Images of the chopped half
Samra Rahman

Across the Wagah: An Indian’s Sojourn in Pakistan
by Maneesha Tikekar
Promilla & Co. in association with Bibliophile South Asia
Pages 360. Rs 750.

Initially, there was a temptation to call this book a ‘curate’s egg’, excellent in parts. But it had to be resisted since it would have implied that parts of it are bad and hence the whole was no good at all. That would have been quite unfair, since the only part that occasioned the temptation, suffers mainly by comparison with the others, which are indeed excellent.

The title is quite apt. The border post of Wagah stands there as a symbol, like the Berlin Wall, of the fact of Partition and that cruel gash, the Radcliff Line. The trite saying that truth is sometimes stranger than fiction very much applies to Partition. If it was not a cold historical fact and if someone had written a novel to delineate such a scenario, one would have unhesitatingly dismissed it as an outright impossibility. It was as if the Judgment of Solomon had turned into a nightmare and the baby was indeed chopped into two parts.

There is a crying need for greater understanding, on both sides of the border. Ignorance and prejudice abound. The author mentions that on her return to Mumbai, her friends enquired whether she went about in a burqah during her sojourn in Pakistan! This reviewer, too, had some strong prejudices, which were dispelled when she was given an opportunity to write a regular weekly column in a leading national daily and review Pakistan television. Watching their TV programmes for about three years made it clear that Pakistan is not entirely hagridden by the mullahs and that the people there have not completely cut themselves off from their sub-continental cultural roots.

The book is the outcome of some five months’ stay in Pakistan, under an Asian Fellowship of the Ford Foundation. A great deal of meticulous research supplemented with personal observation and structured interactions with a cross-section of the common people, opinion-makers, policy-formulators, academics, NGOs, writers, artists and the powers that be have gone into it. It is a serious scholarly work, but mercifully it is not an academic tome, couched in dense, opaque language, overlaid with a great deal of impenetrable jargon.

Maneesha Tikekar deals with the paradox we face in reconciling the accounts of those who visited Pakistan and found the people there to be warm and welcoming. "People as people," she says "are one thing, while people as a nation (are) quite a different thing. When people become nation, it is like a chemical reaction in which the basic ingredient, the people is transformed altogether`85" It creates diametrical opposites like "we" (good) and "they" (bad).

When national emotion is supplemented by political power, a new entity, the nation, state emerges and develops an agenda of its own, which may not necessarily reflect the desires or opinions of the people. And she sets out to understand "the people of Pakistan, their society and their cultural moorings, their life and concerns, their politics as well as their problems and struggles." This she does with exemplary objectivity, giving a wide berth to all prevailing stereotypes.

The book is in three parts. The first, The Tapestry of Pakistan, deals with her stay, travels and interactions with the people. The second part is subdivided into two parts, Five Decades in Search of Political Stability and Movers and Shakers of Pakistani Politics. The former gives a bird’s-eye view of the political history of that nation, while the latter deals with important factors that determine the pattern of their politics, including Islam and national identity, Shia-Sunni conflicts, Army in Pakistan politics, Madarsa and Jihadi culture.

The third part, Contours of Society delineates and analyses the complexities and nuances of their social structures and sociological factors, including minorities; status of women and women’s movement, the print and electronic media; education and intellectual activity and political economy. The other areas are their cultural dilemmas such as issues of national and cultural identity and Pakistani perception of India.

The second and third parts are the most valuable. The first part occasioned the temptation to allude to the curate’s egg. While it is highly informative and, at places, revealing, it is marred by the very strengths of the other two parts, the research methodology that calls for meticulous documentation and thoroughness. At one place, she gives an exhaustive list of 20-odd persons she met in Islamabad with their ranks, designations and so on. Reminds you of Biblical genealogies. She tracks down a woman in Pakistan who teaches Bharatanatyam: "I visited her dance class in Islamabad in Sector F8." In heaven’s name, why the details of the sector and the sub-sector? It is followed by the age group of her students, their names etc.

Writing of her visits to some of the cities in Pakistan, she feels obliged to write about every important monument, even though she is not quite au fait with matters architectural. Despite these minor blemishes, this is still a must read.

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