The Grand Old Trunk Road, Part I

Originally published Sept. 3, 2007 on Desicritics

It was not a goose step! The Pakistani border guard high-kicked his leg above his head some six feet and six inches above the ground. Across from him his counterparts made their aggressive moves, staying of course on the Indian side of the border of Wagah. Their uniforms were spectacular, and their head gear, looking like papier-mâché cocks combs added at least six inches to their height, making them look seven feet tall. I stood and watched the aggressive ceremony, a fierce, glaring, challenging, change of the guard ceremony. Just like the beginning of a cock-fight. On the India side a crowd had gathered to watch the tamasha. Wah, said a little boy as he gazed up at the very tall men putting on their display. Wow!

Way Back Then

The Grand Trunk Road I knew as a child when living in a unified India ran past our home in Taxila, and then south to Amritsar. The road was often rough, full of potholes, road-bumps galore in villages to slow traffic, and narrow. Later in the late 1980s I traveled north from Lahore to Peshawar and the road was similar. I am sure that now the pot holes must be filled and the road has been broadened to multiple lanes and shoulders reinforced. I am sure the traffic has increased ten fold, filled with gaily decorated buses and air conditioned coaches that can whiz one to Sukkur or Peshawar. I am sure that ox carts with lanterns hanging at the back, moving slowly at night, are also things of the past, or slow moving tractors pulling trailers piled high with sugar cane.

In my youth I crossed this area many times in my dad’s 1937 Ford. In our Taxila days we took the Grand Trunk Road down to Lahore and on to Amritsar to see the Golden Temple. Later in my teens we reversed the trip since we were living in Ludhiana and made our way as far as Amritsar and that was as far as we could go. There was a road block of huge proportions at the Pakistani border. Now as an adult, looking at the Wagah crossing I saw a strange phenomenon. I looked into India this time and thought about the tough time travelers would have on busses or in private cars getting across the border. The scene of the guards seemed to be a parody of the relationships between the countries, particularly on the Pakistan side. I felt it was staged hostility, challenge, a display of one-up-man-ship.

In Pakistan, I have traveled on the Grand Trunk Road all the way to Peshawar a number of times and have stood and looked across at the Khyber Pass and saw quite another border scene, traffic, lots of traffic seemed to be moving back and forth. In the local bazaars you could buy practically anything. When I traveled in the NWFP into rural areas to meet farmers who had been growing poppies and who now were trying to make it with alternative crops, (1985) I looked at the vast mountainous countryside, at the dark valleys with hints of green and small roads and trails. The border was porous and the tribal people moved back and forth with ease across the international boundary, the invisible line. My Pakistani counterpart from the Ministry of Agriculture pointed and said, “See. That is the line that separates us from Afghanistan.” Where?

The Durand Line, what is that? It is the line that demarked Afghanistan from the British Indian Empire, a line agreed upon with Amir Abdur Rehman Khan on Nov. 12, 1893, that has been disputed, discussed and cussed ever since. But the Pushtuns who lived on, around and across that magical border have always felt that the land is theirs, and they rule it as they deemed appropriate by their own laws and with their own leadership. They move back and forth with ease across the hills and valleys. It is a porous tribal border.

Those words, back and forth with ease, stuck with me. The Grand Trunk Road I knew as a child when living in a unified India ran past our home in Taxila. What a fantastic thing the old Grand Trunk Road was, India’s oldest highway, and certainly its most historic one. We traveled it with ‘ease’, dodging buffalo and bullock carts, people crowding on the road, camels, donkeys, and of course traffic that came at us which was bigger than we were, pushing us off onto the shoulder. But it was with relative ease that one could move and enjoy the cultural-religious nature of Mother India, its temples and statues, Hindu, Jain, Sikh, Muslim and Buddhist. What a fantastic, colorful mélange; no other road has carried such a baggage of history, which includes the magnificent Mogul cities. I would encourage you to look at Raghubir Singh’s book, The Grand Trunk Road: A Passage Through India to take a beautiful photographic tour of the road of roads. This corridor moves goods, people and of course ideas. In much the same way as ‘all roads lead to Rome’, the Grand Trunk led into the heart of the sub-continent from its most southern tip all the way to ... Wagah.

And Now

The narrow funnel that is at the Wagah border is extremely effective in holding back land travel. It restricts movement, traffic, goods, people and liberating ideas, though somehow there is hope, even in Pakistan; popular Indian songs, raunchy movies, and DVDs slip through and trade is increasing between the two countries. But the grand trunk road is truncated effectively at the Pakistan border. The greater the stress about Kashmir, the more the Pakistani sabers rattle, the tighter the funnel gets and the higher the guards at the border kick up their heels and look really fierce and the longer it takes for one to get through immigration and customs, even if all the right papers and visas are in hand! On the other hand, to the south, the road of roads is celebrated.

