Across the barbed wire

For the post 1947 generation in the Kashmir Valley, regions across the heavily militarised line of control (LoC) have always generated fascination and romanticism. I crisscrossed Delhi, Lahore and Islamabad with a group of Srinagar-based journalists, and upon reaching my own part of the land, I was filled not only with joy, but also inexplicable pain. I was acutely conscious that I was in a part of my own divided state which is as much linked to my culture, civilisation and language as is Srinagar.

Lost in the streets of Muzaffarabad, the capital of Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK) or “Azad Jammu and Kashmir,” I asked for directions in Urdu to lead me to the tomb of Mirwaiz Yusuf Shah, a towering leader in Kashmir’s history ranked alongside Sheikh Muhammad Abdullah. My query in Urdu provoked the shopkeeper to tick me off for not speaking to him in Kashmiri. I was conscious how close and yet how distant we were, when, at the residence of Raja Farooq Haider, former Prime Minister of PoK and now an opposition leader, he served us Baqir-khwani, a multi-layered bread laced with ghee, a delicacy in our own town of Sopore and in the adjacent Baramullah, just 50-kms away from where I was: physically so near, yet politically so far. The divide that has transformed these two regions into two different planets. Incidentally, Raja Farooq Haider had one request and that was to send him a Kashmiri chef, someone who was an expert in cooking elaborate Kashmiri delicacies, which have become a rarity there. 

Behind the mountains lies the mesmerising Kashmir Valley, an elderly man in the street told us. Thinking we were the usual tourists, he continued gesturing towards a particular direction and saying: “Behind that mountain is Kupwara and another mountain leads to Uri, Baramullah etc.” He blinked when told that we were from those very regions that he was pointing at. A resident of Baramullah town, he had a shop near Muzaffarabad at the time of the 1947 tragedy. Since then, he keeps looking at the mountains and fantasising about his ancestral town. Slipping into a reverie, he tried recollecting names of the mohallahs in Baramullah. Listening to the Kashmiri and Urdu musical renditions of the young singer Banu Rahmat at the local press club in the evening was a particularly emotional experience.

A memorable trip down the historic routes my ancestors would have taken to reach Lahore, Amritsar and Delhi, reminded us of this region’s past connections with the external world. A crossing in Muzaffarabad, exactly where river Kishanganga meets the river Jhelum, has a signboard that says Srinagar is just 179 kilometres away from there while Tashkent is 578 kilometres and Kabul 393 kilometres. The signboard, to me, was a marker of the pre-Partition connectivity, which successive Indian Prime Ministers — Atal Bihari Vajpayee, Manmohan Singh and even Narendra Modi — have been keen to restore under the umbrella of SAARC.

The region known in India as Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK), which in public perception is defined by militant camps and as the breeding ground for anti-India sentiments, has a different dimension to it, too. Nestled in the lush green forests and dotted by pencil minarets and flat domes built on the pattern of Turkish monument, Ayasofya, gives this picturesque city the look of a mini Istanbul. Post the 2003 earthquake that killed thousands of people in the region, the face of Muzaffarabad has completely changed. Today, it looks like a well-planned city. Perched on the hills, the city on all four sides is girded by magnificent modern houses, which have come up with the generous aid from international donors. 

Muzaffarabad has been largely built by the Turkish government. The assembly, high court, Supreme Court, government offices and city mosques bear the distinct stamp of Turkish aesthetics. The United Arab Emirates is engaged in building a super-speciality Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan Hospital. Just on the outskirts of the city, in Chattar village on the river banks, Saudi Arabia is generously spending on building the King Abdullah Campus of University. The Chinese aren’t far behind. Some 3,000 Chinese workers are stationed there to build bridges, two mega power projects, roads and state-of-the-art bridges to connect the region with the silk route which criss-crosses Abbottabad.

While approaching the Kohala bridge — the entry point to the Jammu and Kashmir state from the Pakistani side — no one can miss the signposts and hoardings emblazoned with “Aao Kashmir Chalein (Let us go to Kashmir”). This is where Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru was detained in 1946 on the orders of Maharaja Hari Singh. The main language spoken in this region is Hindko, an offshoot of Pahari, followed by Gojri and other dialects even though Muzaffarabad city has a substantive Kashmiri-speaking population.

But comparing Muzaffarabad with Srinagar, which is the second ancient city after Varanasi in South Asia, and amongst the oldest regional capitals, would be unfair. Muzaffarabad, even though district headquarters before 1947, can be compared with only the Doda district of Jammu and Kashmir in terms of distance, topography and remoteness. But calling the region “under-developed”— as is done on this side of the border — is unfair. The region may have more primary schools, and it has a better primary literacy rate than Pakistan’s. But on the higher education front and educational standards, it is lagging. Many would agree that “Azad Jammu and Kashmir” is hardly “free” in the real sense of the term. Islamabad’s interference in its internal matters through its all powerful Kashmir Council is well known. 

But the symbolic nomenclature of “President, Prime Minister” as well as a separate Supreme Court and an Election Commission give the region a greater distinctiveness from Pakistan. Some 50 kilometres from the city lie the historic Buddhist and Hindu temple ruins of Sharda. Archaeologist Dr Rukhsana Khan, who is an expert on the Sharda civilization, told us that the temple is looked after well, not just by the government, but also by local Muslim villagers. “Short of worshiping there, they (villagers) consider the ruins a good omen,” she says. Ironically, Khan was denied visa to lecture on the ruins of Sharda and its script when she was invited by the University of Kashmir a couple of years ago. She had to make her presentation through Skype, which was well received by scholars. “Still I felt something was missing,”  she says. The 2004 joint statement signed between India and Pakistan during the Vajpayee regime led to the restoration of bus and trade linkages. It sent out emotive messages across Jammu and Kashmir. But, the governments of both countries, bowing to the pressures of traders in Amritsar and Lahore, have done every possible bit to destroy these nascent links of connectivity between two parts of the divided state. It is still hoped that the links will facilitate a full-fledged flow of men and materials across the LoC. “A creative insight is required which — without ruffling feathers on both sides of the divide — will ensure that the Line of Separation is rubbed out. This is a challenge for everyone,” an accompanying journalist Mehmood-u-Rashid concluded, while we were crossing Kohala bridge on our way to Islamabad and then on to Lahore and Delhi.

The author is chief of bureau, dna