This year marks the 70th anniversary of Independence and also the Partition of India. As someone who has long been interested in the Partition, the anniversary and all it means have been very much on my mind.

However, recently it came home to me in a real and unexpected way. I say ‘real and unexpected’ because, even though I have worked on Partition for over two decades, and my family has lived through that time and been deeply affected by it, I never thought it would come home to roost in my immediate life the way it did.

About two weeks ago, I lost a very dear friend to cancer, the dreaded disease that is becoming an epidemic across the world. The time taken from diagnosis to death was a mere 30 days. When they discovered the ailment, the doctors did not hold out any hope, and my friend accepted the situation and asked to be put on palliative care to minimise pain. Within a month, she died peacefully in her sleep.

Lala Rukh (that is her name) was a long-term activist in the women’s movement, and was rapidly becoming known as perhaps the best minimalist artist in South Asia. Her work was being showcased in the major international art exhibition Documenta , and was favourably reviewed in newspapers all across the world.

Even though I learnt of Lala’s illness within a day or two of the diagnosis, and managed to speak to her a few times in the month she lived, I was not able to meet her. This is because Lala was Pakistani, someone who belonged to what the Indian media has often defined as an “enemy” country.

She lived in Lahore, a bare hop, skip and jump from Delhi, where I live. All you need is to find your way to Amritsar, take a taxi to the border, and then walk across into Lahore. But, of course, somewhere in there was that thing called a visa, which is always difficult, and sometimes impossible, to get.

Wanting to say a last goodbye to friends facing terminal illnesses is in many ways a selfish thing. They are often in no condition to talk, and sometimes so tired that your being there or not makes no difference, but it matters to you.

For me, the impossibility of being able to cross that intractable border made it matter even more. Why should the States of India and Pakistan, just because they are fighting and wanting to demonise each other, make it impossible for friends to meet? The decision to partition our countries was taken by our colonial masters and politicians, but its consequences are still being felt in our lives.

I was reminded of so many families who have married across borders and are unable to travel at moments like the death of a loved one, because the political climate is not conducive to the issuing of visas. One bureaucrat I spoke to for help mentioned that both countries were being careful about visas because some right-wing political figure (a member of the ruling party) had shot his mouth off on television, saying that if “they” can threaten to hang “our” man, we can equally pick up “their” people and do the same. Thuggery and random violence are all too real in India today, and often have tacit State support, so such a threat cannot be dismissed as an empty one.

If the impossibility of visiting Pakistan to meet my dying friend is one aspect of the continuing legacy of Partition, there are others where people have attempted to undo that legacy and are equally important to remember at this time.

In memory of Lala then, I’d like to pay tribute to the women’s movement in Pakistan of which she was a part, and to the Women’s Action Forum (WAF), of which she was a founding member.

Over the years, WAF has been in the forefront of every issue impacting the lives of citizens in Pakistan — whether it is repressive anti-women laws, the battle against what are called “honour” killings, support for their Afghan sisters, joining the long march of lawyers, fighting anti-minority biases and more.

Besides, WAF and many of its members have often crossed those intractable borders to extend the hand of friendship to their sisters in India, and indeed in the other South Asian countries. Joining with similar groups in other South Asian countries, women have forged a solidarity and a South Asian feminism which has no equal elsewhere in the world. Let our countries fight, we will not, and this is why when one of us goes, the pain is felt across South Asia, in the heart of its feminist alliances.

Urvashi Butaliais an editor, publisher and director of Zubaan

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