Families Split as India and Pakistan Cancel Visas After Kashmir Attack

One family had come to India for a daughter’s marriage. Another came so their young children could meet their grandparents for the first time. A woman traveling alone had arrived for the funeral of her mother, whom she had not seen in years.

At the border where Pakistan was cleaved from India decades ago, they pleaded with anyone and everyone for a little more time: to complete the marriage that was just two days away, or to mourn at a grave that was still fresh.

It was not allowed.

India has ordered almost all Pakistani citizens to leave the country, part of the government’s response to a terrorist attack in Kashmir that it has linked to Pakistan. The Pakistani government, which denies any involvement in the attack last week, has retaliated with measures of its own, including the cancellation of most Indian citizens’ visas.

Over the weekend, as people scrambled to comply with the orders, heartbreaking scenes played out at the main land crossing between the two countries.

Families like Takhat Singh’s, with members on both sides of the border, faced painful separation. Mr. Singh, his younger daughter and his son have Pakistani passports. His wife and his older daughter have Indian ones.

They had all been in the Indian state of Rajasthan for the wedding of Pintu, the older daughter. When India announced the visa cancellations, the family left her behind in her future husband’s village and rushed to the border crossing, hoping to make it home before it closed.

But Mr. Singh’s wife, Sindhu Kanwar, was not allowed to proceed because of her Indian passport.

“They are saying your mother cannot go with you to Pakistan,” said the couple’s younger daughter, Sarita, 15. “How would you feel if you had to live without your mother?”

More than anything else, it is the border that symbolizes the history of these two nations, which, despite a vast shared heritage, are estranged and have frequently come to blows.

British colonial rule ended in 1947 with the partitioning of India along largely arbitrary lines, creating Pakistan as a separate country for Muslims. Mass migration into the two new nations set off ghastly religious bloodletting, leaving up to two million people dead.

The decades since have seen repeated wars, and the divisions have become rigid. Kashmir, the beautiful Himalayan region, has borne the brunt of the continued trouble between the two countries.

At the time of India’s partition, the Hindu ruler of Kashmir, a Muslim-majority princely state, wanted to maintain its independence. It became part of India soon afterward, in exchange for a security guarantee, as Pakistan sent militias and took over parts of the region.

Kashmir has been disputed ever since. Each nation now controls a part of the region while claiming it in whole. Those living there have little say.

People on both sides of the India-Pakistan divide are haunted by the ghosts of the bloodletting, by memories of loved ones left behind. Some have tried to hold on to cross-border ties, particularly through marriage.

That has become increasingly difficult over the years. Even before the latest flare-up, diplomatic relations between the countries had been largely severed, and visas were only rarely issued.

For those forced to leave in recent days, the departure stings all the more because of how difficult it was to get a visa and cross the border in the first place.

Even Hindus who had taken refuge in India from Pakistan’s rising intolerance and persecution of religious minorities have been thrown into uncertainty.

In recent years, India has billed itself as a haven for persecuted Hindus in the region. Many living in refugee camps have acquired Indian citizenship. But others are worried that they might now be forced to leave.

Hanuman Prasad, a resident of a camp in Rohini in northwestern Delhi, came to India more than a decade ago from Sindh Province in Pakistan. He said his brother and sister were stuck at the border trying to enter India. He has Indian citizenship, but his wife and six children are in the country on a variety of different visas.

“What will they do to us? Put us in jail?” he asked. “We will fight and protest if they try to send us back.”

He said that governments uprooting families with the stroke of a pen did not understand the pain of migration.

“Even a bird hesitates before leaving its nest behind,” Mr. Prasad said. “We sold off our farmland, our house, belongings, everything, to shift to India. What will we go back to and do there?”

As India’s deadline for Pakistani citizens, with a couple of narrow exceptions, to leave the country expired on Saturday, chaos ensued on the Indian side of the Attari-Wagah land crossing in the state of Punjab.

Families with suitcases tied to the roofs of their vehicles arrived hoping to cross into Pakistan, but only those holding the country’s green passports were allowed to proceed.

Rabika Begum, who said she was in her 40s, had tried for five years to get an Indian visa. She was finally given one to attend her mother’s funeral, in the state of Uttar Pradesh.

“My husband is on dialysis in Pakistan, and my mother died on this side,” Ms. Begum said as she prepared to return. “I could not even get a fair chance to cry at her grave or be able to hug it long enough before the government asked us to leave.”

“What have I done?” she said. “What is my fault in what happened in Kashmir?”

Famida Sheikh, who has been living in Pakistan since 1987 and obtained a Pakistani passport through marriage, said she had received a visa to visit her siblings in India after a decade of trying. She had been there for only two weeks.

“We hadn’t even unpacked properly,” she said.

Vajida Khan, 24, had been visiting her parents in India. She has an Indian passport, but her two children, 7 and 3, have Pakistani ones. Her Pakistani husband was waiting for them on the other side.

She had spent three days in the Indian town near the border crossing, trying fruitlessly to negotiate a way to reunite the family.

“The government wouldn’t let me go,” she said, “and wouldn’t allow my kids to stay on here.”

For Mr. Singh’s family, this was supposed to be a week of hard-earned joy: the first marriage of one of the children.

They live in the Pakistani city of Amarkot, in Sindh Province, where Mr. Singh recently retired as an officer in the government’s agriculture department.

He and his wife had worked hard to find a suitable groom for their daughter across the border in Rajasthan. The marriage agreement was reached four years ago, but it took two years to get Indian visas for the family, Mr. Singh said.

They did all the shopping, including the purchase of 40 grams of gold jewelry, in Rajasthan. The guests were arriving from all over India when the government issued its order to leave.

“We have blood relatives in India, and we marry our daughters off in India. So our lives are so inextricably linked,” Mr. Singh said. “How can you separate us like this? Who should we talk to about our misery?”

With his wife’s Pakistani visa suddenly canceled, Mr. Singh worked his phone, pleading with officers to let her return with the rest of the family. They refused.

But they allowed one concession: She could walk with them to the final checkpoint and wave goodbye.