Can citizens' diplomacy change the ground reality that India and Pakistan are, and perhaps always have been, in a state of covert if not overt war? In an effort to try, over the last decade, several citizens' initiatives have cropped up, ranging from the people-to-people dialogue, the Pakistan-India People's Forum for Peace and Democracy (PIPFPD) started in 1995, to the more recent Women's Initiative for Peace in South Asia (WIPSA) launched in August 1999.

These build on earlier meetings between leading intellectuals, like the South

Asia Dialogue started by the late Eqbal Ahmad among others.

These interventions have involved retired foreign secretaries, ambassadors, governors, secretaries to government, ministers and judges, besides lawyers, journalists, doctors, educationists, artists, business men and women, trade unionists and students. Even groups of retired military officers, foremost among them Air Marshal Zafar Chaudhry of Pakistan and Admiral Ramdas of India, have engaged in dialogue with their counterparts across the border. Their past battles have given way to a common imperative for de-nuclearisation and peace.

For all of them, India and Pakistan's emergence from the nuclear closet in

1998, the subsequent Kargil war, and the attendant nationalistic hysteria has served to impart new urgency to the quest for better relations.

The scale and committment of the effort is impressive by any measure. PIPFPD's April meeting at Bangalore saw some 450 delegates converging from all parts of India and Pakistan, to renew their pledge of working for peace. The commitment is not an empty one: PIPFPD delegates pay their own way to attend these conferences, although hosts take care of their board and lodging. The Indian and Pakistani women who recently visited each other's countries by bus also paid their own fares.

The respective governments are at best ambiguous. Neither government 'wishes to or is strong enough to stop these initiatives,' former federal minister Dr Mubashir Hasan observes. A committed track-two activist, he believes that the citizen-led process provides a safety net to both governments, offering them a way out of their public positions and postures. "Politicians and government officials privately agree that peace between India and Pakistan is necessary, but publicly they don't know how to go about this," he says.

There are real obstacles. Right-wing, ultra-nationalist and communalist forces in both India and Pakistan have threatened and harassed peace activists, pillorying them as 'traitors', 'anti-nationalists' and 'enemy agents'. Admiral L. Ramdas, chairman of the India chapter of PIPFPD notes that the "enemy" image of the other country "serves as a smoke screen for the rulers to cover up the political, economic and social difficulties that plague them."

Cynics argue that unless 'core issues' like Kashmir are not 'resolved', there is no chance of peace. Mubashir Hasan responds that both countries were finally heading towards peace through the bus diplomacy of 1999, and the Lahore Declaration because it was in their own national interests and because of their own socio-economic compulsions -- both of which still exist.

The peace-makers believe that when Indians and Pakistanis unite to insist that their governments talk, find a way out of the Kashmir imbroglio through, and allow their people to visit the other country without restrictions, the governments can no longer pretend that their people want war. Even now, many people clearly don't, as any Indian or Pakistani who has crossed the border will testify.

The importance of direct contact, putting names and faces on each other as individuals, is reflected in track two demands for a lifting of restrictions on travel, and cultural and media exchanges. At present, visas are allowed routinely only 'to visit relatives'. Once granted, they require reporting to the police on arrival and departure. This irksome procedure is often waived for track two initiatives and has facilitated the cross-border visits of hundreds

of ordinary Indians and Pakistanis.

Exposure to ordinary people serves as a powerful perception changer, and every border crossing brings a new example. Take young Kamran, an engineering student in Lahore who volunteered to help during the Indian women's 'Peace Bus' delegation in March, drawn through curiosity about 'the other'. He was earlier so vehemently anti-Indian that he wouldn't even indulge in the popular pastime of watching Hindi films on video, or allow his family and friends to. Now he says 'They are ordinary people, just like us.'

Or take the Ramjas College students who decided to make Pakistan the venue of their annual excursion, not long after Kargil. Despite dire warnings from friends and family, they were undaunted even by the coup of October 12. One student from Kargil confided that he used to wonder 'what kind of people these were' who caused him and his family and townspeople such trouble. He left realising that people are people everywhere, and that there is a tremendous desire for peace among them.

The effect of disinformation and propaganda, often buried in text books in the guise of history, is most clearly visible in the minds of children, who play war games against the 'enemy' country, and who fear for their relatives crossing the border. If one Delhi student's 11-year old cousin warned him not to disclose his Indian identity while in Lahore, a Pakistani vistor's 9-year old daughter tearfully feared for his life when he travelled to Delhi. In Lucknow, his 12-year old Indian niece talked of Pakistan as the 'enemy' - until he pointed out that he was Pakistani too.

Even adults feel the difference. Part of a group of Pakistani Rotarians

who went to Delhi in Dec '99 to prepare the ground for the first International Rotarians Peace Conference in Pakistan, Conference Secretary Faiz Kidwai says that the post-Kargil atmosphere there was initially hostile. But, he says, "when we met and discussed issues from the bottom of our hearts, it changed."

The conference was held in Karachi at the end of April, with 180 non-police reporting visas granted to Indian Rotarians, although only about 80 could get bookings on PIA, the sole air link between the countries.

"I feel we can definitely contribute something," says Mr Kidwai in the aftermath of the Conference. "There is bound to be a ripple effect. There have been so many requests for more such conferences from both sides of the border."

A senior Pakistani diplomat who helped with the visas said that he believes people across the borders should be allowed to meet and develop an understanding. His view, he said, is shaped not least by a sense that if a solution to the Kashmir issue were to appear on the horizon, the citizens of both countries should be able to accept it.