‘An injustice’: Renewed India-Pakistan tensions split families, dash reunion hopes

ATTARI, Punjab, India – April 26 was meant to be a day of joy for Ms Baskari.

The Pakistani national had come all the way from Karachi to India along with her husband, Mr Muhammad Rasheed, to attend her niece’s wedding scheduled for that day in Saharanpur, Uttar Pradesh.

But Ms Baskari, who was born in India and uses only one name, could not make it to the wedding in the end.

Forced to cut short her visit, she found herself back at the India-Pakistan border at Attari on April 26, the day of the wedding, wiping away her tears as she waited to cross over into Pakistan.

“Everyone is at the wedding but here we are, travellers on the road,” Ms Baskari told The Straits Times. “I came so close, and yet I was pushed far away,” she rued.

The couple were among more than 50 individuals waiting on April 26 for the border to open so that they could return home before the April 27 deadline set by the Indian government for Pakistani nationals to leave the country.

The order followed a

terror attack in Kashmir on April 22

that killed 27 people, an act the Indian government blames on Pakistan.

It has cut short hard-won cross-border family reunions and even split families, accentuating the human cost of the renewed chill that has set in the ties between the two South Asian neighbours.

Ms Baskari and Mr Rasheed had worked hard for the visit that came after a gap of 10 years, persevering through an arduous 14-month-long visa process that saw their applications being rejected twice.

“I was really happy (the day I got my visa),” said the 48-year-old woman. “I called (my family) right away, telling them to tell our relatives that we would be coming for the wedding.”

People-to-people links between India and Pakistan have always been impeded by bilateral tensions, with New Delhi long accusing Islamabad of fomenting cross-border terrorism in Kashmir. It is a charge Pakistan denies.

The two countries have gone to full-blown war over the disputed region twice.

In 2019, bilateral relations plummeted following a February attack in Kashmir that killed 40 Indian security personnel and New Delhi’s subsequent decision to revoke the special status of Jammu and Kashmir and divide the state into two federally administered territories in August.

That year, train and bus services between the two countries were suspended, and they have remained so for more than five years now.

The most recent attack on April 22, described as the worst on Indian civilians since the 2008 carnage in Mumbai, has further crippled people-to-people ties and aggravated bilateral antipathy.

Not only has India shut the land border at Attari, this time, it has even suspended the Indus Waters Treaty, a key water-sharing agreement that was signed in 1960.

Pakistan has described the move as an “act of war”.

Among other distressed Pakistani nationals at Attari on April 26 was Ms Hemi Mali, a Hindu woman from Hyderabad in the province of Sindh, who crossed the border into India on April 22 for the first time.

She had planned to visit her 85-year-old mother in Jodhpur in Rajasthan but managed to spend only a few hours with her before she had to rush back to Attari to return to her country.

With India suspending its visa services indefinitely for Pakistani nationals, there is no certainty when Ms Mali will be able to travel again to Jodhpur to meet her aged mother. Fear that she may not see her again tinged their farewell this time.

“It is an injustice,” she said, referring to the abrupt end of her trip. It had taken her and her son two tries to secure a visa, and it cost the family, who run a garment shop, around 100,000 Pakistani rupees (S$467) to travel overland all the way from Hyderabad to Jodhpur.

“I hope to come again,” Ms Mali said, as she waited in an auto-rickshaw, her hand on a red insulated water canister to help them beat the 40-degree-plus heat in the region. “May Allah reopen our border,” she told ST.

As many as 537 Pakistanis have gone back home since April 24 via the border that straddles Attari in India and Wagah in Pakistan, while 850 Indian nationals who were in Pakistan returned to India via the same route.

The Indian government has strongly advised Indian nationals to avoid travelling to Pakistan, preventing them from crossing the border at Attari.

This has separated families comprising nationals from both the countries. Indian women, who are married to Pakistani men and were in the country to visit their parents and other relatives, were not allowed to return, prompting several of these women to mount an angry protest on April 25 at Attari.

