Heart of Punjab: Give peace a chance, say border residents

You can bomb the world into pieces, but you cannot bomb the world into peace. This eternal quote of American musician Michael Franti resonates in the everyday lives of villagers living on the fringes of the fencing that separates India and Pakistan.

The wars of 1965 and 1971 had ravaged their lives. Generations later, the scars are still there. They have seen so much from close quarters that they know a war never determines who is right, it only determines who is left.

At what cost does a war, followed by displacement, come for Punjab and Punjabis?

Old-timers, who have seen it all, say confrontation will only push both nations back by several years. Human loss will be inevitable and, in fact, immeasurable. Border inhabitants already have been facing socio- economic problems and psychological tensions. They also face social exclusion because they do not get the same opportunities and exposure as their counterparts in non-border villages.

“If a war breaks out, where will we go carrying our children and cattle? For decades, we have financially sustained ourselves on our livestock. If they are doomed, so are we. The BSF men pay midnight visits to our villages and tell us to harvest our crops as quickly as possible. We incur a lot of losses after every calamity — be it floods, farm fires or battles. On every occasion, the government of the day tells us not to worry as we will be reimbursed. It all turns out to be mere rhetoric because nothing tangible is done. We have seen a lot of catastrophes; we do not want any more. Most of our children, living near the international border (IB), where drones regularly drop packets of heroin, are addicted to drugs. We have died many times seeing our children inhale the white powder. We do not want to die anymore,” says Resham Singh of Dorangla.

Ranjit Singh Dhaliwal, a native of Nadala village, located on the IB, says, “My forefathers had very good relations with their Pakistani brethren. Their lives were all different and yet the same. After all, sticks in a bundle are unbreakable. Now, after Pahalgam, the point in history at which we stand is full of danger and is fraught with risk.”

The fencing, that came up in 1991, was the creation of late Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi who wanted to stem the flow of arms coming in from Pakistan to aid Sikh militancy.

It was rather unfortunate that while the world was tearing down barriers like the Berlin Wall, India and Pakistan were erecting new ones.

Wizened septuagenarian Resham Singh, who lives near the IB, puts things in proper perspective when he quips, “can anything be stupider than that a man has the right to kill me because he lives on the other side of the river and his ruler has a quarrel with mine, though I have not quarrelled with him?”

“War is hardly a civilised pursuit. It is amazing how we spend so much time inventing devices which kill each other and so little time working on how to achieve harmony. We are already under debt like 90 per cent of our brothers living near the IB are. If we have a war, we are finished. Our agriculture fields will be mined and consequently destroyed. Where will we go?" asked octogenarian Hakam Singh. He says the wounds of the 1971 conflict are still fresh in his mind. Fresh because he lost his parents, two brothers and a sister in the shelling.

These simple, trusting and innocent souls know that war is not going to take them anywhere, that it will virtually sound their death-knell. As Mahatma Gandhi said, “An eye for eye only ends up making the whole world blind.”

Punjab