PAKISTAN DIARY – II

  Naresh ‘Nadeem’

WHILE still at Lahore, the delegation decided to somewhat deviate from the itinerary that was worked out beforehand. The idea was to go to Nankana Sahib where Guru Nanak, founder of the Sikh religion, was born. As most of us were not sure whether we would at all be able to come to Pakistan again, we did not want to miss this opportunity. But special permission for it had to be obtained from Islamabad as none of us had a visa for Sheikhupura district, in which Nankana Sahib is located. That did not pose a problem, though it took some time.

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This caused a bit of disappointment to local comrades, as some of the programmes had to be cancelled. These included a visit to the Camp Jail in Lahore, refreshment arranged by the CPP office in Lahore, and a meeting with the JLF leadership.

Sheikhupura district is adjacent to Lahore, and it is said that Sheikhupura town was populated by Emperor Jahangir whose childhood nickname was Sheikhu.

We avoided the route via Sheikhupura town. Instead, bypassing Shahdara, we reached Nankana Sahib, 78 km from Lahore, via Shaqarpur and Faizabad Mandi.

The journey was an experience in itself. Here in India, the reality of the Vajpayee government’s “India Shining” slogan was evident to anybody as soon as (s)he took trouble to move a little distance out of Delhi, or any metropolitan city for that matter. Going away from Lahore with all its five star hotels, wide roads, neon signboards and what not, I had had a similar kind of experience. As soon as we crossed the Ravi bridge, the road to Nankana Sahib was just like any countryside road in eastern UP or Bihar. It was broken in places, there were small potholes in it, and there were pools of water alongside. Villages by the roadside gave a gloomy look, pucca houses were few and far between, many of the houses were in a dilapidated state, and the rural folk were in poor and some in tattered clothes. 

I was miffed up by a peculiar fact. Contrary to the impression communal forces here in India have always tried to create, the government of Pakistan has been engaged in the maintenance of Nankana Sahib gurudwara and several other gurudwaras. Then, I asked myself, why didn’t they improve the road, widen it, make the journey smooth? I told one of the local comrades accompanying us: if only the road is improved and there is a further relaxation in visa restrictions, Pakistan may well earn millions of dollars every year. The very nature of the place would bring it on the international tourism map, attracting a large number of Sikhs (and also some non-Sikhs) from India as well as western countries.

Yet, to me it did not come as a surprise. Places of international importance like Kushinagar in India and Lumbini in Nepal have suffered callous neglect for decades, just like Nankana Sahib has. Speaking once in Lahore, Surjeet stressed the basic unity of Indian and Pakistani people by saying that we have the same food items and same songs --- khana ek aur gana ek. One could well add to it: the bureaucratic buddhi running these countries is also the same.

One now hopes the condition will noticeably improve once there is an Indo-Pak agreement to link Nankana Sahib and other Sikh shrines in Pakistan with Amritsar.

Nankana Sahib, where we were greeted with saropas, was among the places where a bitter struggle was fought against the corrupt, pro-British mahants in the 1920s. Here, about 200 Sikhs led by Jathedar Lakshman Singh were gunned down on February 21, 1921, in front of Mahant Narain Das. The self-serving Akali leaders of today perhaps little realise what sacrifices their predecessors had had to make to liberate their gurudwaras and to make their gurudwara liberation struggle a vital part of the bigger liberation struggle --- the national liberation struggle.  

Then --- back to Lahore. We had left Lahore at about 8:45 in the morning and we reached the Tajmahal Reception Hall at five minutes to one. Well in time for the lunch hosted by National Workers Party chairman Abid Hasan Minto. Taimur Rehman’s bet was that we won’t be able to come back even till 1:30 to attend the lunch, and he lost.

The main attraction of this programme was a reunion of two friends after a gap of 58 long years. Though C R Aslam (95) is in the NWP, he is a veteran of the Left movement in Pakistan and is given due regard as such by all Left groups in the country. Hence it was very natural that when he was brought to the stage to meet Surjeet, the audience rose to give respect to the two veterans, amid loud applause.

NWP is not a constituent of the JLF that hosted our visit.

Incidentally, the kisan wing of the NWP is organising an “international kisan conference” at Toba Tek Singh on March 23 --- the same place and the same date on which late Maulana Abdul Hameed Bhasani had organised a kisan conference in 1970. However, there was no gist in the news published in The Dawn (March 1) that communist leaders from India had “accepted invitation” to attend the event.

