The Fourth Joint Convention of the Pak-India Peace Forum selected Peshawar as its host to continue its journey for peace and democracy. It took place in November 1998 in Peshawar for which 160 Indians crossed on foot the normally closed Wagah border and made their bus trip to join Pakistani delegates for the people-to-people dialogue.
Latif Afridi who represented Khyber Agency (a tribal constituency that is now a district of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa) was the primary host of the event. The Peshawar convention demanded that the Indian government pull back its troops from civilian areas and that the Pakistan government make a determined effort to stop the armed activities of the militants.
This must be done to make third-party mediation unnecessary. The convention took place while the grim fallout from the May 1998 nuclear tests by India and then Pakistan was still fresh in people’s minds. The Peshawar Convention instilled a sense of urgency for the Forum to facilitate a process for enabling India and Pakistan to break the logjam of no war-no peace. The forum urged the two governments to sign a peace treaty. Less than a fortnight before the convention, official level talks between India and Pakistan had once again shown up the inability of the two sides to rise above competitive posturing on their inflexible positions on Kashmir.
The most prominent speakers at the Peshawar convention were Admiral R Ramdas, former Indian naval chief and I A Rehman. They urged the two governments to say no to nuclear weapons and emphasised the sheer lunacy of embarking upon a nuclear arms race when nearly half of the people in South Asia live in poverty. An eminent scientist from India, Prof Dinesh Mohan, underscored the need for scientists and technologists on both sides to make common cause to wrest science away from works of destruction to serve the needs of the majority of the people in South Asia.
Then in 1999, there was a Progressive Writers’ Association (PWA) conference in Chandigarh for which a Pakistani PWA delegation got visas to travel through Wagah. It was an experience in itself to travel through the Indian Punjab and spend a few days in Chandigarh and then in Delhi. We visited various educational institutions and offices of literary organisations in Punjab and Delhi. The home hospitality by Urdu writer Nand Kishore Vikram and Hindi critic Namvar Singh in Delhi was unforgettable. Namvar Singh last served as the president of All India PWA in 2012 but in the last years of his life he became controversial for his soft corner for the Saffron Brigade.
The Fifth Joint Convention of the Pak-India People’s Forum took place in Bangalore (now Bengaluru) in April 2000. It had a special significance for this writer as for the first time I was able to take my wife Sanober and daughters Zoya (seven years) and Sawera (four years) to India. I was working for Dawn at that time and Mr Saleem Asmi was our editor. He generously granted me leave for two weeks so that I could take my family to other cities for which we had visas that the Indian embassy had given us.
At the last moment, we found that air tickets were in short supply so our senior reporter at Dawn – Habib Ghori -- had to use his contacts in PIA so that the family could travel with the other delegates. We flew to Bombay where the Bombay chapter of the Forum welcomed us; eminent personalities such as A K Hungal, Javed Akhtar, Kaifi Azmi, Shabana Azmi, and many others were there to receive us. From there we had a long but memorable train journey to Bangalore where the hosts were just wonderful, and we had the best time of our life.
Interestingly, in Bangalore, we heard the news that a court in Pakistan had sentenced former prime minister Nawaz Sharif to life imprisonment. All the Indian media present in Bangalore were after the Pakistani delegates to seek their comments about the verdict. Our group leaders had instructed us that such matters should only be discussed by a couple of seniors in the Pakistani delegation and that saved us from unnecessary media exposure. But our daughters Zoya and Sawera being the youngest participants from Pakistan stole the limelight and we still have newspaper clippings in which they featured prominently.
The Bangalore convention also pursued its objectives of normalisation of relations, demilitarisation and peace, a democratic resolution of the Kashmir problem, and promotion of tolerance, democracy and good governance. It highlighted the increasing danger of deliberate or accidental war breaking out with the risk of any conflict escalating to the level of nuclear holocaust. It also demanded an immediate resumption of dialogue at the highest level and reversal of military buildups and denuclearisation with a comprehensive non-war pact between the two countries.
After the Bangalore convention, we visited Chennai, Hyderabad Deccan, Agra, Delhi and Bombay from where we flew back to Karachi. In Chennai, our generous host was Ravi Kumar Stephan who took us to Mahabalipuram (also called Mamallapuram) – a town between the Bay of Bengal and the Great Salt Lake in Tamil Nadu. It was a once-in-a-lifetime experience to visit the temples and monuments that the Pallava dynasty built in the seventh and eighth centuries. In Hyderabad Deccan, our host was Mazher Hussain who runs a network of NGOs called Cova (Confederation of Voluntary Associations).
In Agra, my old friend from the Soviet Union days Sudhir Dhakre received us at the railway station and we stayed at his home. He took us to Fatehpur Sikri – the capital of Emperor Jalauddin Akbar -- and other adjoining places in addition to of course the Taj Mahal. In Delhi, our favourite abode was Ajoy Bhavan – the head office of the Communist Party of India -- where I used to stay in the good old days of the 1980s. My old comrades were so happy to meet my wife and daughters.
On the way back, in Bombay, our host was Vishwas Rao Prakash the head of the People’s Publishing House on Brabha Devi Road. In Bombay, we met some of my father’s old comrades such as Inayat Akhtar, Hameed Surti and Maqsood Ahmed.
After the Bangalore convention, there was a hiatus for three years and the sixth joint convention of the Pak-India Peace Forum took place in Karachi in December 2003. The convention stressed the need to build resistance against the IMF, World Bank and WTO as well as the agents of imperialist globalisation, and build strong trade and economic cooperation between the two countries and in entire South Asia to foster independent development. It reiterated its call for global nuclear disarmament, and an immediate de-alert and then destruction of all nuclear weapons by the two countries.
In the late 1980s, another significant development took place in Nepal where Kanak Mani Dixit launched the Himal Southasian magazine that promoted peace and harmony in South Asia. Himal debuted in 1987 as the bimonthly Himal and initially focused on the Himalayan region.
Within a decade, it became the monthly ‘Himal Southasian’ by shifting its focus to include a broader definition of South Asia. It started publishing long-form journalism and analysis on politics, culture, history, and economics. It had to close its publication in 2016 due to pressure from the Nepali government which did not like Himal for its criticism and questioning of bad governance in Nepal. Himal resumed publication in 2018 from Colombo, Sri Lanka.
In the early 2000s, the South Asia Free Media Association (Safma) came into being as an association of Saarc countries’ media persons who agree with the goals of the association. Safma benefited greatly from the leadership of senior journalists such as Imtiaz Alam and Ziauddin. Safma managed to set up its chapters in India, Pakistan, Nepal, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka.
Established in the year 2000 as a result of the South Asian Free Media Conference held in Kathmandu the delegates agreed on a ‘Declaration of Intent: Media and Peace’. In August 2003, Safma organised the ‘Pak-India parliamentarians, journalists, and experts’ conference’ in Islamabad with over 200 participants.
In 2006, Safma brought out the South Asian Studies series which was the product of 14 research groups established under the South Asian Policy Analysis (Sapana). Imtiaz Alam was the series editor with Akbar Zaidi as the series coordinator, while Zebunnisa Burki with Maheen Pracha served as copy editors. Safma has promoted tolerance, understanding, confidence building, and regional peace for the past 25 years. I will discuss Aman ki Asha and Sapan (Southasia Peace Action Network) in one of my next columns.
Concluded
The writer holds a PhD from the University of Birmingham, UK. He tweets/posts NaazirMahmood and can be reached at:mnazir1964yahoo.co.uk