Wagah, October 28
Burqa-clad Tahira Hazur waved the Indian Tricolour as soon as she stepped out of the Sada-e-Sarhad that reached the joint checkpost from Lahore on the eve of Ramzan this morning. She was garlanded by her fiance Maqbool Ahmed, a correspondent with a Hindi daily “Qadian”, before she entered the customs office.
“It’s like Id for us”, said Maqbool on his reunion with Tahira after two years of their engagement in Pakistan. The marriage, which would take place at Qadian, the international headquarters of Ahmadiyya Muslims after the Id celebrations, would be the first cross-border marriage after the attack on Indian Parliament in 2001.
“It was love at first sight and I decided to marry Maqbool when he visited Pakistan in March 2001”, said Tahira. The engagement took place in Pakistan and she got her passport on December 11, two days before the attack on Parliament. She said she had to approach the Indian High Commission in Pakistan several times to get visa. It was on the intervention of the former Indian Prime Minister, Mr I.K. Gujral, and other dignitaries that the visa was granted. She was sad that her parents and other family members would not be able to attend the marriage.
Tahira is an Ahmadiyya — the persecuted community in Pakistan — and is feeling relieved to be in India. After nightmarish experiences in Pakistan where the Ahmadiyyas are denied rights, she would reach Qadian tomorrow. “Qadian is the place which is the abode of peace in the eyes of Allah from where the fountain of divine knowledge will spring for the revival of Islam”, said Maqbool.
Maqbool’s late father Manzoor Ahmed was one of the 313 missionaries who had come from Pakistan in 1947 to preserve the legacy of Qadian.
Tahira said radicals had asked President Pervez Musharraf to remove the Ahmadiyyas from high posts. She said 50 per cent of the girls belonging to the Ahmadiyya community wanted to get married in India. However, due to visa problems their dreams could not come true. She said she had come alone for the marriage as all rituals and ceremonies had been done in Pakistan by her parents and relatives. Maqbool would be able to meet Tahira tomorrow as no passenger of the Delhi-Lahore bus is allowed to get down on the way to Delhi. Though Qadian is only 80 km from Wagah, she will have to cover more than 1,100 km to reach there.
Ahmed Bhunnoo, brother-in-law of Maqbool, who has come from UK, said the “nikah” was likely to take place in the first week of next month.
