POLITICS: Girl with Heart Problem Has Healing Touch for South Asia

By Ranjit Devraj Reprint | | Print |

Ranjit Devraj

NEW DELHI, Jul 16 2003 (IPS) - She is all of two and a half years and has two holes in her heart, but bright-eyed Noor Fatima is perhaps the best ambassador of peace that Pakistan may ever have sent across the border to India.

On Tuesday, Noor underwent surgery to plug two holes in her heart at a private hospital in southern Bangalore city. To the relief of thousands of Indians across the country, her doctor declared her safe and she is now recovering from the operation.

”It went off well. The baby is doing fine and has a happy heart now,” Dr Devi Shetty told a crowd of reporters waiting outside the Narayana Hrudalaya hospital, which specialises in treating the congenital condition.

From the day she stepped off the first bus to arrive in the Indian capital from the Pakistani city of Lahore, following the resumption of the service last week, Noor – whose name means ‘light’ – has been a beacon to citizens fed up with decades of confrontation between South Asia’s largest neighbours.

The bus service was inaugurated by Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee who symbolically took the first trip to Lahore on it in February 1999 – to increase people-to-people contacts between the two countries that share a common history and culture.

That trip was otherwise remarkable for the signing of the ‘Lahore Declaration’ by Vajpayee and then Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, with both pledging to sort out differences and disputes, including the thorny issue of Kashmir.

But even before the ink had dried on the document, Pakistan’s powerful military backed armed incursions over the Line of Control (LoC) that divides the Indian and Pakistan controlled parts of Kashmir. That triggered off the latest in a series of wars the two countries have fought over the territory since 1947.

A possible nuclear exchange between the two countries was averted only through the intervention of then U.S. President Bill Clinton, who called for immediate withdrawal of the incursions. But this led to the army under Gen. Pervez Musharraf taking over Pakistan in a military coup and afterwards declaring himself president.

After Pakistan-based groups were accused of attempting to blow up India’s Parliament using a car bomb in December 2001, the two countries withdrew their top envoys, suspended air and land travel and massed close to a million troops along their border.

War was headed off by international shuttle diplomacy led by U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell.

In May, Vajpayee declared that he was going to make another attempt at peace and Pakistan Prime Minister Mir Zafrullah Khan Jamali responded, paving the way for restoration of full diplomatic ties as well as the bus service on which Noor and her parents arrived in India on Jul. 11.

On Tuesday, India’s new high commissioner-designate to Pakistan, Shivshankar Menon, crossed the border checkpost at Wagah on his way to Islamabad to fill a post unmanned for 18 months. His counterpart, Aziz Ahmed Khan, made the crossing in the reverse direction on Jun. 30.

Both envoys have pledged to work toward building rapprochement between the two countries. But it seems that goal can achieved naturally – and more easily – by allowing greater people-to-people contact as Noor and her parents are now demonstrating.

Before leaving Delhi for Bangalore, Noor’s father Nadeem Sajjad and mother Tayyaba Nadeem said that they felt comfortable in India because of cultural similarities. ”The food, the language, everything is the same as in Pakistan,” Tayyaba said.

There were practical considerations too. The operation to plug the holes in Noor’s heart costs a little over 3,000 U.S. dollars, a fraction of what it might have cost in the United States where Nadeem was prepared to go because he has a brother who is a doctor in Boston.

”Except for the resumption of the bus service, we would have had no choice but to go to the United States,” Nadeem, a chemical engineer, said.

As it turned out, such was the publicity generated by television images of a cheerful Noor stepping off the bus – clutching a bunch of red roses in her hand – that the family was showered with offers of monetary and other support.

Even the hospital in Bangalore , where Noor is now in intensive care, has announced concessions. But all that the family ever asked for is the goodwill of people, which they are receiving in abundance.

Tayyaba was quoted in newspapers as saying after the operation was declared successful: ”I entrusted the child to Allah. His grace, the doctors’ skill and everyone’s blessings and prayers have helped her.”

In spite of the political hostility between the two countries, doctors in Pakistan and other South Asian countries regularly refer complicated cases to hospitals in India for treatment because specialised medical facilities are available in this country at comparatively affordable costs.

The Narayana Hrudalaya is considered the best facility in South Asia for paediatric heart care. For Dr Rajesh Sharma who works at the hospital, Noor was only the latest of some 60 Pakistani patients he has operated on in the past.

Another patient from Pakistan who was waiting to be operated on at the hospital was not as lucky as Noor.

Six-month-old Babar died on Tuesday of pneumonia she developed after being forced to take a circuitous route through Dubai, since direct flights and rail links are yet to be resumed between India and Pakistan.

Only politicians, army generals and multinational defence companies benefit from continued tension between India and Pakistan, Sajjad Nadeem told reporters in Bangalore.

”The politicians utilise the situation, the army generals ask for more weapons and the multinationals sell more weapons. They win but the common man whose son dies in the needless war loses,” he was quoted by ‘The Hindu’ newspaper as saying.