We’ve crossed this bridge

The searing images of the Tourist Reception Centre attack which had dominated the frame on Wednesday gave way to the pastoral vistas of Thursday. At Kaman Bridge, history dissolved as people from both sides of the border entered space that had hitherto been demarcated as a prohibited zone, as enemy territory. It marked a moment every bit as defining as the Delhi-Lahore bus trip that Atal Bihari Vajpayee had set in motion in the spring of 1999. As the world watches, both buses traverse the same road, although in different locations — the road to subcontinental peace.

Which presents both India and Pakistan with a conundrum: sustaining the audacious Srinagar-Muzaffarabad bus journey would demand winning the confidence of the traveller, and winning the confidence of the ordinary traveller would mean managing the fear factor and managing the fear factor would require substantive engagement between India and Pakistan on Kashmir and a concerted attempt on the part of both countries to defeat the terrorist agenda. Nobody perhaps has grasped the significance of the latest bus journey as clearly as those faceless men willing to break every human law in order to achieve their mission. In the latest instance, the fidayeen have shown themselves willing to take their battle to the doorstep of the ordinary Kashmiri, in the name of liberating the ordinary Kashmiri. The irony cannot be more patent. Every time they threaten to blow up the bus, or plant improvised explosive devices along the bus route, or plan suicide attacks, they are not “saving” Kashmir — as they claim they are — but attacking Kashmiris. Never has their cause looked as compromised as it does today, for the simple reason that a bus journey linking the two Kashmirs is an idea that has caught the imagination of the local people. Other confidence building measures undertaken by the two countries may have made academic sense to the people of the region, this one touches their lives. It does more than that, in it lies a method — however inchoate it may appear at this moment — of transforming the Kashmir question by informing it with a new dynamic and energy. Listen to the talk of travellers. They want not just one bus but many buses, not one border crossing but many border crossings.

This popular enthusiasm must not be extinguished by fear. That should be a common purpose for India and Pakistan, who had jointly sponsored an initiative that does much credit to both. They have crossed this bridge. Now, for the others.