Indo-Pak border keeps loving hearts away

M A I N N E W S

So close and yet torn asunder
Jupinderjit Singh
Tribune News Service

Chamliyal (Indo-Pak border), June 25
Parveen Ismail finally made it to Chamliyal village today after managing to travel nearly 400 kilometres from Baramulla, hoping to meet her in-laws and cousins living in Pakistan when the border was briefly opened for the annual mela at the Baba Chamliyal shrine.

She, however, could not cover the last 50 metres or so as both the Indian and Pakistani security forces did not allow public interaction at the shrine. Pakistani devotees once used to come there to pay obeisance and partake of shakkar (sand) and sharbat (water) as ‘prasad’.

BSF officials gave two tractor trolleys full of the shakkar and one water tank to the Pakistani Rangers to be mixed with sand and water on the Pakistani side and distributed among devotees. Devotees believe the sand and water at the shrine has healing properties for skin ailments. A number of patients from across the country visit the shrine to take the sand.

Chamliyal, originally called Baba Daleep Singh Manhas, used to offer this ‘prasad’ to those afflicted by a skin disease. He is said to have been beheaded by other self-styled ‘babas’ who were jealous of his popularity. According to legend his head and body of the saint fell at different places where a shrine was erected in his memory. After the subcontinent’s partition part of the shrine was left in Pakistan with the other part remaining in India. Before the rise of militancy in Kashmir people of both countries visited the shrines across the border.

However, the border did not soften today, as was hoped, for devotees from both sides. There was only marginal interaction among the BSF officers and a 27-member delegation of Pakistan Rangers and a few civilians.

Nearly 300,000 devotees are reported to have visited the Indian side of the shrine and more that number on the other side. Among them hundreds had come to use the opportunity to meet with their relatives settled across the border.

There was Parveen Ismail in the crowd, distinctly dressed in a white salwar kameez and a black headgear. She was waving at some people across the border and pleading with the border security men to let her shake hands with them.

She later told The Tribune how she had made the long and arduous trip to meet her mother-in-law and cousins who reside in Pakistan. Belonging to West Bengal, she was married in Baramulla two years ago. “ I wasn’t able meet my mother-in-law and cousins who live across the border”, she rued. She said they had never seen her in person, adding “they have only seen my pictures.”

There are thousands of such families in Kashmir who were divided by the Partition and find it an impossible task to meet up with their close relatives across the heavily fortified border.

courtesy The Tribune, page one anchor, June 26,2009