NEW DELHI/KARACHI, 24 April 2003 — When Ali Hassan Baqai last saw his father, on a visit to New Delhi from his home in Karachi, he refused to believe it might be for the last time.
Now, three years later, Baqai could not even get back for his father’s funeral. Like many divided families, he is a victim of a downward lurch in the troubled relationship between India and Pakistan, which severed road and rail links at the end of 2001.
“His father has died and he can’t even come to attend to the last rites,” says his 72-year-old mother, Jamila Khatoon, in the family house in Old Delhi. “For a family there is nothing worse than that. Everyone is desperate.”
The Baqais are among thousands of Muslim families divided by the partition of the subcontinent in 1947 now praying that tentative peace overtures between Pakistan and India might make it easier for them to meet up again.
Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee last weekend made a conditional offer of peace talks with Pakistan, opening a small window for improved ties between the nuclear-armed rivals, which came close to war last year over disputed Kashmir.
“I pray that relations between the two countries improve. It would be such a blessing for people like us who have families on both sides,” said Jamila Khatoon.
At partition, Muslims either fled to Pakistan or stayed behind in mostly Hindu but officially secular India. For half a century they traveled by bus or train for family reunions.
All that changed after an attack on India’s Parliament in December 2001 that New Delhi blamed on Pakistan-based militants fighting against Indian rule in Kashmir. Islamabad denied involvement, but the two severed road and rail links. Visas became much harder to get.
“Earlier, whenever there was an emergency, they could grant a visa in a day. Now there are no visas. There are no routes. How do you come and go? Everything is snapped,” says Jamila.
Her eldest son, one of five, went to Pakistan in 1962, drawn by other members of the vast extended family, who married there and settled in the port city of Karachi.
He still vividly remembers his last visit to Delhi.
“My father bid me good-bye. He couldn’t come with me to the station because it was raining so heavily,” he told Reuters from his house in Karachi.
“My father embraced me and said, ‘Maybe we are meeting for the last time’. I said, ‘Why are you thinking like this? Insha Allah, I shall try to visit you next year.’” His father died on April 13 at the age of 86.
This is the second time Jamila has lived through the pain of the division of the subcontinent by the departing British colonial rulers. One million died in the ensuing religious unrest.
Jamila’s family fled to Pakistan, abandoning most of their wealth and their land, while she stayed behind with her journalist husband. But she remains hopeful that relations between India and Pakistan can take a turn for the better.
“If the two countries pledge not to fight a war for 20 years they can divert their resources to development, and no third country like America will be able to dictate to us,” says Jamila, echoing popular concern across South Asia about US power.
And the Baqais hope the shared culture of the people of Pakistan and India will eventually bring the two together. “We have to have friendly relations with India because many Hindus who are living in India were born here and many Muslims migrated here from India,” says Ali Hassan Baqai.
