June 22, 1998

Visits to Islamabad would once unlock the gates of hospitality. Post- Pokhran, open hostility rents the air. Associate Editor Harinder Baweja experiences the change.

Aap kis mazhab se taluk rakhti hain? "Are you Hindu or Muslim?" was a question that followed me everywhere I went. Through the streets of Islamabad and Lahore, at airport lounges, at the money changers and in hotels. It's sad that I had to use religion to bail myself out of tense situations and heated arguments. Sad, that I had to say I was a Sikh when earlier the word "Indian" used to be enough to unlock the gates of hospitality. When warmth flowed over innumerable cups of tea, without which I wasn't allowed to leave even a roadside shop.

I have been to Pakistan several times and, as always, was looking forward to landing in Lahore to the familiar questions of "where do you live in India?" and "how long will you be with us?" This time too the smiles were there -- at the airport where I handed my passport to the immigration officer who immediately looked up and said, "So, we are even now. We have given you a matching response." At the check-in counter where a soft-spoken Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) staffer looked up again and said, "So finally you will have to give up Kashmir." At the snack counter too, where the waiter who had always said, "so what if you don't have Pakistani currency, you speak Punjabi, chai to hum pilayenge (I will offer you tea)", now said, "okay, pay me in Indian rupees." The mood had changed. I landed in Pakistan on May 29 -- a day after it had exploded with joy, along with the five nuclear devices that shook the mountains in Baluchistan.

"It's back to 1947," the taxi-driver said, describing with glee and in great detail how Indian flags had been set on fire. In cold print, a newspaper that was pressuring Nawaz Sharif to answer what it called "India's Kamasutric belligerence", devoted a whole page to pictures which captured the macho mood. Cameras clicked while people danced and fired in the air in orgasmic delight. Punjabi didn't matter any more. "How did the glass know you are an Indian," a receptionist at a Lahore hotel joked when he accidentally toppled a glass of juice across the counter.

There were few light-hearted moments. Humour was laced with sarcasm and conversations began and ended with "You are the ones who started it, you are the aggressors". In between, the questions popped up with unfailing regularity: Is it not a fact that India has hegemonistic designs? Isn't it true that India was planning to walk into Azad Kashmir? Don't you know that Hindu fundamentalist BJP leaders call Hitler a hero? The questions would soon take the form of statements. Delivered with vengeance, the message was the same: "You are like the Nazis." My attempts at talking about secularism were met with the response: "You are an Indian agent."

Some just threw it at me straight while a few delivered it softly. Depending on which side of the fence they were on. The division -- if it can be so termed -- was along the lines of those who were and still are divided along the lines of "test or be damned", "do or die" and others who couched it in phrases like "realpolitik", "we had no choice" and "it was necessary for national security". Former foreign secretary Tanvir Ahmed Khan, one of those in favour of the tests, was kind enough to call me each morning to see if I was all right. "If you need any help, please call," he'd say, explaining the hostility thus, "It is embedded in 50 years of history and psyche. There are brief periods of recession when tensions have come down but the general attitude is always one of confrontation."

But on the streets, it was mostly confrontation and the chances of my winning an argument were nil. Inevitably, the final decree was "but you are from Hindu India". A diktat that saw the Indian diplomat based in Islamabad, B.S. Rawat, in hospital with a fractured skull and other injuries. "Be careful," the high commission officials told me as soon as they heard about Rawat, for by then Pakistan was in a state of frenzied joy. The few voices of reason too had been drowned in the din of jingoistic jargon. Audible in a few air-conditioned hotels and drawing rooms. "War has been more glorified than peace," rued senior human rights activist I.A. Rahman in a paper that was read out at a seminar where the main concern of the small audience was, "But would India not have destroyed Pakistan?" Rahman is perhaps right when he says, "Religion shuts out logical reasoning, where peace is seen as contrary to religious belief. For the masses, hostility means physical conflict till victory." And the conflict now is "Hindu India" versus "Islamic Pakistan".

It's a conflict that suits the Sharif Government. It's a sentiment that is being kept alive on television through an elaborate public relations exercise. An exercise that includes "no friendship with India till the Kashmir issue is solved" and "it's time to be patriotic". To make generous donations to the self-reliance fund and even to initiate a dialogue with India. And if there were moments where I felt sought after, they were because, at least in government, it was quite an advantage being an Indian. I still heard the familiar lines of "Pehla kadam aap ne liya tha (You took the first step)," but it gave me access.

Again, it was in the corridors of power that I was asked why India was constantly taunting them even through commercial TV programmes. If L.K. Advani became a household name after his statements which led to widespread anger, another popular name, Anu Kapoor -- host of Antakshari -- lost quite a few fans. The Friday following the Pakistan tests -- May 29 -- Kapoor apparently ended his programme with a Punjabi folk song which went, "... asan mar jaana par nahi chaddna Kashmir". The immediate response was, "India is provoking us even after our tests." If only I had known in Islamabad -- where the song became a subject of hot debates -- that the programme had been recorded in December, I could perhaps have put up a better fight.

Or maybe not. The mood had already changed and tolerance was in short supply. My curiosity was not, and just before I drove to the airport to take the flight back to Delhi, I risked an argument. "So what if I tell you I am a Hindu?" I asked the shopkeeper who told me he had migrated from Indian Punjab, "Well, I would have to say you are a zalim (tyrant)," he said, leaving me thinking of a second partition. Emotionally.

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