Passport to Confusion

It all started when India and Pakistan, hostile ever since their split five years ago, decided that passports would be necessary for travel between the two countries. The rumor spread that the frontier would be permanently closed, leaving minorities on each side at the mercy of old enemies.

As the passport deadline approached last week, a panic-stricken exodus began. About 6,000 Moslems in India fled eastward into East Pakistan. Out of East Pakistan tramped 70,000 Hindus. They came on foot along dusty roads, carrying young and aged, with household goods loaded in bullock carts or in large bundles balanced on their heads. They crammed into train compartments or perched precariously on undercarriage beams. Thousands fled by steamer to Calcutta or jammed into buses. They clogged the roads and small wayside stations and spread out over adjoining fields. Most of them had no food, and the countryside was soon stripped bare of everything edible. They had no idea where to go. Many, Hindu and Moslem alike, complained of rough police treatment. Border guards, empowered to enforce the new passport regulations, were helpless.

In West Pakistan only a handful of Hindus have remained since partition, but in East Pakistan 28.5% of the inhabitants are Hindus. Since 1950, when fanatical Moslem mobs ran amok killing Hindus and destroying their property, the Hindu minority in East Pakistan has lived in fear. After the 1950 riots, India and Pakistan agreed to protect each other's minority groups and to permit unlimited free travel between East Bengal (East Pakistan) and West Bengal (India). Under cover of this agreement, trade (and smuggling) between the two countries flourished to such an extent that some Hindus unwisely began to speak of a reunited Bengal. That was when Pakistan decided to restrict free travel; India thereupon decided to meet ban with ban.

At week's end the governments of India and Pakistan took an appalled look at the chaos they had created out of red tape. Prime Minister Nehru flew to the scene to see for himself. Then the Indian and Pakistan governments got together, decided to relax the new passport regulations for 15 days. It was a breathing space. No one was optimistic enough to think that in so short a time the masses of India and Pakistan could be made to understand the meaning of that mystery of modern travel, a passport visa.

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