Singh is determined to travel whatever distance is required to make up with Pakistan. —AP/File photo

I WAS asked the other day at Amritsar whether the lighting of candles on the night of August 14-15 at the Wagah border had lessened the distance between India and Pakistan.

My reply was that the mood of the people, although still biased, had changed, but not to the extent I expected when a dozen of us lit candles at the border for the first time 15 years ago. I was conscious then that it would take time to dispel the darkness that decades of hatred had caused.

Yet I thought that people in both countries would assert themselves in favour of peace when the rulers were keeping them quiet in the name of patriotism or religion. For the first time since independence, some 40 people from Pakistan appeared on the other side of the border at midnight last August and exchanged candles with us, shaking hands amidst slogans like ‘India-Pakistan dosti zindabad’.

I must explain that the lighting of candles is a movement to awaken the people on both sides to their common culture, history and geography so that they don’t grow apart. It is a search for peace, an effort to change outlooks. I can see more and more people renouncing violence and ruling out war. The change is slow but steady.

Last year’s attack on Mumbai, however reprehensible, did not create the war hysteria that the attack on parliament did in 2001. At that time, the forces of the two countries stayed on the border in an eyeball-to-eyeball formation for 11 months. Another positive sign is that Pakistan has admitted that the perpetrators of the Mumbai carnage are its nationals. Such an admission is difficult when the record of the two countries is only a sum total of accusations and counter-accusations.

I am not suggesting that Pakistan has changed its policy. Gen Kayani puts the threat from the Taliban and that from India at par. Yet when President Asif Zardari rules out danger from India, it indicates some rethinking.

The Supreme Court’s judgment terming Gen Musharraf’s Nov 3 emergency as illegal is a major development and in line with the fresh air of freedom blowing in Pakistan. The fact that the army has refrained from comment encourages me to believe that the military is beginning to respect the limits to which the armed forces can go in a democratic polity. At this time, the tendency of Indian thinkers and experts to run down Pakistan and heap all the blame on it does not help. Even a bit of change across the border is huge because it gives good tidings of a much-awaited spring.

However, the effusive Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani continues to blunder by indicating that he had the upper hand at Sharm el Sheikh where he signed the joint statement with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. Gilani is helping only the BJP and the hawks who have not accepted the statement either in letter or in spirit. He is provoking New Delhi to take a stiff stand.

Take the mention of Balochistan. Manmohan Singh has told Pakistan to place the evidence on the table. America’s indication that there is no evidence of an India hand in Balochistan should have silenced the critics. But they are bent on defaming Manmohan Singh who has acted on the principle of transparency.

Next week India and Pakistan will be celebrating their 62nd year of independence. Both should use the occasion for some introspection in order to find out in where ties are headed. Both are relentlessly going towards a point where, even if there is no conflict, there will be no settlement.

Those in India who are engaged in a sterile debate over the word ‘link’ should stop their carping because of the militants’ attack this week in Srinagar which killed two security men. The attack proves beyond doubt that the first task before the two countries is to deal with terrorism. The Mumbai attacks are only one aspect. Until Islamabad does not go after terrorist organisations like the Lashkar-i-Taiba which focuses on India from safe havens in Pakistan, the root cause of terrorism cannot be exterminated. Then the manner in which the Pakistan administration is dealing with the case of Hafiz Saeed is not helping to restart the composite dialogue.

How I wish Pakistan could start thinking afresh on India. When I accompanied former Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee on his bus trip to Lahore, I could see how determined he was to begin a new chapter to cultivate good relations with Pakistan. We had not reached the border when he called me and showed the message he had received about the killing of Hindus by militants at Doda. But he decided to complete the mission. This can be judged from what he wrote in the visitors’ book at the Minar-i-Pakistan: India’s stability and integrity depended on the stability and integrity of Pakistan.

The effort which some of us have been making for the last 15 years by lighting candles on the Wagah border is towards that end. People in both countries should light a candle outside their homes on the night of Aug 14-15 to demonstrate their commitment to friendship between the two nations.

Leaders in Pakistan have in Manmohan Singh a person who is determined to travel whatever distance is required to make up with Pakistan. He is thinking of a common market for the South Asian countries. Islamabad should not try to score points while interpreting the joint statement. He should be strengthened. He is a man on a mission.

The writer is a leading journalist based in Delhi.