Archrivals have a lot in common

It's an anger long nurtured by politicians on both sides, who use fear of the other to build support and win votes.

More than 50 years after Pakistan was formed, its very existence is still questioned by some of the most ardent Indian nationalists.

"We could have solved our problems among ourselves if Pakistan had not been created," Ashok Singhal, one of India's most prominent Hindu militants, told reporters recently.

Singhal leads the World Hindu Council, the ideological "family" that includes Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee's governing Bharatiya Janata Party. He calls the latest rapprochement with Pakistan "incomprehensible" and warns darkly of Muslim plotting to create semi-independent Islamic homelands deep inside Indian territory.

No evidence of such schemes has ever surfaced, but such talk terrifies many in Pakistan, who suspect India of creating a pretext to swallow up their country.

The rivalry is felt most acutely in Kashmir, where 65,000 people, most of them Muslim civilians, have died in a bloody 13-year cycle of revolt and repression.

The border is replete with tales of people stuck on the wrong side: teenage boys who accidentally wandered across unfenced areas and wound up in prison accused of espionage; fishermen whose boats drifted the wrong way and spent years in jail; people who tried to commit suicide by throwing themselves in rivers and were arrested after being pulled out on the other side.

And many have to choose sides, a decision that can seem nearly as terrible.

Firdous Javed, a 27-year-old Pakistani, married an Indian Kashmiri five years ago, crossing the border to live with him in Srinagar, the capital of Indian-controlled Kashmir.

Her family remains in Pakistan, less than 320km away. In five years, she's been able to get home only once.

"What can I do?" she asked. "I have a home there and a home here. It is difficult to choose between the two. That's what we had to do, though, and it was agonizing."

Perhaps, though, the recent easing of travel restrictions means she'll be able to go visit again soon.

"I hope this agony will be over," she says.