SRINAGAR, 9 April 2005 — Kashmiris hailed yesterday a historic bus service between Indian and Pakistani Kashmir as a concrete step toward resolving the vexed territorial dispute and said militant separatists should not be allowed to disrupt it.
Analysts praised India and Pakistan for what they said was the determination of the nuclear-armed rivals to go ahead with the bus launch on Thursday, the first to connect the two Kashmirs in nearly 60 years, despite threats from militants.
But they said New Delhi and Islamabad still had a long way to go to untie the Kashmir knot, as they had yet to show much inclination to move from entrenched diplomatic positions despite the hype and celebrations over the transport link.
“I was crying with joy when I saw television pictures of the bus crossing over to this side,” Pakiza Carrim, 25, a sociology student at a university in Srinagar, the main city of Indian Kashmir, said. “Kashmiris have won half of the battle.”
“Now, it is the sincerity of the two countries that will make a difference to the future of Kashmir. I wish this bus runs daily,” she said, a day after the first fortnightly service rolled into Srinagar from across a military cease-fire line.
Nineteen Indian Kashmiris, mostly elderly, on Thursday defied separatist threats and crossed a “Peace Bridge” across a military line that divided them for more than half a century, hours after 31 Pakistanis walked into the Indian side for an emotional reunion with relatives.
Srinagar and Muzaffarabad, capital of Pakistani Kashmir, erupted into spontaneous celebrations as the first passengers broke down with joy over seeing their dear ones, many of them for the first time.
“It is a great step toward peace,” said Adbul Hamid Bhat, a businessman in Srinagar. “Kashmir is a more than 50-year problem and things will not change overnight. Some elements will oppose it for their vested interests but let’s go ahead.”
Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said the bus had opened a door and it was the beginning of a new phase for Kashmir. Singh, who flagged off the bus, is due to hold talks with Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf in New Delhi this month to boost a slow peace process between the neighbors.
Indian Foreign Minister Natwar Singh told BBC World in an interview: “I have never seen a better atmosphere on both sides of the Indo-Pak border.” Natwar said: “These are complex problems going back decades. It will take time...”
Pakistan Foreign Minister Khurshid Mahmoud Kasuri too hailed the bus service as another confidence building measure. He said if India allows the leaders of the All Parties Hurriyat Conference (APHC) to travel on the bus, Pakistan would also reciprocate by allowing its Kashmiri leaders to visit Srinagar. “We will do the same in the case of Azad Kashmir leaders if the Indian government permits Hurriyat leaders to visit Pakistan,” he said at Governor’s House, addressing foreign businessmen in town for a two-day workshop on business opportunities in Pakistan.
Passengers who rode the first trans-Kashmir bus service were yesterday enjoying emotional family reunions, visiting ancestral homes and getting to know life on the “other side” of the divided state.
“I am reborn today. I feel great to be back in my house,” a tearful Farida Gani, 57, said as she and her brother Mehboob Gani, 45, returned to their family home in Jamalata area. The Ganis were among 30 people who arrived in Srinagar late Thursday from Muzaffarabad.
The passengers from Muzaffarabad were hosted overnight by the state government in a Srinagar lakeside hotel but left to rejoin families early yesterday. Some, however, went to pray first at the Hazratbal Mosque on the shores of Dal Lake.
For the Ganis, it was a happy homecoming to the ancestral house. Although Farida Gani was only two when she and her parents headed for Muzaffarabad, home for her has remained the modest house in Jamalata.
The entire neighborhood poured out to welcome the sister and brother when they arrived, presenting them with bouquets, garlands and sweets. Mehboob Gani was born in Pakistani Kashmir and said he had come to visit his family. “It is my right to be here. I have come to see my ancestral land,” he said on meeting his relatives for the first time. We have received love and care from all quarters here.”
Similar scenes have been repeated in both Srinagar and Muzaffarabad since the “peace buses” arrived at their destinations, reuniting families who in many cases had been split for decades. Holding her son Naseer Ahmed tightly on the lush green lawn of a government guest house in Muzaffarabad, the more Fatima Butt tried to control herself, the more she wept. Mother and son had last seen each other 15 years ago. “It seems more like 150 years,” Ahmed, 35, said.
Fatima and her husband Abdullah Butt were among the 19 passengers who crossed to the Pakistani zone, to where their son had moved after he married his cousin.
Inside a hall of the guest house, Ashiq Suleria was elated as he met his cousin Firdous Nasim and her husband Khalid Hussain for the first time. Hussain, a former bureaucrat in Indian Kashmir, and his wife had received threatening phone calls from militants to cancel the trip. They were later to travel to Pakistani Kashmir’s southern Mirpur town, where Suleria lives.
Newspapers on either side of the divide welcomed the first bus service and hailed the passengers as heroes for defying militant threats.
“2 buses. 49 passengers. History,” the Indian Express daily said in its main headline, adding in a subhead, “For once, people to people was stronger than state to state.”
“Peace bus makes history,” said the Asian Age.
“The spin-off for peace, politics and India’s long-term strategy in the region could be immense,” said the Times of India in a front page comment piece.
Pakistani newspapers and politicians were more circumspect.
“This is the first concrete manifestation of repeated declarations by leaders in India, Pakistan and Kashmir that they want the LOC to become a line of peace,” said an editorial in Dawn, Pakistan’s oldest English language newspaper. “At the same time, such gestures cannot be a substitute for a determined political effort to tackle the Kashmir problem and other knotty issues that divide Pakistan and India.”
The News, another major national daily, was more positive, headlining extensive coverage of the event: “Peace wins the day”.
It hit out at militant attempts to sabotage the bus service, and praised the Indian and Pakistani governments for pushing ahead with the link despite threats of violence.
In Indian Kashmir, officials heaved a sigh of relief that the inaugural service, which is expected to run fortnightly, had passed without major incident.
“This is the happiest day of my life as I could witness the reunion of the divided families,” said Mehbooba Mufti, leader of the state’s ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), in Srinagar.