In 2003 the Indian department of tourism and culture and a tire company, Birla Tyres, came together to celebrate the Indian part of the road. “It is said that since the Aryan invasion of the subcontinent, 3,500 years ago, the road served as a corridor for movement of travelers, goods, armies ...”. Now that is a persistent road! The magnificent cities of Mogul and British India were highlights! The road was an open and effective land corridor connecting travelers to the wonders of India. It used to be that this corridor ran all the way to Afghanistan, through the amazing city of Lahore and on to historic Peshawar. But international border crossings have prevented what used to be a land corridor for cultural exchange on which people moved with ease. To the north the road led to cultural wonders now seen by very few from India. How many younger Indians have visited Lahore? How many Pakistani’s have visited India and seen its wonders? Few. The lack of a communication corridor has reinforced cultural biases.

In Lahore I was talking to a young Pakistani man about the Taj Mahal. He looked troubled. “The builder of the Taj Mahal was a Muslim. The great mogul treasures such as the Shalimar Gardens were made by Muslims, Pakistanis.” I reminded him of the partition and a unified India and that Muslim history on the sub-continent existed before 1947. I reminded him that Lahore, as cities go is ancient. Written histories go back as far as 1206. Europe at that time was, ah....sort of primitive. Genghis Khan and his hordes were on the move. But India was a thriving civilization. Qautb-ud-din Aybak was crowned Sultan of Lahore in 1206. The Silk Road was established, bringing trade items into India from China. In more modern history, Akbar the Great was emperor in the period from 1584-1598. Fantastic buildings were constructed in Lahore. Gardens with fountains were delighting the women of his harem in Kashmir and in the Punjab. Two hundred years later, 1776, a declaration of independence was made in America. Lahore was thriving. The Taj Mahal had been standing already for almost two hundred years in Agra.

Sipping garamchai we spoke now of our life in Lahore, the miserable hot season, the humidity and his visit to the Ravi early in the morning. I had written a poem that day, and of course had carried the draft in my pocket. We sat in a small tea house and drank tea. “Would you like to hear a poem I wrote about Lahore?” He smiled and nodded, not knowing what to expect. I cleared my throat.

CITY ON THE RAVI
Ravi city , fathered by many
Iron Fort, Ram Chandra named
Loh-Awar, a fortress by the river
Shabuddin Ghuri a despot’s abode
Fragrant gardens of Kamran Mirza
Zannana of Akbar, keep of Nur Jahan
Tomb of Anarkali, pomegranate blossom
A burial place of jealousy and regal shame
Aurangzeb the righteous, builder of mosques
Moghul splendor, Badshahi Mosque grandeur
Sikh and Guru strongholds, Mogul desecraters
Pakka British Raj, white bungalows and botanicals
Minar-e-Pakistan, Zia al Huq, land of the pure, wars
Capital of Islamization, border disputes, atomic rockets
Ten million dung fires, stifling heat, five calls to prayer
A Trunk Road sarai, life corridor; Khans and slaves alike
Oh glorious Lahore, City on the Ravi, fathered by so
many

Muj ko samaj nahin ahta. “I do not understand,” he said. “What is meaning of ‘fathered’?”

To the north there are wonders! In Kipling’s time the movement along the road led to Lahore. His story, The Gate of a Hundred Sorrows, was prescient of the horrors of the Partition’s woes and sorrows. Anthony Weller’s work, Salon Wanderlust, Days and Nights on the Grand Trunk Road, speaks of current Lahore and a different view perceived by Lahore citizens of their decaying Mogul treasures. “A Pakistani mother who wants to frighten a misbehaving child will still let him know that So-and-so Singh will come and get him unless he straightens out.” The Salon Wanderlust goes on to say that when you’ve been into your fifth great mosque or palace or tomb in a morning and find that the Sikhs had stripped it bare of the semiprecious décor two centuries ago, then used it as a “...dump, storehouse or whorehouse, it does something to how you might have enjoyed Amritsar.” I begin to see how the Wagah border guards on both sides got the expression on their faces. The nightmare of partition still rankles.

