20

For Indians and Pakistanis,

on-going visa woes

The uncertainty
around visas for
Indian groups
attending a
theatre festival in
Pakistan again
highlights the
bureaucratic
restrictions that
prevent people-topeople meetings

ndia and Pakistan continue to

make it difficult for each others citizens to visit their countries, with everincreasing bureaucratic restrictions on
both sides making it more and more
difficult for applicants to obtain visas.
Both countries now require conference and seminar organisers to obtain
no objection certificates (NOC) from
the Interior or Home Ministries for the
entire event as well as for each
participant from the other country.
Since the procedure is not widely
known or clearly listed anywhere, conference organisers often have to scramble at the last minute to fulfil these bureaucratic requirements.
This is something I found out the
hard way when Lokmat Media in Pune
invited me to a conference last month.
They had never invited a Pakistani before. It was only after I had filled in the
visa form (a painful process in itself)
and started following up with officials
at the Indian High Commission, and
even with Indias Ministry of External
Affairs, that we learnt that the conference organisers had to obtain NOCs
from the Interior Ministry not just for
cross-border guests but also for the conference.
After a lot of hectic back and forthing, phone calls, emails, tweets, and
other noise, I learnt that the clearance
had finally been given, which would enable the visa official at the embassy to
stamp my passport. But thanks to assorted holidays and a weekend in between, by the time I received the passport back with the precious visa it was
too late to make it to the conference.
With India now enforcing such bureaucratic red tape, could Pakistan be
far behind? Not for long, obviously.
The wretched NOC issue has again

Visa woes: Theatre Festival forced to extend dates

Daddy in Delhi: Imran Zahid and Bharti on stage. Photo: Monica Dawar

Pooja Bhatt with father Mahesh Bhatt: committed

been highlighted by the uncertainty surThe groups Rajasthani language
rounding the participation of Indian
play Kasumal Sapno directed by Ajeet
groups in the on-going International
Singh Palawat was due to be staged in
Theatre Festival of the National
Karachi on March 14-15.
Academy of Performing Arts (NAPA) in
Another Indian theatre group Being
Karachi, originally scheduled from
Associations Museum of Species in
March 12-31, 2015.
Danger (Hindi/English) was scheduled
This is the second NAPA Internafor March 20-21 at the festival.
tional Theatre Festival, first staged in
NAPA was to stage a co-production
2012 as the NAPA Performing Arts Feswith Indian group 5 Senses on March
tival. This year, audiences were looking
28-29. The festival was due to close
forward to the performances by several
with the stage adaptation of acclaimed
Indian groups at the Theatre Festival.
film director Mahesh Bhatts 1989 film
However, last week Pakistan denied
Daddy (Hindi) on March 30-31, for
visas to members of the Ujjagar Theatre
which Bhatt and his daughter, wellGroup apparently because they had not
known actor Pooja Bhatt were to
obtained NOCs.
travel.

Given his profile, Mahesh Bhatt is

almost assured of visas for his group.
However, he has said that he will not
participate in the festival unless the
other Indian groups also get visas. It
is either all of us, or no one.
The celebrity father and daughter
duo were looking forward to visiting
Karachi for the theatre festival. It is
the mother of all events for every performing artiste and theatre lover. Storytellers, filmmakers, artistes look forward to such events, said Bhatt.
I have always said that
the performing arts bind
nations together, he adds,
stressing that cultural
ties should not be affected by tensions at
the government level.
We have spent a
decade to build ties and such impediments cause a body blow to us.
One hears that the festival organisers are working to obtain the requisite
NOCs for the Indian delegates, and
hope to have the issue resolved soon.
The festival dates have been extended
and the Indian plays re-scheduled for
the end.
We have crossed our fingers and
are hoping the matter will be resolved
in time so we can participate in the
festival. We wanted not just to showcase our artistic skills to the Pakistani
people but also to strengthen the cultural ties between the two countries,
bridging the gap through art," says Kasumal Sapno director Ajeet Singh
Palawat who is waiting for the NOC
and visa along with his 27-member
group.
There is excitement in Pakistan at
the staging of Bhatts Daddy if one
goes by the daily spree of tweets from
Pakistanis looking forward to seeing
the play the first time it would be
staged in Pakistan.
I sincerely hope that the Pakistan
government and the concerned authorities respect the emotions and desires of
their people to resolve this issue at the
earliest, says Daddy lead actor Imran
Zahid.
Fingers and toes crossed that this indeed happens.

