KARACHI: “Mujhay Lahore se wahan [India] ka visa nahi milta”, a verse from Urdu poet Tauqir Chughtai’s poem titled ‘Visa’, resonated in the Shaheed Zulfikar Ali Bhutto Institute of Science and Technology (SZABIST) auditorium on Friday, March 19, thus setting the tone for the seminar that was held at the university.
Aptly titled ‘Progress needs peace and stability’ and organised by the Department of Social and Media Sciences at SZABIST, the speakers comprised a high-profile delegation of Indian and Pakistani journalists, politicians and activists – including Dr Bhalchandra Mundrekar (an educator and politician), Shahid Siddiqui (member Indian Parliament), Jatin Desai (journalist), Mazhar Hussain (executive director of the Confederate of Voluntary Associations, South Asia), Muqtida Mansoor (Pakistani political analyst) and Karamat Ali (founder of PILER ), to name a few – that emphasized the need for bilateral relations via people-to-people dialogue, academic discourse between both countries and, in the words of Muqtida Mansoor a “visa-free South Asia”.
Speaking to a decidedly charged and somewhat zealous audience present at the seminar, Mazhar Hussain’s assertion that “we don’t need to meet to connect; we have technology [social media] that we can use to cross borders and connect with one another” was met with resounding applause. Deliberating on the tumultuous – and tragedy-infested -- pasts of both India and Pakistan, Hussain pointed out that the people of both nations want peace but since conflict is a multi-billion-dollar industry, “challenging conflict and demanding peace often means that you are challenging vestedinterests.”
The significance of peace and the end to all visa restrictions remained the underlying theme of the event, a sentiment that was also expressed by Jatin Desai who reinforced the fact that “we are all the same so the visa restrictions must also end.” Talking about the stark contrast between what appears to be development and the ground realities of India, Desai pointed out that 77 per cent of the Indian population less than Rs20 a day which is less than half a dollar. So while both countries try to outdo each other in the mad quest for arms, Desai said that the people continue to live in abject poverty. “It’s time we stopped expanding our budgets for defence and focus on the real issues at hand, that is,development and peaceful co-existence.”
In fact, it is by empowering the youth and giving them access to literature and resources from both sides of the border, said Dr Bhalchandra Mundrekar who was also visiting Pakistan for the first time, that peace in South Asia can prosper. Student visa restrictions, he added, need to be eliminated so that these agents of social change can do what governments, politicians and bureaucrats from both sides of the border have failed to do so far. “When I go back to India now, I will write a letter to the prime minister asking him to remove visa restrictions for students for both sides,” he said.
Ironically, other Indian delegates of the seminar, acclaimed film-maker Mahesh Bhatt, and journalists Seema Mustafa and Kuldip Nayyar could not make it because they were unable to get the visa in time.