Wagah and Jallianwala Bagh

I grew up with indistinct ideas of what constituted a frontier, vague notions that, in retrospect, were entirely appropriate given the amorphous nature of the subject. In my hometown of Palakkad, a sleepy Keralite border town that curried favour with sandalwood smugglers due to its strategic location near Tamil Nadu, I learned to identify territorial limits with forms that seemed specifically located to mark a boundary: the dull khaki uniforms of the sometimes-dozing policemen at the checkposts, the signboards frostily greeting travellers with welcome to or goodbye from, the long queues of trucks that were as much a fixture of the landscape as the grey road and the trees trying to shake off dust from their leaves..These recollections are perhaps why I find the clamour at the Wagah border so astonishing. The atmosphere leading up to the nightly closure of the border gates is festival-like, with young men flagging down vehicles full of visitors to tell them to park here, not there, or there, not here. Schoolchildren sit chattering, sipping colas, outside the many stalls lining this last stretch of the Grand Trunk Road in India. The colas taste suspiciously unlike the brands they claim to be, but no one appears to notice anything amiss.In front of each of the stalls are television sets, facing not the stalls but an imaginary audience on the road. These screens continuously show Indian soldiers marching, presumably taking part in the sunset ceremony, when both the Indian and Pakistani sides bring down their respective flags – an event that all of us are here to witness. On the road are boys selling CDs of what they describe as the 'border show'. They run away at the first sign of an authority figure, unsuccessfully trying to hide in the fields by the makeshift parking lots. Two men in khaki, however, assure me that the CDs are genuine. "It's us," says one..Nearing the border, I see a stadium-like arrangement where Border Security Force (BSF) men are sorting out the seating woes of still more schoolchildren. Patriotic songs blare from a loudspeaker and, behind a BSF building, young military personnel practise their steps – perfecting the ritualistic stomping of feet, synchronising their salutes. Desh mangta hai qurbaniyan (the nation demands sacrifices), says one of the songs, as if in approval..The view beyond the gate that marks the end of Indian territory is similar – more schoolchildren, girls in burqas running from one corner of an amphitheatre-like structure to another, trying to decide which seats will give them a better view. I wish I could see them more clearly, but though smiles and frowns are indecipherable from the distance, their spirited sprinting indicates their excitement. I notice that the men and women are seated in separate sections. Soon, they start clapping and singing loudly..Without warning, a Master of Ceremonies materialises on the Indian side of the road – a tall, thin man with a booming voice. He exhorts the audience to shout Bharatmata ki jai! loudly, more loudly, till the voices reach a crescendo. He is not happy with these decibel levels, however, and screams across many heads, scowling menacingly: "So rahe ho kya?" (Are you sleeping?). Mortified, we cower in our seats..A chorus of Pakistan Zindabad! is heard on the other side of the gate, to the accompaniment of breezy tunes that I do not recognise. The cheers from the Pakistani side seem to make not only the MC but also an overly gung-ho young man in the audience unhappy. "Look at them, you can at least clap your hands," urges the youngster, and proceeds to organise several rounds of Bharatmata ki jai! at full throttle. The MC is displeased with this unexpected competition from the stands, and attempts to re-win the audience by encouraging schoolchildren to dance on the road, even allowing several people to run up to the gate with the Indian flag. There are many more who are eager to display their patriotism by swaying the tricolour before a Pakistani crowd, but as the sky turns crimson and the evening breeze becomes cooler, the MC is forced by time constraints to turn them down..30 km away.There is something unreal about all of this, this entire setting, this frantic show of patriotism at the border. The meaninglessness of this jingoistic posturing, wherein vocal chords are tested to prove one's loyalty to the nation, is amplified by what I had seen just the previous day at Jallianwala Bagh. This memorial lies next to the Golden Temple in Amritsar, its entrance so nondescript that it is easily missed in an alley full of small shops and pilgrims. A narrow passage leads to the open ground where, on 13 April 1919, a crowd had gathered to peacefully protest the colonial Rowlatt Act, which had provided for imprisonment without trial and other measures intended to decimate dissent. This was where Brigadier-General Reginald Dyer had infamously ordered his soldiers to fire on the crowd, spilling, as a signboard morbidly informs tourists, the blood of "innocent Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs"..Today, the ground is a garden with green lawns, fragrant roses and trees, with a teardrop-shaped sculpture in the centre. Surrounding the garden are walls pockmarked with bullets – the walls that had reined people in on that fateful day. The bullet holes are encircled with white paint, helpfully pointed out for visitors. On one side of the garden is the 'Martyr's Well', into which people jumped to escape the firing. 120 bodies were recovered from it, notes another signboard..The afternoon I visited, a family of five was posing for pictures in front of the well. "You think there is water in the well?" one asked. "Will it splash if I throw a stone? Hey, now take my picture, let me stand here, now come, it's your turn, stand here…" I heard these sentences delivered one after the other, with much preening and grinning, as the family posed in front of the well, taking turns to photograph each other as if they were standing next to a film star's life-sized wax model..There was no reverence, not even a perceived need not to be boorish at a place where people had died for the freedoms that we exploit today – to think of dropping stones and buckets into a well stained with the blood of martyrs and innocent victims, or to write graffiti around the bullet marks; "Rinku love Reetu my life" went one, while another affirmed, "Kamal Madhu I love you". There were several more, not to be deterred by either the written warnings against desecration or the memory of those who had lost their lives here less than a century ago..Inexplicably, just 30 km away at the Wagah border, we who can so effortlessly show disrespect to the sanctity of a memorial find our patriotic feelings suddenly roused in front of a crowd from across the border. We are suddenly proud of our country, of the freedom fighters who won us our Independence, of the tricolour that we shake before an iron gate whose very existence defines us as Us and them as Them. Here, as long as I can shout louder than a Pakistani, dare you question my patriotism? Bharatmata ki jai!