavy construction
on the Lahore side of the border. It is perhaps a viewing
gallery for civil audiences that is being erected; ours
was inaugurated and opened to the public only months
earlier, on Oct 20, 2000. The India-Pakistan match is
still on. Bajwa’s words ring so true: “In the wake of
five nuclear tests conducted by India, Pakistan has
gone one better and claimed to have carried out six
… It is tragically evident that we still conduct our
national affairs s a game of one-upmanship and three
costly wars have not made us any the wiser.”
Bajwa chronicles, in the same book, about meeting an
old friend, Zulfiqar Ali, across the border at the Wagah
Checkpost. The account tugs at the heart, and acquaints
us with the pain suffered by all those who were affected
by a division that ought never to have happened.
As army cadets of a pre-independent India, Ali and Bajwa
trained side by side under the British Guards at Dehradun.
They carried each other’s backpacks and rifles when
they were injured or exhausted in training, and grew
to develop a deep bond that would stand the tests of
time even when later they would choose to live in two
separate lands. Best mates once, they became the defenders
of separate nations across a divide which was not of
their making.
After Partition, they met once more by chance in 1972,
soon after a gruesome India-Pakistan war. Bajwa was
overseeing the repatriation of a thousand Pakistani
prisoners of war through the gates at Wagah. Taking
them back home, was Zulfiqar Ali:
Both brigadiers now, it took us only a few seconds to
rush into a warm embrace, oblivious of the touchy dignities
of the victors and the vanquished. We laughed and years
of the invisible barrier fell away. We held on to each
other and we remembered. Then I became aware of hostile
glances … and we parted ... Zulfie came round twice
more to reach across in silent communion … We had relived
for fleeting moments the bonds of human friendship that
knew no geographical barriers.
During times of border skirmishes, the ceremony is
more animated than usual.
A land divided
Devna snuggles close to me as our car takes the dusty
road to Amritsar again. As I rest her weary head on
my chest and look out at the hustle and bustle passing
us by, my thoughts go back to those Punjabis whose lives
were torn asunder when Sir Cyril Radcliff drew that
ill-fated dividing line, among them, members of my own
family.
Was it along this road that Devna’s Dadaji made his
way to Delhi from Sargodha as a young teenager in 1947?
It must have been through this very checkpost that another
13-year-old, some day to be her Nanaji, fled a riot-ridden
Rawalpindi to the safe haven of Indian Punjab in early
1948.
Both her grandmothers, I shall tell her some day, were
luckier: Dadi because her family were fortunate enough
to be airlifted from Sargodha although they had their
share of troubled times before and after, and Nani because
she was a native of the Punjab that fell within India.
When she is old enough to understand her Indian roots
better, Devna will learn these aspects of her Punjabi
heritage.
On this India trip, I have driven around Punjab visiting
relatives in Chandigarh, Patiala, Jullundur, Pathankot.
If 1947 had panned out differently, I would perhaps
have taken this very dusty road out of Amritsar, through
Wagah but not through any checkpost, and visited relatives
in Lahore, Pindi, Sargodha … For I would still have
family living there, if 1947 had panned out differently.
If 1947 had panned out differently ….. oh well, what
a heck of a cricket team India would have had.
..-
End Of Article.....
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