Country Visa,
City Visa
By Beena Sarwar
02 March, 2005
TNS
"Pakistanis,
this way! Make a line here!" A straggling line duly forms at the
airport counter where Pakistanis entering India must register themselves.
Armed with passports, disembarkation forms and duplicate copies of the
registry form to be stamped here, the travellers resign themselves to
a long wait. Some joke about the 'special treatment' and this 'welcome'
to Mumbai.
A white-bearded
gent headed for Bangalore realises he doesn't have the registry forms,
and goes off to find them, then laboriously fills them before the lone
duty-free shop as the line inches forward.
The end of the line
is formed by a large, high-spirited group of musicians and their guitars:
Fuzon and the Mekaal Hasan Band, headed for Kolkata to play at a fund-raising
concert for tsunami victims. They are accompanied by their managers,
law student Erum Sattar and and actress Sania Saeed, possibly the first
female managers of any music band in South Asia. Several people recognise
Sania, including the Bangalore-bound gent and his family. There is camaraderie
and good humour, a bond shared by being in this tedious, unnecessary
line. "At least this time they're being polite," says Nausheen
Wasi, a young lecturer from Karachi University, headed to Goa for a
South Asian conference on democratisation, peace and regional cooperation.
Fuzon's restless
lanky lead guitarist Shallum, wandering up and down the line, stops
to ask if he could be fitted in a bag and taken to Goa. This is his
second time in India. Last June, Fuzon participated in an event called
'Sarhadon ki Jugalbandi' at Pragati Maidan in Delhi, where they jammed
with Indian Ocean. It was a memorable concert, also featuring Kailash
Khair and Rahat Fateh Ali Khan. Besides the music, everyone remembers
the intermittent rain showers that the musicians played through, encouraged
by the mesmerised audience.
The Mekaal Hasan
Band (MHB) made its debut in India more recently, at a show called 'Sufi
on the Rocks', organised by Etc, a TV network partially owned by Zee.
Apparently, it was Aakar Patel, the influential Editor of Mid-Day (a
tabloid with a circulation of over a million in Mumbai), who prevailed
upon Etc to launch the MHB in India, after having heard them rehearsing
at their studio in Lahore, where he had come for a lecture at Kinnaird
College. At their concert before the Mumbai press fraternity on January
7, MHB played to what was by all accounts an amazing reception. At one
point, as the Band members stood aside during a break, Kailash Khair
approached them and said how much he was enjoying the music. "He
asked if he could join us, and we said sure, so after the break, he
played with us. It was great," says Mekaal.
The event was hugely
hyped in Mumbai, complete with billboards at Juhu Beach, though one
didn't hear too much about it in Pakistan - another indication of the
Great Divide. A personal email from a senior journalist at the time
mentioned how popular the event had been and how much people had enjoyed
it.
Pakistani bands
playing in India invariably get a great reception, and particularly
appreciate the music-knowledgeable audiences they find there. But there
are spoilsports everywhere; one disgruntled journalist at a major newspaper
played up the fact that the MHB was in India on a visitor, as opposed
to an artist, visa - and questioned whether they should have been allowed
to play. Fortunately nothing came of this trouble-making attempt, but
the band was under some tension after the article was printed. Obviously,
there are spoilsports everywhere. They are encouraged in their cussedness
by the needless restrictions that the Indian and Pakistani governments
place on each other's citizens, whom they treat quite differently from
visitors of other countries. At this point, officially there are few
ways to visit each other's countries. The governments sometimes allow
visiting Indian and Pakistani musicians and artists to perform on the
other side, and sometimes not. Last May, the Pakistan High Commission
in New Delhi denied the Indian dancer Sharmistra Mukherjee a visa at
the last minute, even though she had obtained the necessary clearance
from the Interior Ministry. But when embassy officials in Delhi learnt
that she planned to participate in a classical dance performance, they
said she needed special permission. The event in Karachi and Lahore,
organised by Sheema Kermani, had to take place without her.
Breakthroughs like
the Srinagar-Muzaffarabad bus service are important. But what's needed
to really normalise relations is to make cross-border visits easier
for each other. There is no reason why Pakistanis should have to stand
in special lines to register their arrival at the Indian port of entry,
or why Indians should report their arrival and departure to the Pakistani
police (except the fortunate few who are granted exemptions based on
connections), and vice versa. There is no reason why visas should be
valid only for cities rather than the country, and or the stipulated
points of entry and departure shouldn't be changed if the traveller
wants. These basic bureaucratic hurdles can and must be removed.