B R I E F S

Aman ki Asha Nagpur MUN

hen a group of
Pakistani
Americans announced that
they were running for a
cause at a marathon last
Saturday in Washington
DC, Indians runners joined
them in solidarity and support. The cause: Honoring
the Lives of our Children Screenshot: A message of thanks for solidarity
martyred in Peshawar
School Attack. At the over 20 km long Rock n Roll DC Marathon,
at which many of the 25,000 participants ran for different causes,
this group of Indians and Pakistanis ran wearing t-shirts to honor
and in remembrance of the Peshawar school children.
Their motive: to show our solidarity with the families of the victims of Peshawar School Attack, and show the world, that we will
never forget their sacrifice.
On learning about the Indians participation, Mohammad Jibran
Nasir?, the young lawyer who is spearheading the civil society
movement in Pakistan against terrorism sent them a video message
from Karachi, that he posted to their Facebook event: a very special thank you to all our Indian friends who are running the
marathon.
The Indians participation, he said, is sending out a very strong
message of peace and solidarity and letting the world know that
whatever may be our differences, we are united against terrorism
Efforts like yours, wherever they may be coming from in the
world are rekindling our spirits, motiving us, increasing our resolve
to pursue our at movement with much more vigour, to take on the
Taliban, to take on the banned outfits and to force the government
to start a crackdown against them.
aka

Steve Alters
Beena Sarwar

Crossing the lines

Wanted: soft borders

haring here a thoughtful post on the Aman ki Asha Facebook page by Ravi Kallianpur?, who
writes that he was enjoying every bit of an online travelogue by a Pakistani writer about
the Pakistan side of the Punjab in a Pakistani newspaper. Then a thought struck him: If
we were to take every reference to the publishers and authors name, country, religion, religious
places, religious figures out of this piece and challenge people from both countries to be able to
pin-point which nation was this travelogue based in, very few, if any would know the answer.The
irony is this: I, of South Indian ancestry have very little in common with an Indian Punjabi, who
has lot more in common with a Pakistani Punjabi. I am hopeful about the future because of the
younger generation; with exceptions, they as a group seem to have very little patience with religious acrimony.
I know it will always be two nations, but someday I hope to see the line between them get softer; like the border between India
and Nepal, or the one between the US and Canada.
Well said Ravi ji. Milne Do!

A group of Indian and Pakistani runners at a

marathon honor the Peshawar Army Public
School children martyred in the attack of
Dec 16, 2014

espite visa woes and difficulties, Indians and Pakistanis keep trying to enable cultural exchanges. This time it is two acclaimed actors from Pakistan
and India, Sania Saeed in conversation with Nandita Das in Lahore, on
March 17, 2015, following the screening of a cineplay, Between the Lines.
The contemporary play by Nandita Das and Divya Jagdale is set in urban India
and focuses on the conflicts faced by an affluent lawyer couple who find themselves caught between modernity and tradition. They end up arguing on opposite
sides of a criminal trial, resulting in the blurring of their personal and professional
lives.
The play, directed by Das for stage, and recorded for a cinematic experience is
a new language of storytelling, as she puts it.

A scene from the cineplay

Running
for a cause

At the marathon: Kuldeep Gill and his daughter Sadgi

Himlayan journey

he Nagpur Model United Nations (MUN) including a special committee on Aman ki

Asha is set to take place on May 30-31, 2015 in India. The other committees are General Assembly, World Health Organisation and Human Rights Council.
Focusing on college and high school students, the organisers are trying to get the maximum number of Pakistani participants. The next hurdle will be obtaining the visas.
The hopes of the youth are raised high to meet each other and to make a difference,
says Devang Shah, Director, Aman ki Asha Council at Nagpur MUN. They are some of the most intellectual minds (of our countries) and they are craving to reduce the enmity to such a level that the progress of both these nations is not hindered.
Participants are selected after an application process that includes interviews, conducted via Skype in the case of Pakistani
applicants. It gives me intense happiness to see the coherence of thoughts that we got to hear from other side of the border on the
Skype interviews, says Shah. In fact, during the interview process itself we have got amazing solutions to the problems.

