Flag-lowering ceremony at Wagah border to become history

[ajtr]

Flag-lowering ceremony at Wagah border to become history​

The traditionally hostile flag-lowering ceremony at the Wagah border post between India and Pakistan will become a relic of the past after almost five decades from Monday as authorities from both sides have agreed to do away with the show-piece event of aggression. The decision was reached in


Lahore, capital of Pakistan's Punjab province, on Saturday after a meeting of visiting Director General of Indian Border Security Force (BSF) Raman Srivastava with Maj. Gen. Yaqub Ali Khan, director general of Pakistan Rangers (Punjab).
"We have decided to end the angry eyeball-to-eyeball exchange, thumping of boots and other aggressive gestures from the flag-lowering parade," said Maj Gen Khan. "I had come to Pakistan to extend a hand of friendship and feel happy that it has been emphatically reciprocated," said Srivastava.

The animated display by the border guards had become synonymous with the parade at Wagah border and was greeted by loud cheers and slogan-mongering from spectators on both sides.

The traditional event always attracted spectacular coverage and has been covered by almost every publication and TV channel around the world.

"The jawans taking part in the flag-lowering ceremony will shake hands properly from here onwards," the officials said.

Both sides also agreed to hold regular sports events between Indian and Pakistani troops to promote friendship and ease tensions.

A similar effort was also made to lessen animated gestures in the parade during former Pakistani president Pervez Musharraf's tenure when the peace process was initiated between both countries in 2004, but it could not last long as tensions resurfaced.

The current style of flag-lowering ceremony started at the Wagah border in 1960.

The 19-member Indian delegation spent five days in Lahore to discuss issues related to cross-border tensions, smuggling and release of fishermen and will now pursue these points with their respective governments to form a joint mechanism to resolve such issues.

 

[venkat]

This is a real good news!!! i always use to wonder what is the usefulness of this kind of exercise day in day out?There are some funny videos in You-tube where you can watch BSF Jawans tripping and falling off !!!

 

[ajtr]

Pakistan refuse to tone down Wagah ceremony​

LAHORE:
Pakistan on Thursday rejected India's request to tone down the flag-lowering ceremony at Wagah border.
According to a press release, the Director-General of Punjab Rangers Major General Muhammad Yaqoob Ali Khan has said that the parade will continue in its traditional aggressive style, adding that firm handshakes between ranger personnels from both sides will also continue.
It may be mentioned that on request of the Indian Border Security Forces (BSF) last month, the Punjab Rangers had taken the decision to discontinue the aggressive marching approach during the flag march ceremony at the Wagah border, which over the years has established its position as a symbolic and traditional feature and has been witnessed by throngs of people from both sides of the border.
Both Major General Khan and the Director-General of India's BSF Raman Shrivastav had earlier decided that both countries will take substantial steps to free as many prisoners as possible.
They had also agreed to urge their respective governments to initiate the release of fishermen held in their respective countries after detention and official paperwork.
Published in The Express Tribune, November 7th, 2010.

 

[Tshering22]

Why do we have to do this drama in first place when we know that they're our enemies and by being kind to them, we're not going to be winning any war? All this aggressive marching and nonsense is the type of things we should tone down and do something against our enemies that really affects them adversely. There's too much pomp and ceremonialism in the sub-continent in which lots of money, energy and time gets wasted and everytime whenever action is needed, things are done in a hurried manner taking a toll on quality of work and efficiency.

One simple solution post-26/11 is to ban entry of Pakistanis in India either for tourism, visiting relatives or any damn reason. Those who's relatives went on the other side, chose their destiny as those who stayed back chose theirs. If those people have problems with government for not allowing them to return for "family visit", they can pack their bags and leave as well. This partition should have been done in a more reasonable manner than the chaotic and Utopian stupid ideas with which it was done under Gandhi-Nehru alliance's stupid, fictitious, self-damaging, restrictive, meaningless and absolutely disastrous theories, most of which have caused all our geo-political problems to exist till today.

Terrorism in India will stop only and only if there's a blanket ban of allowing Pakistanis to enter India and marking that map as black; just as Jews and Arabs do and also stopping all trading with them. We're not going to go into recession if Pakistanis don't sell their stuff to us or we don't sell ours to them; All this bloody show has to stop and this can be done only if we have a government that thinks of the country rather than votebank, corruption, money laundering and Gandhian spineleness (which is not practical or possible to an entire country).

Unless we adopt an Israe-Arab approach of just stopping this crossing over and inter-marrying nonsense, we're going to get people in disguise who'd plan like Headley, go back and tell his friends to come and cause havoc. There are 1.2 billion people in our country and more than 6 billion on earth; is it so difficult for some dumb Indians to find love here than to cross the border and find "love" in an enemy's land? Such stupid things must be kept in films like Veer-Zara because in films 200 people dying are only pretending; in real life they don't come back.