Lahore roses for Golden Temple, ‘amrit’ for plant: Professor’s case for soft border

AMRITSAR: Under Attari’s giant “Lahore 23 km” sign on a hot Thursday afternoon stood the small reception party for US professor, Tarunjit Singh Butalia, who was taking an empty, barricaded road from Punjab’s old capital and Amritsar’s once twin city. Many people cross this India-Pakistan border everyday but Butalia’s hour-long arrival trip was different — a “pilgrimage of love”.
Coming from Lahore’s Gurdwara Dera Sahib to Amritsar’s Harmandar Sahib (Golden Temple) — from a shrine associated with the martyrdom of Guru Arjan Dev to the one which the 5th Guru had built — he had stopped at the Hazuri Bagh royal garden that Maharaja Ranjit Singh raised in front of Lahore’s Badshahi Mosque, to pluck two roses and tuck them in his turban.
He offered those at Harmandar Sahib and took water from its amrit sarovar (holy tank) for the rose plant. A habitual ritual for the Lahore devotees had become a unique offering, a man’s prayer for love between hostile neighbours.
‘Foreign privilege’ in ‘own land’
Butalia, who teaches civil engineering at Ohio State University in the US, called this trip a “privilege” but what pained him was that only his US passport had made it possible.
For Indians and Pakistanis, who should be doing this pilgrimage, find it close to impossible.
There’s a case for soft borders between the two Punjabs — charhda (east) and lehnda (west) — separated by the world’s heaviest guarded fence but united by language, culture, history, and people.
In Butalia’s opinion: “Instead of being a divider, this border can be a unifier between the two countries if made soft.” His friends Pargat Singh, Parminder Singh, and Prateek Sehdev joined him on the trip.
His volunteer organisation ‘Jeevay Sanjha Punjab’ runs Gurmukhi classes in Pakistan and Shahmukhi (Punjabi written in Persian script) classes in India, and reunites Partition refugees with their parted families across the border.
He crossed the Wagah before the border closed at 4 pm. Back in Pakistan, he ended the trip in the evening by watering that rose plant in Lahore’s Hazuri Bagh with the ‘amrit’ from Amritsar — as if quenching a seven-decade thirst.