Mirpur, November 23
The long drive from Lahore to Mirpur through the heartland of Punjab was uneventful except for an encounter with a fruit vendor. At Rs 15 for a dozen bananas, he said his rate was quite reasonable.
But what attracted everyone’s attention was a tape recorder, attached to an amplifier, which monotonously kept on announcing his rate. He reduced the volume to tell me that he did not compromise on quality while demanding the same price from everyone. But he would be very happy if I took some bananas for free because I was from India.
“Why should I shout day long when this machine can do it at a small cost?” he rationalised. The famed Punjabi enterprise was at once visible in him.
Except for the Urdu signboards, the countryside was very similar to the one in India’s Punjab. The same kind of dhabas and the same kind of kiosks were seen. Compressed Natural Gas (CNG) stations were as numerous as modern petrol and diesel stations on the impressive highway that led to Rawalpindi, once the capital of Pakistan.
Every time we entered a cantonment area like the Mangla Cantonment, some of us remembered the noting on the visa which prohibited us from entering any cantonment area. “I can neither drive over the cantonment or underneath it” said the driver as he took a turn from the highway to hit the Mirpur road.
Less than half an hour later, we passed through the gate to what is locally called “Azad Kashmir”. Suddenly we could feel a difference. Signs of prosperity stared us in the face.
The high wall on one side of the road prevented a look at the Mangla power station, one of the main sources of hydro-electric power in Pakistan. But nothing blocked the view of palatial houses each with a compound of its own on both sides of the Mirpur road. Have we strayed out of Pakistan and landed in some European village? The doubt was genuine when I saw the hoarding of a “British Jewellery” shop. As if to confirm the suspicion, there was another hoarding put up by a school which claimed to provide “British-quality education”.
Unnoticed by some of us, an “Azad Kashmir Police” patrol party was providing us security, which could also mean surveillance. We realised the utility of the patrol party when an officer at an Army checkpost flagged us to stop. Obviously, he had not noticed the police vehicles accompanying us.
Though we were behind schedule, enthusiasm had not waned among the journalists of Mirpur at their “Kashmir Press Club”. Every one of us was garlanded and showered with fresh rose petals. For a small town, the two-storeyed Press Club was quite imposing. There were banners outside and inside the club building welcoming “Journalists from India-Held Kashmir”.
In his welcome speech, Mr Sufi Mohammed Nazir gave his perception of the Kashmir problem. Kashmir had a distinct identity and it was older than Pakistan. He hoped the government would allow the Kashmiri leaders living across the line of control (LoC) to meet and discuss their problems.
We had to rush as another welcome awaited us at the hotel. The brightly lit Mirpur town with its well-stocked shops spoke of all-round prosperity. Considering the smallness of Mirpur, the hotel was quite plush. It is a different matter that the lift did not work and we had to carry our luggage ourselves.
Mirpur is a new town where people began to arrive in the mid-sixties when the old Mirpur town became a casualty of the Mangla dam. “Only a temple survived in the old town” said a local advocate. Mirpur owes its prosperity to the Non-Resident Kashmiris, who are mostly in the UK. “The palatial houses you find here are mostly unoccupied”, added the advocate.
The “Azad Kashmir” unit of the Pakistan People’s Party was our host for the evening. Led by Mr Abdul Majeed, legislator and former Speaker of the State Assembly, the PPP workers were in a jubilant mood. News had just come that Ms Benazir Bhutto’s husband, Mr Asif Ali Zardari, had been released after eight years in jail.
In his welcome address, Mr Majeed wanted an early solution of the Kashmir problem. He said any solution that was not acceptable to the Kashmiri people on both sides of the LoC would not work.
Mr Vinod Sharma, Secretary of the Indian chapter of the South Asian Free Media Association, which organised the trip, recalled that when he was posted at Islamabad for three years in the early nineties, he sought permission to visit Kashmir and even approached the then Prime Minister of “Azad Kashmir” in that regard. But he had to wait for so long to make a visit.
If anything, it underlined the significance of the first-ever visit of Indian journalists to the Kashmir on this side of the LoC. Outside the hotel, PPP workers were busy bursting crackers not so much to welcome us as to celebrate the release of Mr Zardari.
