KARACHI,Dec 11: As the over 250 Indian delegates disembark from their overnight journey from Lahore by the Karachi Express on Friday, the city will play host to the biggest session of the Pakistan-India Peoples’ Forum for Peace and Democracy ever held.
Over 500 delegates will participate in the deliberations. Most participants were issued visas by the Pakistan High Commission in Delhi on Wednesday, giving them barely some hours to board their train to the Wagah border. The organizers thus have had many sleepless nights.
While the ongoing thaw in Pakistan-India relations has helped the organizers, many complain that the bureaucracy continued to create obstacles at the planning stage when visa applications were held up or delayed and other paperwork took ages to move from one desk to another. Like all other such things, this too was reciprocal. One Pakistani member of the forum recalls similar delays at the Indian high commission in Islamabad as they prepared to go to India for a session there.
Now all that seems to be in the past. An opportunity has come to show how vibrant and alive this city is and how hospitable its people are. People-to-people contact has always been a catalyst in improving relations between countries and this event is expected to work on those lines. As important as the proposed final declaration would be the interaction between the Indians and the Pakistanis. Most of the Indians, despite warnings to the contrary, will want to meet all kinds of people. This will entail visits to public places in Karachi in the daytime and discourse with the so-called elite in the evening parties.
Everything will be seen under a microscope. Journalists would be looking for a good story. Others will be interested in anecdotes to take back with them. There are some who originally came from these parts — they will be looking for some signs of their previous life here. Take this all in your stride. The curiosity, too, is reciprocal.
Surprisingly, one of the problems being faced by the organizers is the popularity of the event. From the initial 80 delegates, the number of those coming in from India has ballooned. So has the number of those wishing to attend from the Pakistan side.
Peace activist Shahid Fiaz, the convener of this convention and secretary of the Forum’s Sindh Chapter, says that the arrangements have been quite a challenge. “We have worked on the premise that the convention will be held on the dates given. People have been travelling from as far as Bangalore and Chennai to Delhi to collect their visas, which were only issued at the last moment. We have made hotel bookings here and other arrangements. At the end of the day, we just waited for the visas to materialize,” he said. Fiaz says that another issue has been the mixed response received from the people of Karachi. Some businessmen pulled out at the last minute from holding receptions for the visitors. “They said that they were facing pressure from some quarters,” the convener said.
Now that the show is on the road, what one expects to see is quality discourse and a mature and mutually beneficial exchange of views. Anis Haroon, secretary of the Forum’s Pakistan chapter, says she expects the Karachi convention to be a memorable one.
In today’s world two contradictory trends are at work. On the one hand, the globalizing agenda is pushing for relaxing fiscal barriers and allowing commodity flows. On the other, governments are trying to control the public and private lives of the people. Thus, whereas trade related liberalization is being advocated between India and Pakistan, restrictions on movement of people are yet to be relaxed.
“We have consistently held the view that people-to-people contacts are decisive if relations between the two countries are to change for the better. Better relations will keep the region free of big power intervention”, says Anis Haroon.
Apart from the deliberations by the delegates, arts shows, theatre and interest group seminars will be held at different locations in the city. Plays include “Ab Jang Naheen Hogi” by Tehrik-i-Niswan, “Mughal Bacha” by Ratna Pathak Shah and Manto’s play “Titwaal ka Kutta” by Jameelur Rehman from India.