Organised by JLF in the afternoon, the seminar on “Future of Socialism in South Asia” was attended by a large number of activists, several of whom had come from other parts of the country. The attendance was indeed so big that many had to stand outside and many sat on floor inside the auditorium of Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, situated in New Garden Town in Lahore. One leader each from the JLF constituents, the CPI and the CPI(M) spoke on the occasion. The presentations were interspersed with poetry recitals throughout.

It was a different look in late evening when Pakistan Chapter of the South Asia Free Media Association (SAFMA) hosted a dinner for the delegation at Avari Hotel on Mall Road. It was preceded by an interaction session with a dozen odd intellectuals ---economists, political scientists, media persons and the like. Surjeet did not attend the session as he needed some rest after the whole day’s activity, and A B Bardhan had to reply the queries coming from these intellectuals.

At least two hundred souls attended the dinner, with the welcome function presided over by SAFMA secretary general Imtiaz Alam and the proceedings were conducted by renowned columnist Munnu Bhai. “Indian Left & Indo-Pak Reconciliation” was the theme on which Surjeet and Bardhan were asked to express their views and reply to the queries coming from the audience. A large number of JLF workers were present on the occasion and their slogans and revolutionary songs created an ambience rarely, if ever, seen in a five star hotel. Many media organisations including Geo TV covered this SAFMA-organised event.

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While Surjeet flew to Islamabad in view of his age, the rest of the delegation negotiated the 372 km distance in cars and the media team accompanying us came by bus. It was a broad and smooth motorway that, at places, passes through hills in a serpentine fashion. The weather was pleasant, and cars ran at 100 km an hour. A vanload of CMKP workers also came from Lahore to Islamabad.

The first programme in the capital city of Islamabad was a lunch hosted by CPP on its outskirts. The house belongs to Engineer Jameel Malik who was the CPP candidate for National Assembly against the present prime minister, Shaukat Aziz. Malik mustered only 1,400 odd votes in this poll when the PPP candidate accused the military of having engineered rigging in order to ensure the victory of its chosen candidate for prime minister’s post. Yet, Malik’s candidature served the purpose the party had in view. It created a sort of sensation in the country and sent the message across that the Left was not dead in Pakistan. We in India may not be able to fathom the full significance of this message. But it was a big thing in Pakistan where the landlord-military-clergy combine had assured themselves and their masters abroad that they had done away with the Left!

Malik’s candidature was a boost also to the liberals who were badly marginalised, if not decimated, by the same combine. The story is the same as in India. Here, if the RSS-variety and other fundamentalists are dead opposed to communists, they do not tolerate the liberals and progressives either. To that extent, communists and liberals have a common enemy and a common cause --- here as well as there. 

Rawalpindi, or in short Pindi as the local people call it, was the capital of Pakistan till 1964 when the construction of Islamabad was completed. Population-wise, Pindi is the third biggest city in the country. Though the two cities are adjacent and one is not able to judge where one ends and the other starts, they are two worlds quite apart. Contrary to the well-planned and modernised Islamabad with a population of only 7 lakhs, Pindi is an old, highly unplanned and overcrowded city.

Reaching our destination --- Rawalpindi Press Club --- involved a bit of trouble as our driver was from Lahore and did not know much about Pindi roads. This meant we had to pass through several roads and lanes in the city, unnecessarily, but this way we also saw a few places we could not have seen otherwise. These included the road where the JKLF, Azad Kashmir Mahaz, and various other militant groups have their offices. We were told that it is the government of Pakistan that allotted them office spaces on a single road in Pindi. Also that they were deliberately allotted offices in Pindi and not in nearby Islamabad where they would have constantly been under the gaze of international public opinion; and that this would have been embarrassing to the Pakistan government also.

The public meeting organised by JLF in Rawalpindi Press Club was a crowded one, with several comrades coming from the North West Frontier Province and other places. The Indian delegation’s visit to Pakistan was a moral booster to comrades in these places; many of them had got inactive or joined the NGOs came forward to contact the JLF parties. One of such veterans, for example, was Mukhtar Wacha who remained with us in Islamabad and also came over to Karachi. 

A slightly unpleasant situation developed here as CMKP activists came to have a verbal clash with a group that had left the party two years ago. This breakaway group is in favour of supporting the Musharraf regime, on the understanding that a weakening of this regime would mean a fundamentalist take-over.

As soon as we reached the Marriot Hotel in Islamabad, our status changed. For the next 40 odd hours now, we were the guests of the Pakistan government.

In the evening, the Pakistan Chapter of SAFMA organised yet another reception to the delegation in this hotel that stands face to face with the Marghalla Hills of scenic beauty. As we were now state guests, the original JLF programme that the CPP would host a dinner for us, had to be cancelled.

(To Be Continued)