Wednesday, March 18, 2015

Making Media, Building Peace

ur friends at Friendships Across Borders: Aao Dosti Karein (ADK) write that
theyve had an exciting week. Aao Dosti Karein was invited by the Faculty
of Journalism and Communication at the Maharaja Sayajirao University in
Baroda, India, to facilitate a two-day workshop on March 10-11. Titled Making
Media, Building Peace, the workshop involved 24 energetic and enthusiastic students.
Over two days, they conducted surveys about attitudes towards Pakistan among
Indians, got introduced to the concept of peace journalism, engaged in art activities
and problem-solving tasks, devised skits, watched short films focused on people-topeople contact between Indians and Pakistanis, and learnt about social media initiaStudents at the workshop.
tives focused on peace-building in the Pakistan-India context, says ADK.
Our inbox is buzzing with happiness, reading about how the workshop touched their hearts, Many of them are planning to
work on projects that would reduce the hostility between both nations by connecting young people using social media tools.
More power to you, we say.

THE FIRST STEP

LET US KNOW WHAT YOU THINK

Feedback, contributions, photos, letters:

Email: amankiasha@janggroup.com.pk
Fax: +92-21-3241-8343
Post: aman ki asha c/o The News,
I.I. Chundrigar Road, Karachi

Steve Alter at the NY reading. Photo: Beena Sarwar

t a reading in New
York recently to
launch his new
book Becoming a
Mountain: Himalayan Journeys in Search
of the Sacred and the Sublime, Indian-born American
Stephen Alter said that he was
looking forward to his upcoming trip to Pakistan in August,
to climb K-2.
Alter, like his actor cousin
Tom Alter for whom he is
often mistaken, was born and
schooled in India. Children of
missionary parents, they have
lived in India all their lives
and speak fluent Urdu/Hindi.
His latest book is his account of a series of treks in
the Himalayas after recovering from an attack in 2008 that
he and his wife miraculously
survived. The yet-unsolved assault that took place at his
life-long home in the hill sta-

In his India-Pakistan book, Alter

reflects intimately upon Indias past
and present as a special observer who
is an insider as well as outsider
tion of Mussoorie in the
foothills of the Himalayas led
him to question his own sense
of belonging as a third-generation American in India.
Alter is also the author of
Amritsar to Lahore: A Journey Across the India-Pakistan Border (2001), written
after two visits to Pakistan.
During the course of my
journey, many of the people I
met in Pakistan and India expressed a curious combination of affection, indifference,
and animosity toward their
neighbors across the border
The border divides them but it

is also a seam that joins the

fabric of their cultures, he
wrote.
He first crossed the border
between India and Pakistan in
1997, the fiftieth anniversary
of Partition, going from New
Delhi to Lahore. During his
journey, he retraced the legendary route of the Frontier
Mail toward the Khyber Pass,
and returned by bus along the
Grand Trunk Road, stopping
along the way.
During this journey and
another in 1998, Alter interviewed people from all
classes and castes: Hindus,

Muslims, and Sikhs, men and

women. The book includes diverse interviews, conversations, and oral histories, with
Alters informed commentary
raising questions about national and individual identity,
the territorial imperatives of
history, and the insidious
mythology of borders.
In his India-Pakistan book,
Alter reflects intimately upon
Indias past and present as a
special observer who is an insider as well as outsider. His
encounters illustrate the
shared culture and heritage of
South Asia, as well as the suspicions and intolerance that
exist across both countries.
The narrative includes discussions of the works of South
Asian novelists, poets, and
filmmakers who have struggled with the issue of identity
across the borderlands.
aka

A peace initiative whose time has come...

Destination Peace: A commitment by the Jang Group, Geo and The Times of India Group to
create an enabling environment that brings the people of Pakistan and India closer together,
contributing to genuine and durable peace with honour between our countries.