“The authorities say, ‘we are not responsible, we are not responsible’. If they aren’t, then who is?” a livid Ms Afsheen Jahangir, a 32-year-old Indian national, told reporters at Attari.

She was not allowed to cross into Pakistan and reunite with her husband and two children, aged nine and seven, who were waiting for her across the border at Wagah.

Ms Jahangir, who has a visa that allows her to enter Pakistan only “on foot” via Wagah, was instead forced to return to Jodhpur to her parents’ house. She had come to India on March 16 to seek treatment for her asthmatic condition and is now not sure when she will see her family again.

Speaking to ST on the phone from Jodhpur on April 28, she said that the terrorists who killed tourists in Kashmir were not her “uncles or brothers”.

“So, why should I and others among the public suffer because of them?” she added.

In another heart-rending instance, Indian citizen Zakiya Firdous, who recently married Mr Sahibzada Munadi Ahmad, a Pakistani citizen, was photographed by Reuters at Attari on April 25 bidding him a tearful farewell.

The intricate henna designs on her hands were still fresh from their wedding on April 19.

There are similar stories of separation from Pakistan, which has taken tit-for-tat measures, suspending visas for Indians and not permitting its nationals to cross the border into India at Wagah.

Ms Savita Kumari, a Hindu Pakistani national married to an Indian man, was visiting the country to meet her family and now finds herself stranded in Pakistan along with her two young children who are Indian nationals.

She holds a “Long-Term Visa” (LTV) for India, but was not allowed to cross at Wagah. She claimed she was told by Pakistani border authorities that her children could cross over to reunite with their father in India, but she could not.

“My children, an eight-year-old boy and a 12-year-old girl, can cross into India, but how can I leave my children alone?” she told Voicepk.net, a Pakistani digital media platform.

This was despite India exempting LTVs already issued to Hindu Pakistanis, along with diplomatic and official visas, from its ongoing ban on visas for Pakistani nationals.

Back at Attari, Mr Baldev Chawla, a 74-year-old Hindu Pakistani national who runs a paper carton packaging business in Ghotki in Sindh province, was waiting in a car to cross over into Pakistan.

He came to India on April 3 with his wife to visit their three daughters, all of whom, he said, have acquired Indian citizenship after marrying Indians.

Mr Chawla’s wife, who has an LTV, chose to remain in Raipur in Central India with one of their daughters, a widow with a young child.

He himself had planned to stay in India for 45 days and was angry at being forced to return early.

“I am so upset that if they (who attacked the tourists in Kashmir) come in front of me, I will not spare them,” said Mr Chawla.

Those like him who are returning hastily are not sure when they will be able to reunite with their loved ones.

Even before the April 22 attack, it had been increasingly difficult for Indians and Pakistanis to visit each other’s countries, with stricter scrutiny for visas and reduced transportation links because of strained relations between the two countries.

“I had to go through two five-month-long visa processing cycles,” said 28-year-old Arun Kumar, a Pakistani Hindu from Sanghar town in southern Pakistan.

Mr Kumar wished to travel to India to visit his relatives in Gujarat and undertake religious pilgrimages. Sadly, he received his visa just a few days before the terrorist attack.

“I got the visa after nearly a year of effort, but now it’s useless,” he lamented.

Another Pakistani family echoed similar frustration.

“My sister lives in Mumbai, and I last saw her in 2015 when we visited,” said Ms Shireen Hasan, a 50-year-old resident of Karachi.

“The process of getting a visa is so cumbersome and painful that even our Muslim relatives in India prefer we don’t visit – it puts them in a difficult position with the Indian authorities.”

But despite mounting challenges, there are those like Ms Baskari and her husband who persist and say they will apply again for a visa to come to India.

“We would like to come again, and if we get that opportunity, why not?” Mr Rasheed said.

“We have that hope.”