Indian women / Pakistan diary

Shobhano Bhattacharji, o Delhi-based educationist, visits Lahore and Islamabad with a group of Indian women interested in peace with Pakistan. This was the first crossing of so-called peace groups after the Kargil disaster and the coup in Pakistan, and it was followed a week later by a meeting of the India-Pakistan Peoples' Forum, which brought 200 Pakistanis to the southern Indian city of Bangalore. At a time when opportunities for discussion seem to have been replaced by verbal belligerence, we believe that informal 'track-1/' contacts between Indian and Pakistanis is good for all South Asians. Needless to say, we do not agree with commentators like Swapon Dasgupta writing in the 17 April Indian Today, who terms the ladies who crossed over from Lahore romantic peaceniks who became "pawns" of General Pervez Musharraf. The fact that 35 Sikhs were massacred in Chitisingh Pora, and that there were 500 Indian soldiers who died in the Kargil war, which Mr. Dosgupta puts forth as the very reason not to have met the General, is for us the very reason why contacts between the two countries is essential, so that each side humanises rather than demonises the other.

– Editors

Forty women from India were in Lahore and Islamabad from 25 to the 31 of March, on a peace mission. Thirty-six of us gathered at Delhi's Ambedkar Stadium bus stop at 4:30 in the morning. Lots of security checks followed. Hair dryers and irons had to be plugged in and shown to be other than bombs. Batteries from cameras were to be removed, but we were let off after one despairing policeman told another that these women were all carrying cameras.