Jalandhar : “Pappi-Jhappi diplomacy is a must between India-Pakistan to boost the economy of Punjab,” said Satnam Singh Chahal, chairman of the US-based North American Punjabi Association (NAPA).
He said to normalise relations between the two neighbouring countries, both sides must resolve their long-pending problems through negotiations and dialogue process.
While hawks in the strategic community have often mocked at the role of Punjab in the India-Pakistan relationship – either hyphenating it with pre-partition nostalgia, or dismissing it as pappi-jhappi/assi-tussi diplomacy – the Punjabi diaspora has supported Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s impromptu stopover at Lahore on December 25, 2015, on his way back from Moscow.
According to Parminder Pal Singh Khalsa, president of the Sikh Sewak Society International, the business community in Ludhiana and Amritsar is keen to benefit from a stronger relationship across the Radcliffe Line, since Punjab, a landlocked state, does not have many options.
He said governments on the other side of the Radcliffe Line have been unable to echo this sentiment totally, not only because the Pakistani Punjab is larger but also because the province dominates the politics and army of Pakistan.
“For long, Punjab was the citadel of raging anti-India sentiment, which was visible both during the aftermath of partition and the 1971 war. A change has been evident since the late 1990s and during Nawaz Sharif’s second term. The reasons for this are many, but the economic rationale, and continued engagement over the past decade and a half have considerably helped in reducing the acrimony on both sides,” said Khalsa. He said Sharif, a businessman himself, has been consistently in favour of greater bilateral trade.
Another NRI, Amarjit Singh, was also of the opinion that besides business, border states of the two countries also have cultural and family ties and must be harnessed by both the governments to push the peace process.
The diaspora is also of the view that religious tourism between the two countries has given a huge boost to the peace process in the past. Religious pilgrimages by Sikhs to religious shrines in Pakistan have sustained during times of tension and the provincial governments of the two Punjabs have played a significant role in easing the escalated tension between the two countries.
They feel that apart from formals talks, “pappi-jhappi diplomacy” has worked better on many occasions.
The Tribune (tribuneindia.com, Jan 19, 2016 )