JAIPUR: Two prominent royal families in India and Pakistan have already done what governments of both countries have been struggling to accomplish. Uniting their families with the lasting bond of marriage, crossing over the geographical and political barriers that divide, the only Hindu jagirs in Pakistan from Umerkot chose a bride from the family of the former thakur of Kanota in Rajasthan, India.
As the grooms family accompanied over a 100 baraatis from Pakistan, for the wedding on Friday, 20 Feb, the government of India did its bit by expediting visas for the visitors in record time. When families divided by partition embraced with love, it was a dream come true for the kind of people-to-people contact both governments aspire to and a confidence building measure of the most genuine kind.
Karni Singh, the son and heir of the Islamic Republic’s only Hindu jagir married Padmini Kumari, daughter of the former thakur of Kanota on Friday night at a glittering ceremony in Jaipur. Even after most of the group of special guests from Pakistan return, Karni Singh and his family will stay back in India till Padmini Kumari gets her visa to Pakistan.
During Partition, the Hindu rulers of Umerkot had chosen to stay back in their ancestral home and had refused to move to India. For 18 years after that, they would often visit their relatives in Barmer and Jaisalmer. But after the 1965 war, the border was fenced and people-to-people contact was cut off.
After all these years, the erstwhile royals returned to India to make a fresh alliance.
Rana Hamir, the father of the groom said, Religion and identity, these things that are more prevalent now, but for us, common culture and heritage is more important. If we had left that, we would have been nothing.
The significance of the cross-border alliance is not lost on Karni Singh. When Indians and Pakistanis meet and embrace at occasions like these, their perceptions about each other change, he said.
The bride is also looking forward to her trip across the border to her new home. My husband’s mother is from Rajasthan. His sisters are married here. So, even if I have to go and live in Umerkot, culturally, it will be like Rajasthan, Padmini Kumari said.
Her father, Man Singh, the former thakur of the Kanota family, said he accepted immediately when the proposal came to him. I did not think about India and Pakistan and the boundaries between the two countries, he says. I only thought what a respectable, historical and cultured family we were making an alliance with, he adds.
The jagir of Umerkot has a considerable Hindu population, and has had a significant role in the region’s history, claiming to have never been conquered by invaders. The Mughal ruler Akbar was born at Umerkot Fort, where his father Humayun was under the refuge of Umerkot’s rana.
In more recent years, Rana Hamir’s family has played a prominent role in Pakistan’s politics. His father, Rana Chandra Singh, was a founding member of the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) and had been a federal minister in the cabinet of former Pakistan Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto.
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