With Kartarpur, Punjab has forced Narendra Modi to make another U-turn on Pakistan

Punjab CM Captain Amarinder Singh and Prime Minister Narendra Modi | @PMOIndia/Twitter

For the Modi government that is so focused on bringing Pakistan to book, this climb down is remarkable.

The Toba Tek Singh moment never fails to grip you when you’re crossing the Wagah-Attari border, half an hour from Amritsar on the Indian side and another half from Lahore on the other.

And that’s why the Kartarpur Sahib groundbreaking is so important.

For those who haven’t read their Saadat Hasan Manto, Toba Tek Singh is a mentally ill patient in an asylum in a town by that name who is completely bewildered by the fact of Partition in 1947. He wonders if his body must be divided too and lapses into an incomprehensible babble which, of course, is a metaphor for the complete craziness unfolding around him in the outside world.

Perhaps the Toba Tek Singh moment is special for Punjabis, especially from a certain generation who are either old enough to have lived through the trauma of Partition or young enough to have lived it through the stories of their parents. The brutal violence that accompanied the forced migration of 17 million people is now considered one of the largest exchanges of people in contemporary history. The plains of Punjab are leached with the blood that accompanied the murder, rape and mutilation of ordinary people.

Remember that the Partition massacres took place in Punjab – not Kashmir – and Bengal. Kashmir, that bleeding wound on the face of India, came much later. By the time Pakistani raiders crossed the line into Kashmir in October 1947, Punjabis had already witnessed their share of the bloodbath. More than one million dead, irrespective of religion, at last count.

With the Imran Khan-led Pakistani government making the first move on the emotive issue of Kartarpur Sahib corridor, the Narendra Modi government was forced to respond, after shouting its determination not to enter into any dialogue until the end of cross-border terrorism, from the rooftops.

But what’s happening on the ground? The exact opposite. On the 10^th anniversary of the Mumbai attacks, the Modi government inaugurated its own facilities for building the corridor in Dera Baba Nanak in Punjab, right up to the international border. The PM has also been forced to send his government’s own representatives to the Kartarpur Sahib ceremony, the BJP’s Hardeep Singh Puri and the Akali Dal’s Harsimrat Kaur Badal.

For a government that is so focused on bringing Pakistan to book, having mounted “surgical strikes” inside Pakistan-administered Kashmir only two years ago, this climb down is remarkable.

The irony would certainly embarrass even Toba Tek Singh. At the exact time the foundation laying ceremony at Dera Baba Nanak was being inaugurated (have rephrased this), Modi in his campaign rally elsewhere was castigating “Madam’s sarkar”, which she ran by “remote control”, for failing to protect the people of Mumbai.

Certainly, it is the people of Punjab who have forced Modi’s hand. He has been forced to execute so many U-turns on his Pakistan policy since he got elected in 2014 that it’s unclear what he really believes it should be. So the people of Punjab decided to lend him a helping hand.

Like a series of silent waves crashing on the shore, they made sure Modi executed another about-turn, this time on building a corridor across the international border to Kartarpur Sahib, considered one of the holiest Sikh shrines because Guru Nanak breathed his last there.

This is happening across Punjab, which witnessed such unprecedented trauma during Partition 71 years ago that people have had no option but to remember. And yet, Punjab is ready to embark upon the healing process. Punjabis want to go to Lahore, to travel to the shrines that dot the landscape across Punjab, be it Hindu, Muslim and Sikh, and to reconnect with their memories. They want to dip their pens in their inkwells and pick up the stories they were forced to leave off, when the mobs came for them and they fled 71 years ago.

It is Punjab that is showing the way to healing and reconciliation. It is not clear whether Modi, personally or through any of his friends, has a Partition story that makes him so irrationally worked up about the neighbour next-door, Pakistan.

Of course, India cannot forget the Mumbai attacks – they changed India forever, remember? But Modi ji, by allowing Vice President Venkaiah Naidu to go to Dera Baba Nanak has sent the message that India, 10 years on, is ready to close the Mumbai chapter.

In a happy coincidence, Punjab is now telling Modi ji that it wants to move on.

Here’s another irony of history that Toba Tek Singh would have loved. Punjab chief minister Amarinder Singh has refused the invitation to attend the Kartarpur Sahib ceremony, saying that he won’t go to Pakistan until cross-border terrorism comes to an end.

Hey, wasn’t that Modi ji’s script, until recently? For someone like Amarinder Singh, whose close Punjabi friend, Aroosa Alam, is Pakistani, it’s time to laugh out loud at the over-compensation.

But, the people have spoken. In an election year, no party worth its salt, especially the BJP, cannot ignore that. Not even when the Pakistani army establishment backs Imran Khan all the way. Kartarpur Sahib, where Guru Nanak breathed his last, awaits a reconciliation of the decades.