Grand Trunk Road - New Corridor of Asia

Originally published Sept. 4, 2007 on Desicritics

Road traffic may bottleneck at the Wagah border, but bilateral trade is booming between the two countries. The Economic Times (indiatimes.com) reported encouraging news on 10 Apr. that the bi-lateral trade has "...swelled from $235.74 million in 2001-02 to more than $1 billion last fiscal year." This increase in trading between the countries bodes well for improved means of moving goods. Many goods which come into Pakistan by land must be transshipped at the border. I was told that it took passenger buses about one and a half hours to get across the border. But infrastructures are improving. Electronic communication has greatly enhanced the trade across the borders and businessmen can more easily buy and sell using computer orders.
Though economic protectionism exists, both countries are trying to remove barriers to improve trade. India and Pakistan have opened banks in each other's territories. All this bodes well for the establishment of an international land corridor.

There are visionaries around who see not only the India-Pakistan links but an APIBM CORRIDER! (Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, Bangladesh, Myanmar)
Imagine being able to zoom along such a corridor as a tourist, researcher, as a trader or transporter of goods on roads that form a corridor all the way from Afghanistan through Pakistan, to India, the hub, to Bangladesh and Myanmar, a new silk road in Asia! Imagine the boon this would be to landlocked countries that border India, particularly Nepal that could tie into the linked roads.

RIS Policy Brief No. 30, March 2007 for the SAARC Summit held in Delhi on April 3-4 outlines a visionary look at ground transportation networks, that is, overland travel routes which if developed would make India the hub for commerce and trade in Asia. One item mentioned is "Strengthening Infrastructures at Borders." Reading the list of things needed to be done makes one wonder if all this is possible, however, there were similar thoughts years ago in a non-unified Europe and look what happened there. The Grand Trunk road is a reality, a somewhat uneven continuum that covers a distance of over 2,500 km. Imagine if it were easy for Indians and Pakistanis to cross their international border, what it could mean to families that have been torn apart for decades. Imagine how the information from an APIBM corridor would change the perceptions of the youth, in all of the countries.

Pakistan, looking into its future, has done its own smaller version of the road. They have developed the New Grand Trunk Road, also called the National Highway 5. I have traveled on many parts of it and there are some sections that are very fine. It begins in Karachi in the Sindh province, moves north to Thatta, Hyderabad, Moro, Multan, Sahiwal, Lahore, Gujaranwala, Gujrat, Jhelum and Rawlpindi. Then it turns east and crosses the Indus River and moves into the NWFP where it goes through Nowshera and Peshawar before reaching the town of Torkham crossing into Afghanistan. Regional cultural exchanges are occurring. People are mixing it up; Sindh, Punjab, NWFP; Baluchistan residents are meeting each other in Peshawar and Lahore. Afghani people are now a significant part of Pakistan's cultural experience through population movement of vast numbers of refugees coming from across northern borders, yes, some on the old Grand Trunk Road.

I looked up the record on the current SAFTA '2006 Agreement'. I was amazed at the number of "Sensitive" trade items Pakistan and India list. It is hard to imagine the bureaucracy that will be needed to enforce such trade exchanges. These are mere economic trade barriers. There may be detours, diversions of a socio-religious-cum-political nature which will hamper the establishment of a corridor; however, improved bi-lateral trade, people making lots of money may move the political policy makers of both countries toward more liberal trade policies. Money squawks.

The historical Grand Trunk Road could once again function as a corridor for commerce, trade and cultural exchange. It could be a mechanism to link Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, Bangladesh and Myanmar in a new Silk Road of Asia, not moving silk but cultural ideas. The SAFTA mentioned above could become the impetus for such a development. In the good old days of the Silk Road trade was confined by and large to movement of material across land. Now with global communications and air and sea transportation, land traffic may very well not be the major means of enhancing trade, however, six lane highways that tie southeast Asia together could create a vibrant Asian community, much like what has occurred between the European countries. But creating a corridor will be a complicated process.

India and Pakistan celebrated their 60th birthday last week! Congrats. Jim Hoagland of the Washington Post wrote an article, "A tale of two South Asian Nations" which appeared in the San Diego Union Tribune this morning, August 20th. 2007. "New Delhi had the air of the capital of an emerging world power looking ahead into a promising if complicated future. Pakistan marked the same occasion by sinking deeper into the past. The corrupt backroom dealing between military rulers and politicians that has produced a cycle of disasters for the Pakistani nation resumed-- aided by the hidden hand of U.S. diplomacy working to pressure President Pervez Musharraf's dwindling power in Islamabad." Bring back Benazir? This does not look good for Grand Road construction or repairs. It does not look very hopeful for open negotiations to create a functional land corridor.

Tragic as it may seem, the Grand Trunk Road Wagah international border displays may well be a thing of the near future. Posturing, high kicking, fierce appearance, Inshallah, will do the trick for now. But let's dream of a corridor.