Beena Sarwar September 25, 2004

Tags: POW , indo-ak , peace

href="/tag/Delhi">Delhi hope that this time, the mirage will be real. Particularly elated and hopeful is 29-year old Siddharth Dave, who has always been drawn to Pakistan. He made a ‘life-changing visit’ to Lahore during the cricket test recently and believes that “No Indian can be completely Indian without a visit to Pakistan.”

His unusual habit of introducing himself as ‘Sadat from Pakistan’ is a great icebreaker, besides being a personal contribution towards peace. “People expect Pakistanis to be a certain way, but we are all just people,” he says. “Look at us, can anyone tell we are from different countries?” Certainly, no one would be able to guess which of the group he is with is from Pakistan and which from India, at a music session recently in Delhi.

A slim, tall woman starts chatting with Siddharth. Hearing that he is from Pakistan, she tells him that her father has been a POW there since 1971. Taken aback, Siddharth introduces us – she is Simi Waraich, a psychiatrist; her husband, a bearded young major in the Indian army, looks on as we talk. Simi tells us that her father was among 54 POWs believed to be in Attock Fort (“now perhaps there are 30 left”). Her father’s name heads the list: Major Sharanjitpal Singh Waraich of 15 Punjab, also known as the Patiala Regiment.

The affected families have made many efforts to recover these forgotten prisoners, whose existence the Pakistan government continues to deny. Simi has outlined evidence about their being in Pakistan in a recent article The Forgotten 54 - When will the War Finish for Them? posted to Chowk, the online interactive magazine, www.chowk.com.

She believes that Pakistan is unlikely to send them back, because “that would mean admitting that they kept them 32 years after the war they fought in finished. So why fight the impossible! By some improbable chance if they are sent back, who knows what they’ll be like- disoriented, demented perhaps; brainwashed perhaps? They’ll be followed by RAW for months to see if they are upto something here.”

But in a poignant comment that also reflects on relations between the two countries, she concludes: “These men if still surviving have little time left for niceties now. They need to be brought home in whatever state they are. Even if there were human rights violations, releasing these men would send a gesture of goodwill and peace. The two governments could in a way make amends for the violations of past regimes. What happened is past, releasing these men could be the harbinger of a new beginning... I went to the Wagah border for the candlelight vigil held on 15th August this year. The vigil is held for peace. I just wonder when the war will finish for these men. When will they return home?”

Responding to this piece, Veeresh Malik from Delhi recalls the Agra summit at which President General Musharraf “said on television something to the effect that ‘I am a soldier, I am not mad, why would I keep Indian POWs/soldiers in captivity for decades?’ A group of Indian families then visited Pakistan, were taken to a few jails, and then brought back. Pakistan continued to claim that it had no Indian soldiers in its custody… And now, August 2004, suddenly the Pakistanis ‘discover’ that two Indian soldiers were with them in Rawalpindi Jail Barrack No. 4 or 8, all along. And these soldiers are then exchanged.”

The story of one of these soldiers, Mohammad Arif, captured during the Kargil ‘war-like situation’, has caused a furore. Returning to a hero’s welcome, he found that his family, presuming him dead, had got his wife Guriya married to another cousin -- whose child she is carrying. A local panchayat then decreed her second marriage invalid, although the baby would be legitimate, and ordered her to return to Arif. Guriya has bowed to social pressure and agreed, but Arif does not want to accept her second husband’s baby. He initially insisted that after a few months, the child should be returned to its father, but now may have agreed to let Guriya keep it.

None of this would have happened had Pakistan acknowledged the existence of its Indian POWs. Simi would not have had to grow up without her father. If Arif had been allowed to communicate with his family in India, they would not have presumed him dead, and got his wife re-married. As she said in one interview, this is not a game, but people’s lives.

It is time that Pakistan and India set in place mechanisms to ensure that such aberrations don’t happen, causing so much human suffering. It is time for the forgotten prisoners of the 1971 war to be sent home.