At midnight on August 15, hundreds of Pakistani and Indian peace activists will converge at the Wagah-Attari border with candles, placards and music to jointly celebrate Pakistan and India’s independence days after nearly a decade. This year, I hope to be among them.
The tradition of a joint celebration began in 1996, following a 1995 visit to Lahore by the late Delhi-based journalist Kuldip Nayar who met with like-minded Pakistanis. They agreed to organise an annual candle-lit vigil at Wagah border to send a message of peace on both sides.
In August 2018, Nayar handed over the baton to the youth group Aaghaz-e-Dosti, flagging them off as they set out for the Attari border from Delhi. He passed away less than 10 days later, on August 23.
A long gap
The Pakistani activists will join this border gathering after a long gap, having been denied permission for several years.
Happy that the permission has finally been granted, Imtiaz Alam, Secretary General of the South Asia Free Media Association, said the aim is to “reiterate our position” calling for peace and dialogue.
The tradition of meeting at the border at midnight on August 15 had been “discontinued because of our polluted political environment”, he told Sapan News. Peace activists “are now getting some space”, he said, and hoped they will be able to expand on it.
A list of 150 Pakistani activists has been cleared to go to the border. About 250 people had expressed interest and sent in their details.
From the Indian side, several groups are headed to the border. One of them is Aagaz-e-Dosti (Start of Friendship) contingent, which left from Delhi to Amritsar on August 12, after a seminar addressed by luminaries like Shabnam Hashmi of the rights group Anhad and education activist Syeda Hameed, also the founder trustee of the Women’s Initiative for Peace in South Asia.
Both of them are also members of the Pakistan-India People’s Forum for Peace and Democracy launched in 1994, and the Southasia Peace Action Network, Sapan, that started in 2021.
As India and Pakistan celebrate independence, Sapan’s resolution on August 7 expresses solidarity with the people Bangladesh and calls for peace and stability in the region.
Peace warriors
At a kick-off event on August 12, young peace activists were awarded. They included Evita Das, 32, a Delhi-based researcher and practitioner focusing on land, housing and caste dynamics. Das is also the national coordinator of the Pakistan-India Peoples’ Forum for Peace and Democracy and heads The People's Commission and Public inquiry committees.
Veteran “peacemonger” Lalita Ramdas, also a Sapan founder-member, shared congratulations from herself and her late spouse, Admiral Ramu Ramdas. She described him as “that peace warrior who is at peace somewhere not too far away”, encouraging peace efforts. “Even in his final few days, in a semi-conscious state, he kept asking me what progress there had been on Pakistan-India relations,” she said.
Admiral Ramdas was a staunch proponent of India-Pakistan peace and dialogue. In 2004, he received the Ramon Magsaysay Award with prominent journalist IA Rehman of Pakistan for “their reaching across a hostile border to nurture a citizen-based consensus for peace between Pakistan and India”.
“He was most impressed with all you had done,” Lalita Ramdas said, addressing Evita Das. “He used to say we need a hundred young people like Evita.”
Responding with a clenched fist salute, Das said she hoped that the message reaches hundreds of youngsters. “On behalf of those we know and those we don’t, we send our salam to both of you,” she said. “From the hundreds and millions of young people sending ishq bhara salam – love-filled salute.”
Peace activist Ram Mohan Rai from Panipat, one of the main organisers of the event, said, “This journey is a respectful salute and humble tribute to all those people who gave their lives to give us the nectar of freedom and also to those who suffered the fire of Partition and sacrificed themselves.”
It is inspired by peace activists who have passed on, like Nayyar, Mohini Giri, Satyapal Grover and Kamla Bhasin.
“This was the dream of Didi Nirmala Deshpande ji,” he said, referring to the Gandhian activist. He said it was a collective responsibility to realise Deshpande’s dream.
Another group of peace activists under the banner of Hind-Pak Dosti Manch and Socialist Party, India, also began a march from Mansa in Punjab to the Attari border, from August 9 to 14. Sandeep Pandey, who heads this group, had led an Indo-Pakistan peace march from New Delhi to Multan in 2005. He was conferred the Ramon Magsaysay Award in 2002 for the emergent leadership category.
They too will converge at the Attari-Wagah border to light candles at midnight on August 15.
A seminar for around 1,000 people was to be organised on August 14 in Amritsar by stalwarts who have been mobilising and arranging logistics since Nayar’s time. Here, it is important to acknowledge activists like Ramesh Yadav of Punjab Folklore Society, Satnam Manak, editor of Ajit, the largest circulated Punjabi daily, and Ruby Singh, a younger volunteer, among others. “We need to recognise such people,” said journalist Jatin Desai in Mumbai, former secretary of the Pakistan-India Peoples’ Forum for Peace and Democracy. “They are the pillars without whom the programme cannot be organised.”
Soft borders
Activists reiterated their demand for both sides is to soften the border and initiate dialogue, allowing human contact between both countries. “We urge the two governments to resume the peace process," coordinator Harinder Singh Manshahia, vice president Socialist Party India, told reporter Neel Kamal of The Times of India.
Manshahia said that like the Kartarpur corridor, more passages should be opened, but without the requirement of a passport and fees. “Ultimately we should have a soft border to allow free movement of bona fide citizens and vehicles of the two countries and all issues should be resolved by dialogue.”
A soft border is also the demand of Sapan, endorsed by over 90 organisations and hundreds of individuals around the region and diaspora.
Manshahia told The Times of India that peace activists from both sides want India and Pakistan to give up nuclear weapons and weapons of mass destruction that have never been used since the end of the Second World War in 1945.
Pakistan and India need to reduce defence expenditures to release valuable resources for development and to eradicate poverty as more people die of disease than war in both countries, he said.
Saeeda Diep of the Pakistan Institute of Peace and Secular Studies told Sapan News that her organisation is also planning a joint peace conference in December in Lahore.
The friendship of javelin throwers Arshad Nadeem of Pakistan and Neeraj Chopra of India and the large-heartedness of their mothers has already warmed hearts around the region. Earlier in April at the Karate Combat competition in Dubai, another sportsman athlete holding up flags of both countries expressed similar sentiments.
When will both governments realise that it is in their own interests to follow the people to peace?
Beena Sarwar is an unabashed peacemonger and the founder and chief editor of Sapan News.
This is a Sapan News syndicated article.
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