Peace memorials and peace parks

By Ishtiaq Ahmed

The News, July 07, 2007

On October 27, 1999 I was returning from Delhi to Stockholm after doing my first round of interviews on the partition of Punjab. When the SAS plane crossed the border into Pakistan the pilot told us to look to the left side below as we were flying over the city of Lahore. Somewhere down there was Temple Road Lahore where I was born a few months before the partition.

As we flew over Lahore, my nostalgia gave birth to an idea that I thought should greatly help heal the hurt and pain of what transpired in the Punjab in 1947. It was to propose a memorial to the victims of 1947 at midpoint between Wagah and Attari on the Lahore-Amritsar border. Such a symbol should signify an end to the partition mindset that had caused wars in 1948, 1965 and 1971 between India and Pakistan. I collected signatures via Internet and that brought me into contact with many other people who had similar projects in mind.

Dr Saleem Ali floated the idea of a peace park in Kashmir and wrote on that theme. An Indian gentleman, who was an architect, offered his services to prepare sketches of such a building. Some people suggested that the monument should be a living place. My sardar friend, Ravi Singh, suggested that a research library should be built there. The late Dr Bilal Hashmi wanted statements on peace to be extracted from all the holy books and inscribed in stone. Some of us with a secular-humanist commitment wanted verses of Sahir Ludhianvi, Faiz Ahmed Faiz, Amrita Pritam and other Punjabis to be written down as well.

Many young people began to write to me, saying that they wanted to do something to build peace between the peoples of India and Pakistan. But then after a few years when nothing happened beyond mere discussion we all sort of resigned ourselves to the realpolitik of the region.

Then on May 20, 2007 I received an email from a school teacher in Germany, Hieke Fiedler, whose students were going to discuss my idea of a monument at Wagah-Attari. She had come across my petition on the Internet and decided to take it up with her students. For Germans peace has been a very important issue and I could understand her enthusiasm, but had no progress to report to her. That made me really sad.

I remembered a young Indian woman, Amisha Nanavati, from Gujarat, India, who had written to me about a year earlier in connection with a peace park her brother wanted to build. He died, however, in an accident and now she wanted to pursue his vision and thus honour his memory. So, I wrote to her to send a sketch of that peace idea again. This is what she wrote on May 31, 2007:

'My brother Zankhan Nanavati who was a student of Rachana Sansad College of Architecture (Prabhadevi) and a passionate trekker had proposed a peace park to strengthen the ties between India and Pakistan and build a new wave of trust, mutual growth thus opening the new gates for trade, culture and relations between the two great nations. It happened so that in one of his trekking expeditions in the year 2001, he got a chance to hear the veteran Indian trekker and novelist, Aamir Ali's lecture in which he had proposed to demilitarise the Siachin Glacier and convert it into a conservation park. It was at this time that the idea of a peace park had crystallised itself in this young mind sitting mute amongst spectators.

Three years later, in May 2004, the dormant idea started taking shape as his final year thesis. Encouraged by his professor Mr Arvind Adarkar he went full steam ahead with his idea and started extensive research on the history of the India-Pakistan formation, the saga of the partition, and the Indo-Pak relations issues, etc. Originally he had plans of a peace park at the Wagah border. He visited villages near the Punjab border to study the demography as part of his survey. At this point in time there were multiple thoughts mingling in his mind.

After seeing the museum in Amritsar and interviewing people around, he was too disturbed. He then visited the Golden Temple, and as he was sitting near the pool suddenly his eyes fell on a reflection of the Golden Dome in the serene waters. It looked so calm and peaceful. Suddenly he made up his mind to go ahead with his idea no matter what. The entire feeling that he experienced has been jotted down beautifully in one letter that he wrote sitting by the pool at the Golden Temple. He had plans to visit Pakistan in December 2004, to get the story from the other side as well. But in July 2004, we lost him in a trekking accident.

This would have shelved the thesis and shattered his vision, but for his classmates who came forward and proposed to complete his thesis and pay due respect to his dreams. With their support we could get the documentation done. Seeing the precise research and documentation his professor Arvind Adarkar of Rachana Sansad College of Architecture encouraged materialising this vision and giving it the shape of reality. This is the point where I actively stepped into this mission.

The next day she sent another email informing me about a Pakistani student who wanted to build a peace park:

'A similar proposal has been made by a student named Saad Gadit, a final year student of Architecture at the NED University of Engineering and Technology, Karachi. He is proposing to have a peace museum at Khaju-O-Darro in Mirpurkhas (Pakistan). I have proposed a peace park on the Indian side of the border at Ramsar near Munabao. Together we can proceed to link the two areas and take a concrete step towards a better tomorrow'.

I believe the ideas to have two peace parks on the India-Pakistan border in Sindh and link them with the Punjab should be such that they have a memorial midpoint between Wagah and Attari that should appeal to all peace-loving people of conscience. We also need to have peace memorials and parks in Kashmir and other parts of India and Pakistan. I would even suggest that a peace memorial be built in Dhaka to bring to a close the sad chapter of a civil war that took a huge toll on life and ended in a war between India and Pakistan that broke up Pakistan.

 

The writer is professor of political science at the University of Stockholm, Sweden. Email: ishtiaq.ahmed@statsvet.su.se