Express orders

The flagging off of the Moitree Express, to connect by rail Kolkata and Dhaka, is a long-delayed connect between cities that till 1947 had been so organically linked. In that sense, the train is an abiding metaphor of journey and snapped links in the aftermath of Partition. But 60 years after that event, the activation of the rail link is also a hope that the various parts of South Asia are finding comfortable measure of each other. When the divisions of Partition came, India and its neighbours tended to hem themselves into their respective borders, remaining for too long distrustful of the consequences of interaction at these borders. That mistake is being unmade — the two Punjabs, the two Kashmirs, the two Bengals, and Rajasthan and Sindh are being connected more deeply by transport routes.

South Asia as a geographic entity is thus gaining viability. With the people-to-people interactions and the commercial ties enhanced thereby, a process of disaggregation of government ties and popular engagement often follows. This has happened in India-Pakistan relations, especially in the last five years. With Bangladesh the process has been considerably more limited. The fact that train services between the two Bengals, suspended in 1965, were not resumed after 1971 was symptomatic of the persistent mutual suspicion. The inaugural run of the Moitree Express itself has been delayed a number of times by disagreements over security check points and the fencing of the route.

These old problems will be around yet; and illegal immigrants need not take a train or a bus anyway. But the message of the train is the need to segregate people’s diplomacy from the threat of infiltration. It is, even more, an antidote to the terrible stereotypes of the Other that gain salience in the absence of popular and cultural interaction. Moitree Express carries good tidings. After all, it was a rudimentary popular demand on both sides of the divide that made the train run.