Yoginder Sikand writes about the impact of the new train links between India and Pakistan.

Cries of ‘Long Live India-Pakistan Friendship’ rend the air as the Thar Express streams out of the Jodhpur railway station on the evening of the 17th of February, heading for the Pakistan border. The next afternoon, a train bearing the same name crosses into India from Mirpur Khas in Sindh and chugs into Munabao, a desert settlement in Rajasthan’s Barmer district, barely two kilometers from the border, being warmly welcomed by an enthusiastic crowd of several thousand people.

‘May the Thar Express become the Yar (Friendship) Express bringing India and Pakistan ever closer than before’, exclaims the compare of the function held by the Indian Railways to inaugurate the resumption of the railway link between Rajasthan and Sindh, which was terminated in the wake of the 1965 India-Pakistan war.

Many of the passengers on board the Thar Express to Pakistan have relatives across the border whom they have not met for decades. An elderly Muslim man from Barmer tells me about his grand-daughter in Sindh whom he has never seen although she is twenty now. ‘I’m going to attend her wedding’, he beams with excitement. ‘Had it not been for this train I would not have been able to travel to Pakistan, because the other route--through Punjab--is simply unaffordable for a poor peasant like me’.

A middle-aged Hindu woman, who migrated to India from Sindh twenty-five
years ago, says she’s going back to her village to meet her son whom she has not met ever since she left Pakistan. Another Sindhi Hindu, who now lives in Rajasthan, tells me he is going to meet his guru in Sindh, whom he saw for the last time fifteen years ago.

At the railway station in Jodhpur and in Munabao activists of the Jodhpur-based Seemant Lok Sangathan (‘Border Peoples’ Organisation’) distribute leaflets hailing the train as a major landmark in promoting people-to-people contacts between India and Pakistan.

Says Hindu Singh Sodha, President of the Sangathan and himself a migrant from Thar Parkar in Sindh, ‘Rajasthan and Sindh have had close historical, cultural, religious and trade links and the resumption of the train service will once again bring these two regions close to each other’.

While welcoming the inaugural of the train service, Sodha says that it can be meaningful only if the existing strict visa regime is suitably modified to enable Indians and Pakistanis to easily visit their relatives across the border. Sodha’s organization, which has successfully lobbied with the Indian government to provide Indian citizenship to some 13000 Hindu migrants from Sindh now living in the border districts of Rajasthan, has suggested in a memorandum submitted to the Union Railway Minister and the Rajasthan Chief Minister that the train be allowed to stop in Barmer as well since many people across the border have relatives living in the Barmer district.

He suggests the need for a Pakistani visa counter in Jodhpur and an Indian visa counter in Hyderabad, Sindh, to obviate the necessity for Indians to travel to New Delhi and Pakistanis to Islamabad in order to get visas to travel between Rajasthan and Sindh. He also stresses that in addition to the new passenger train the governments of India and Pakistan should consider starting a goods train in order to promote trade between Sindh and Rajasthan.

Sodha also points out that, in contrast to Pakistan, India does not allow Pakistanis to visit border districts in Rajasthan and Gujarat. ‘This’, he says, ‘causes major difficulties to people in the border
districts because if their relatives from Pakistan come to visit them they have to take a place on rent in Jodhpur to be with them, which is simply unaffordable for most people’. Hence, he suggests, Indian visa rules should be modified to allow Pakistanis, both Hindus and Muslims, to visit their relatives in the border districts of Ganganagar, Bikaner, Bikaner and Jaisalmer.

He claims that the suggestion that allowing Pakistani nationals to visit border districts in Rajasthan might help terrorist and divisive forces is untenable. ‘In contrast to Punjab, this sector of the border has remained peaceful has not witnessed any terrorist activities’, he says, ‘so why is it that while Pakistanis are allowed to visit border districts in Indian Punjab, they are not allowed to do so in Rajasthan and Gujarat, being forbidden from traveling west of National Highway 15 in these two states?’

At the official function at Munabao station organized by the Indian Railways to welcome the train service, politicians, cutting across party lines, wax eloquent about the resumption of train ties between Sindh and Rajasthan, some seeking to claim credit for the train for their own respective parties. Union Rail Minister Laloo Prasad Yadav regales the audience with anecdotes about his visit to Pakistan, stressing how similar Pakistanis and Indians are and insisting that despite the Kashmir conflict the two countries must pursues the path of peace, for which the rail link is a major step forward.

Vijay Raje Scindhia, Chief Minister of Rajasthan, speaks about how the train will revive historical bonds between Rajasthan and Sindh. Ex-Law Minister and presently Rajya Sabha member Ram Jethmalani opines that the train will help counter forces of religious extremism by promoting a culture of tolerance and sharing, referring in this regard to Sindh’s rich Sufi traditions. He suggests that the train be extended from Ajmer in Rajasthan to Hala in Sindh, both noted Sufi pilgrimage centres that attract hundreds of thousands of Hindus and Muslims.

An elaborate cultural programme presented by employees of the North-Western Railways outside Munabao station drives home the same message of communal harmony, uniting Hindus and Muslims, Indians and Pakistanis. A traditional Rajasthani dance drama depicts a local folk hero, venerated by Hindus as Ramdev and by Muslims as Ram Shah Pir. This is followed by a musical recital of verses composed by Sindh’s most well-known Sufi poet, Shah Abdul Latif. And to further stress this plea for Indo-Pak bonhomie, the official compare of the function piously announces, as the train from Pakistan trundles into Munabao station, the noble goal of ‘uniting the message of the Gita and the Quran’.

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