When nations go to war, ordinary families pay the price every time a beloved husband, son, brother or father comes home in a body bag. When two nations remain in a constant state of war, it is Everyman who pays the price of appearing to be the enemy.
This week's Special Report chronicles exactly that. It might almost be a remake of Mehreen Jabbar's 2008 film Ramchand Pakistani, which told the story of a low-caste Hindu man and his son, Ramchand, who accidentally cross into India from Pakistan and end up spending five years in a prison. Meanwhile, Ramchand's mother is left wondering what happened to them. One week is a long time in politics. Five years can be an eternity for a family parted it knows not how — or why. It falls apart. The film shows Ramchand and his father as guilty by suspicion because they came from "enemy" country.
As all the reports on this page illustrate, there are many Ramchands on both sides of the border. Prisons in India and Pakistan are teeming with unfortunate "illegal aliens" — Pakistani and Indian — whose only crime is to have entered the neighbouring country by mistake or overstayed their visa. In the sub-continent's colonial neo-officialese, it's called violation of the Foreigner's Act and Passport Act.
The Geneva Convention, which both the countries have signed, requires humane treatment of civilians. In the subcontinent, this convention is followed selectively. When citizens from any country other than India or Pakistan violate the visa law on either side of the border, they are fined or deported. But if an Indian is caught in Pakistan or vice versa, it is Ramchand Pakistani every time.
Now, as the Indian and Pakistani foreign secretaries meet in the run up to home minister P Chidambaram's visit to Islamabad, is there hope?
Punjab
He is 16 and a victim of the politics of hate between two countries. Salim has spent two years in a home for juvenile criminals. It's a small house with three dingy, airless rooms. Salim shares a small room with 33 others, aged between 12 and 18. As the mercury rises and electricity supply trips, the three-room house becomes stiflingly hot.
There is no clean drinking water to be had. As the Indian and Pakistani foreign secretaries meet in the run up to home minister P Chidambaram's visit to Islamabad, Salim is fervent about peace at any cost. "I can only pray to god for improvement in India and Pakistan's relations. Only then I will be able to get out of this place," he says.
It shouldn't have come to this. The son of a farmer in Bahawalpur, Salim crossed the border by mistake at Hussainiwala in May 2008. He didn't have a passport or a valid visa. Arrested by the BSF, the boy, then 14, was sent to the juvenile home. Ever since, life has been hellish for an adolescent who is regarded an enemy agent by the other inmates. Often, Salim gets into fights with those who make caustic remarks about his nationality and religion.
Why is he still here? Salim has served out the sentence for his "crime", the Punjab government has withdrawn the criminal case against him. And yet he awaits repatriation to Bahawalpur. "Salim's case was sent to the Union home minister after withdrawal of all criminal cases against him in Punjab and now the ministry of home affairs is waiting for the nod from their Pakistani counterparts for the verification of boy's antecedents in Bahawalpur," said Chhinder Pal Kaur, chief development project officer in Faridkot and supervisor of the juvenile home.
Salim is nervous. It may take months or years for him to get home. But it says something about the indomitable nature of the human spirit that he doesn't dare to think he never will.
— Priya Yadav & Balwant Garg
Rajasthan
One wintry morning seven years ago, Gulam Shabbir's ailing father asked him to borrow some money from the neighbours for food. The family had eaten nothing for days. Unable to bear the sight of his parents' hungry faces, Shabbir left his home in Khiparo tehsil of Sangadh district in Pakistan and started to beg in the villages along the border in the desert.
Thirsty and tired, he got disorientated and wandered among the sand dunes. That was when he ran into a Border Security Force patrol. Before he found out he was in India, Shabbir was in prison in Jaisalmer. He has been behind bars since November 20, 2003.
Each year Shabbir has spent behind bars might have been a decade. He hasn't heard from or spoken to his parents. Sitting in his cell in Jaisalmer prison, he wonders if they are still alive.
Meanwhile, he has fought a grim legal battle, with barely any help from his government, to be sent home to Pakistan. On interrogation, he was declared "innocent" by the BSF and charged with nothing more heinous than
entering India illegally". And yet he remains incarcerated.
Shabbir finished his prison term on February 25 this year. He was released, re-arrested and thrown into his old cell once again. Police sources say he was taken to the Pakistani High Commission in Delhi for identification but Islamabad is yet to accept that he is a Pakistani citizen. "We are desperately trying to deport him but we are not getting positive response from the other side. We are left with no alternative but to keep him in the prison," says S Parimala, Jaisalmer's Superintendent of Police.
If Shabbir made a mistake, it was in wandering across a border without the requisite paperwork. But what of Arjun Ram, who is in prison in India for "violating visa norms" as he fled religious persecution in Bahawalpur, Pakistan?
Ram's family originally belongs to Ranjitpura in Bikaner, but they migrated to West Punjab many years before Partition. In August 2008, Ram and some of his family arrived in India determined to seek citizenship because they felt threatened in Pakistan. Ram's son Gumana, 45, and the rest of his family arrived in Jodhpur on April 6 last year.
With his whole family in India, Ram began the process of resettlement, travelling to their ancestral village in Bikaner to fix a daughter's marriage. But their visas were only valid for Jodhpur and in June last year Ram and his son were arrested under the Foreigners Act and dumped in Bikaner jail. The family, which is unable even to meet the men, still waits for their release. There is no word and appears to be little hope.
Shabbir strayed into India. Arjun Ram arrived here with a purpose. As they remain behind bars, they — and the sub-continent — must wonder about a system that makes criminals of innocent people.
