By Soumitra Banerji
It was the 7th of May 2025 night merging into the 8th morning, when I got up to the news of ‘Operation Sindoor’… a champion stroke by the Indian dispensation led by a majorly able Indian Defence Services … headed by the CDS, Gen Anil Chauhan.
Two of the principal targets of the operation were Sialkot and Muridke…and of course Lahore, where the Air Defence System was neutralised. The three cities seemed and sounded so familiar. Saying that, they are famous places in Pakistan and keep on popping up every now and then, for varied reasons…yet the familiarity sunk in far deeper. It is then that I realised that a substantial part of a book, authored by me, Liminal Tides, was based out of these regions…pre-partition…pre- independence…pre-1947.
Sialkot was a business bastion; and continues to be one, harbouring a substantial part of Pakistan’s Sports Goods and Surgical Goods industry. The pre-1947 Sialkot was a prosperous and multicultural industrial city with Hindus and Sikhs forming more than 20% of the population…which today has slipped down to less than 500 in numbers. Liminal Tides saw it to be an export hub in those days, wherein the success lay in a heady collaboration of efforts and skills of the two communities … Hindus (including the Sikhs) and the Muslims. The approach to partition saw this collaboration slowly disintegrating into a bloodbath … an upheaval without parallels. All the industries were virtually destroyed…and it seemed that prosperity would transition into a famine like situation. This is where Liminal Tides left it…but with a hope that harmony would return.
As an author, it is so disheartening to see Sialkot back in the news for all the wrong reasons. The scars of partition have turned septic and required a surgical strike by India.
Muridke was a major Grains and Agricultural hub located on the Grand Trunk Road…a very significant arterial connection in British India. Its nearness to Lahore as well as the mighty river Ravi, which was one of the five rivers which made up the united Punjab and made it so geopolitically relevant. So much so that the British dispensation made it a Military Base, being so logistically viable. The social and cultural fabric was very syncretic, intertwined with the Lahore ecosystem. The Hindus as well as the Sikhs had substantial investments in the commerce of this city.
However, what was the city’s relevance also turned out to be its curse…its geographical location. The city saw huge caravans of Partition victims trampling over her…falling dead and bleeding over her…being looted and tortured over her…humans turning into demons over her. The partition, resulting in the formation of Pakistan and India, converted her into radicalism from syncretism. It became a base of Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), driven by Salafi Jihadists…the Military wing of Jamaat-ud-Dawa (JuD).
The Markaz Complex in Muridke was established in the late 1980s by Hafiz Muhammad Saeed (a cofounder of LeT and its Ameer). This has now been cut down to size in the course of Operation Sindoor.
Lahore, one of the most significant landmarks of Pakistan…so much like Delhi…will continue to shake whenever an earthquake is created by these two fighting nations on account of its proximity to the Indo-Pak border.
The realisation is so obvious … these three cities in Pakistan are being made to suffer on account of a huge boil of radicalism … Non-State Actors as they are called by some. Non-State Actors supported by the State as has been so obvious…and Deep State as what it might be…And the reason:
- Their proximity to the Border.
- Jammu & Kashmir in their neighborhood.
Thank God I did not go beyond 1947 in Liminal Tides…it would have left me absolutely hopeless.
(Soumitra Banerji is an acclaimed Indian author and writer, best known for his thought-provoking novel “Liminal Tides”.)
