Outlook India, MArch 20, 2006
Balochistan Diary by Tarun Vijay
Forbidden Country
Balochistan being a forbidden zone, we were going to have a darshan of an "almost forgotten" deity—as The Telegraph proprietor Aveek Sarkar, who joined the pilgrimage as a Shakta devotee, described it. Fire, thunder- and sandstone-sculpted mountains mark the inhospitable terrain to Hinglaj, the devi whose self-immolation drove an angry Shiva to travel from the Himalayas to this region. A sea of sand nuzzles the blue, deep shores of the Arabian Sea here, magic happens on the horizon at sunset. It was here that Jaswant Singh—pleasantly surprised at Pakistan's permission to visit this rebellious hotbed—underwrote a new peace path as he led the first Indian group to cross Munabao by road post-1947. Off Munabao, a welcome awaited us at Khokrapar, led by Rana Hammir Singh, descendant of the Umarkot ruling dynasty and naib nazim of the area, were in attendance. Sporting a traditional turban and moustache with Rajput-like pride, his overpowering personality would make a Schwarzenegger look low. We pass through Umarkot—then Mirpurkhas and birthplace of Akbar, famous for its mango orchards—and Indus in Sindh Hyderabad before finally seeing the lights of Karachi. There were many unforgettable moments while we drove almost non-stop, escorted by members of the anti-terrorist squad. People were waiting en route for hours, waving and yelling at us with sheer joy on both sides of the road. We tried hard to hide moist eyes.
Death Or Darshan
Travelogues have described the road to Hinglaj in Balochistan as one of the toughest ever, taking over 45 days from Karachi on camels through hot, arid and dacoit-infested deserts. Death or darshan defined the mission then. Now, thanks to the Chinese, a national coastal highway has come up till Gwadar port. We turned right at Aghore for the temple. Air-conditioned Toyota vans have replaced the camels, still the journey from Karachi was tiring. A semi-pucca 22-km-long road, right up to Nani Mandar as the signboard describes Hinglaj, has been built by the Jam Yousaf Mir Mohd government. The CM’s an ex-nawab of Lasbela, under which district Hinglaj lies. The lunch he organised in Hinglaj was fabulous by any standards. And with his minister for minorities, Jamaat-e-Ulema Islami (Fazl-ur-Rahman) member Jaiprakash Seethlani smiling approvingly, he assured all help. The Hindu community had gathered in large numbers here to welcome us, mostly from a nearby city, Uthelo. They avoided talking politics, the night given to long bhajan sessions by some of the local popular singers. It was a historic day for them, as it was for us. Once movers and shakers of the land, they have resigned themselves to living in a shell. Praising the divine and joining parties like the Muslim League, Jamaat and ppp form part of the survival kit now.
Speaking Hinglaj
Hinglaj is mesmerisingly simple, symbolising an age-old continuity, which goes beyond even the Mahabharata. Hindu sanyasins and Greek travellers dating back to the 4th century have written of visiting the shrine. Baloch Muslims too pray here, they call it Nani pir. This sojourn to pay obeisance at Hinglaj and offer chador at Shahbaz Kalandar’s shrine on our return turned out like a beautiful poem—of human bonding overwhelming hate, even erasing the marks of invaders who took the same route to destruction. Do the people have any say in why we go to war? In Karachi, we visited four fairly well-maintained temples. Most of them house a Granth Sahib alongside. One of Pakistan’s top oil dealers and amongst the country’s highest taxpayers, Mr Khetrapal, heads the Swaminarayan temple committee here. Temple expenses apparently cross Rs 2 crore annually. Almost everywhere, the Hindus told us they are happier under Pervez Musharraf’s rule. They say "it’s a first time for us, not being attacked after something untoward happens in India. Even after the Gujarat riots, nothing happened to us here. The General had given strict orders on this, saying we are Pakistani citizens too". Out of over 350 temples in pre-partition Hyderabad, just four remain today. But things have changed now, the Hindus say.
Salaam Namaste
While the MQM-organised lunch was at a five-star hotel, the ppp chose a British signpost, the Sind Club in Karachi to show their hospitality. With Benazir Bhutto in ‘exile’, M. Amin Faheem leads the party now. An unusual chemistry was evident at all the gatherings. They greeted us disarmingly with a Sai Namaste or Sai Ram Ram, we reciprocated with a Salaam. No, they didn’t discuss Kalabagh but seeing our high commissioner Shankar Menon and charge d’affaires Raghavan accompanying the leader of the Opposition, one of their members couldn’t resist an analogy—well, such courtesies aren’t available to our opposition leader on a trip abroad.
Dotboomers
I couldn’t find a single Hindu lady sporting a bindi in Karachi or elsewhere. I asked one at a temple and her one-liner was—we have to live the way everybody lives, it’s safer. Even some temple attendants wore Muslim skullcaps. But Kalpana Devi, a beautiful advocate at the Karachi high court who met us at a dinner hosted by the Sindh CM, challenged my calculations. She wore a bindi and looked a Gujju straight from Kutch. It depends on your self-confidence, she emphasised, playing with her mangalsutra. "Yes, I read the Outlook cover story (‘Hindu girls under siege’)...things like that do happen, but aren’t they occuring in your country too?" I was silenced.
(The author is the editor of RSS weekly Panchjanya)
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