LAHORE: Based on accounts of scores of relatives who have visited Lahore from Uttar Pradesh over the last 10 years, it appears that visa regulations for Indians wishing to visit Pakistan are relatively more liberal, if not enlightened.
My suspicion is that our policies are governed by bureaucratic incompetence, not necessarily credible intelligence intercepts or other material evidence which the security agencies may have gathered to determine that the level of security threat is sufficiently high to warrant that each applicant, regardless of his or her profile, be scrutinised and humiliated indiscriminately to a point where instead of reason, shouting matches ensue between the applicant and the valiant gate-keepers.
I have seen firsthand how a simple quest for a visit by an aging and unarmed lady to the Indian High Commission for a visa degenerated into mutual psychosis as she was repeatedly asked the same question by the Pakistani security personnel: “Waat is the purpose of your visit?”
Rao Amjad Ali
Published in The Express Tribune, October 29th, 2011.
