Days earlier than the seventy fifth anniversary of Pakistan’s and India’s Independence Day, Ganpat Singh obtained a name he has lengthy been ready for, that granted him freedom to see his household in India after six lengthy and tragic years — the Indian Excessive Fee in Islamabad mentioned his visa to India was authorized on Saturday.

Mr. Ganpat Singh is a Pakistani citizen born within the Hindu Rajput Sodha group, based mostly within the Umarkot (earlier Amarkot) principality of the Sindh Province. Historically, the Sodhas don’t intermarry inside their very own clan, and have all the time intermarried with different Rajput clans in India, with a particular visa mandate to journey forwards and backwards agreed to for them some a long time in the past. Mr. Ganpat Singh’s father was from Pakistan, his mom belongs to India, and his brother and sister, born in Pakistan, now stay in Jodhpur and Jaisalmer. Mr. Ganpat Singh married his spouse Magan in Jodhpur in 1996 and he or she moved to Pakistan, however died of hepatitis in 2012, leaving three youngsters — son Chander Veer Singh, 22, and daughters, Meena and Disha, now 21 and 13. He remarried in 2013 to Magan’s cousin Dimple Kanwar, who had two youngsters — Kuleep, 8 and Priya, 4, and selected to convey up all of the 5 youngsters collectively in India. As India and Pakistan’s relations collapsed after the Uri assault in September 2016, nonetheless, so did Mr. Ganpat Singh’s world, as he realized he had been “blacklisted”.

“When my visa was first rejected, I believed it should be a mistake. They mentioned I had been ‘blacklisted’ for overstaying in India, regardless that I had utilized for extensions on-line. I couldn’t consider it,” mentioned Mr. Ganpat Singh on the cellphone to The Hindu.

In truth, in line with Sodha group leaders interviewed by native media, as many as 900 Sodha group members discovered themselves and their households blacklisted, as visa rules between the 2 nations had been tightened, and the particular mandate for the Sodha group was rescinded. Ministry of Exterior Affairs (MEA) and Ministry of House Affairs (MHA) officers declined to touch upon the explanations for the visa denials. 

As India and Pakistan shut down borders, exchanges, commerce, and people-to-people ties over the following few years as a result of bilateral tensions and the COVID-19 pandemic, Mr. Ganpat Singh started to lose hope of visiting India once more, though he saved re-applying for his visa every time he obtained a rejection. Ms. Dimple Kanwar too drafted letter after letter of attraction to officers within the Rajasthan authorities, the MEA and the MHA. “I humbly request on humanitarian grounds that the visa / clearance could also be granted, in order that our disturbed household [can be reunited], and our youngsters could obtain the supervision of each their dad and mom,” Dimple begged in a single letter, dated November 2021. The frustrations multiply, says Mr. Ganpat Singh, given simply how shut they’re to one another (nearly 400 km) on the map.

Mom’s dying

Darker, extra tragic days had been to observe as his mom Darya Kanwar’s well being deteriorated in 2021. From her deathbed, Ms. Darya Kanwar recorded a heart-rending attraction to visa officers in India and on the Indian Excessive Fee in Islamabad, urging them to provide her son a visa in order that he may see her one final time. However the officers and the visa processes had been unmoved. Ms. Darya Kanwar died every week later.

Subsequent got here phrase that the household wanted to maneuver forward with the marriages of the youngsters that had been fastened, and Mr. Ganpat Singh’s quest for a visa turned extra frantic. He attended Mr. Chandar Veer’s ring (engagement ceremony) by way of a video name. When he needed to do the identical for Ms. Meena’s ring ceremony, his coronary heart sank. “Ring ceremony of a daughter with out her father,” he wrote to Beena Sarwar, a Pakistani peace activist, who had been attempting to lift consciousness for Mr. Ganpat Singh’s case, in addition to different cross-border spouses who stay hostage to India-Pakistan bitterness (https://www.change.org/p/southasia-ease-visa-restrictions-let-people-meet-milnedo ).

A miracle

Regardless of the enjoyment over his visa, obstacles nonetheless stay for Mr. Ganpat Singh and his household — his Indian visa is just for 45 days, and an extension, which he’ll want so as to attend his youngsters’s weddings in December, will nonetheless require extra paperwork and clearances from the MHA in Delhi.

“Even this visa is a miracle, given the lengthy wait,” he says, including that he can solely pray for one more miracle so he can watch his son and daughter get married.

What makes it worse, says Ms. Sarwar, is that connectivity for abnormal folks has truly decreased over time. At independence, flights related even smaller Indian and Pakistani cities, and Sodha group baraats travelled from Hyderabad (Sindh) to Jaipur. Right this moment, no flights, trains or buses are allowed, and anybody wishing to journey should use prohibitively costly flights by way of Dubai or different hubs, or journey tons of of km additional by way of the Wagah-Atari border in Punjab on circuitous routes to achieve their locations throughout the border, and meet their family members once more.