Click to play videoNew Delhi: As India and Pakistan debate on how to question the victims of the Samjhauta blast, a 9-year-old boy caught between two country’s governments who still can’t trust each other.
A passenger on the ill-fated Samjhauta express is now in the middle of a war of words between India and Pakistan. India wants to question him since he is a witness to the blasts while Pakistan says this is harassment of their citizen. Somewhere in the diplomatic tussle, the boy is struggling to survive in a hospital in Lahore.
The plane that airlifted the injured on Thursday night remained waiting at Delhi airport for close to five hours.
While Pakistani officials claim that Indian authorities are harassing the injured, Indian authorities say that Pakistan is trying to make political capital out of tragedy.
That was the question asked on the debate on the show Face The Nation : Was Pakistan right in airlifting the Samjhauta blast injured out of Indian hospitals?
On the expert panel to discuss the issue were former Indian High Commissioner to Pakistan, G Parthasarathy and senior journalist, Saeed Naqvi. The show was conducted by Sagarika Ghose.
Plight of the victims
If Pakistanis can be treated in Indian hospitals under normal circumstances, why was there this hurry to take critically injured people back to Pakistan?
“That is the tragedy of the relationship between India and Pakistan. At the level of people, we are friendly with each other. At the level of Governments, it’s all clouded with suspicion. When the blasts happened, the best solution would have been to open consulates in Karachi and Mumbai; issue 3,00,000 visas a year and make Samjhauta a daily train service. That would be the best answer to the terrorists. But we didn’t do it,” said G Parthasarathy.
“In this case, Pakistanis have their own sensitivities and maybe we should not have said we wanted to interrogate their people. It’s a human tragedy, what was the hurry to fly them back? In the case of baby Noor, who was brought here to India for a surgery, it was because her parents brought her, the Pakistani Government may not have necessarily liked it,” added G Parthasarathy.
But are we talking only about Pakistani sensitivities or are Indian officials being equally to blame for not letting Pakistani officials access to hospitals and interrogating critically injured people?
“There is suspicion on both sides. The person who is going to be in trouble because of all this is the very nice Foreign Minister of Pakistan. He spilt the beans and said ‘The reason why the Prime Minister of India is not taking you journalists into confidence is because we are about to swap something.’ The back channels were working very well and it should have been sewn up but he spilt the beans, it activated anti-bodies on both sides. Those anti-bodies are going to make a huge noise in Parliament on Saturday. We thought that the tragedy had played itself out. It was very tragic but sometimes sacrifices are conducive, since it had affected both sides and it was adding to the momentum of the peace process. Then by announcing more or less prematurely and taking Pakistani officials by surprise, Mr Kasuri might have got himself into a mess,” said Saeed Naqvi.
Disunited in grief
The plight of the injured in this case, in fact shows that the Indo-Pak dialogue is far from conducive to the real progress.
When the Samjhauta blasts happened there was a great hope that India and Pakistan will fight terror together. But now it seems like the two countries are disunited in grief.
“If you want to fight terror together, you have to first get people of both sides together. This was a very good opportunity but we have lost out on it. Intelligence agencies on both sides are the greatest obstacles to people to people contact. Encourage tourism, allow Pakistanis to come and meet us normally. But Governments will stand in the way. As a democracy, India should take the lead,” said G Parthasarathy.
But what is so wrong with India and Pakistan that with regard to injured passengers we cannot be civilised and have to exchange allegations?
“Once you open it to officials, it’s a running concentric circle. The most dangerous thing that is happening in the world is that the Prime Minister takes a decision and the file is for eyes only, which subverts the entire democratic structure. This bilateral problem that we have but it’s not just India and Pakistan, it’s Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, India, Pakistan is one contiguous belt and you simply cannot talk about our bilateral issue when the lens has to pan a wider canvas,” said G Parthasarathy.
Final SMS poll:
Yes: 20 per cent
No: 80 per cent
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