In my previous column series, ‘Discussing South Asian Peace’, we talked about the evolution of people’s initiatives for restoring peace in South Asia. From the Pak-India Peace Forum to Himal Southasian and the South Asia Free Media Association (Safma) it was a journey that activists, intellectuals and journalists led with varying degrees of success.
The Pakistan Peace Coalition (PPC) was a civil society initiative for peace launched in September 1998 following the nuclear tests that India and Pakistan had carried out in May that year. The PPC comprised numerous pro-peace organisations, groups and individuals from across Pakistan. Sharing the common goal for de-nuclearisation and peace in South Asia, the PPC and its component organisations worked with regional movements and organisations on broader themes of reduction in defence expenditure to promote human development in the two countries; de-nuclearisation of South Asia; and countering the increasing trends of intolerance and violence in society.
The coalition convened a large, multi-sector conference in 1999 in Karachi to enhance collaboration among peace groups. The Pak-India People’s Solidarity Conference, inaugurated in 2001 by the PPC, and the Coalition for Nuclear Disarmament and Peace are prominent examples of such efforts. Some other initiatives included the Indo-Pak Soldiers Initiative for Peace -- which hosted smaller-scale annual conferences of retired military figures -- and the Women’s Initiative for Peace in South Asia, which enabled women from both India and Pakistan to lend their voices to peace efforts, including in meetings with top-ranking Indian and Pakistani officials.
A historical peace march began on March 23, 2005 from New Delhi and culminated on May 11, 2005 at Multan. Sandeep Panday and Sanat Mohanty wrote about that march in a 2010 book ‘Bridging Partition: People`s Initiatives for Peace Between India and Pakistan’ that Smitu Kothari and Zia Mian edited. They shared in their diary several stories of humanising the ‘other’ and transforming the conflict at the grassroots during their journey. In the same book Shehryar Ahmad wrote about Junoon, the first Pakistani rock band that performed in Mumbai in 1998.
After overcoming political restrictions following the band’s denouncement of nuclear weapons, Junoon performed on stage with Indian rock sensation Euphoria at the 2003 MTV Awards in Mumbai. The two bands hoisted both flags and proclaimed ‘Long live Pakistan, long live Hindustan’. In his essay, ‘A Pakistani Looks at India’, Pervez Hoodbhoy recalled winning the Unesco Kalinga Prize in 2003. The prize included an opportunity to travel to India on a four-week lecture tour from Delhi to Chennai, but tensions on both sides kept him grounded for two years. Finally, in 2005 he was able to cross the border and begin the tour in India.
Almost at the same time in 2005, another interesting and significant episode unfolded. Prompted by two American tourists, thousands of children in India and Pakistan overcame the age-old enmity of adults through exchanges of love letters. Two ordinary Americans who had come to India for a year realised that there was too much hatred in India against Pakistan. So they decided to visit schools and talk to children about peaceful coexistence with neighbours. From Bangalore and Mumbai to Haryana and other cities, there was a campaign to write love letters to Pakistani school children.
Riding bicycles to schools, the tourists gathered over 30,000 letters from Indian children and delivered them to Pakistani children who responded in kind. The world’s largest love letters emerged on the grounds of cricket stadiums in various cities of India. The love letter with the theme ‘India loves Pakistan’ was prepared in three events in Ahmedabad, Bangalore and Mumbai -- their labour of love for the world’s largest love letter in March 2006. Dozens of porters gave up some portion of their daily earnings to carry the letters over the 250-metre stretch up to the Wagah border.
That letter-writing episode led to the founding of Friends without Borders, an initiative made up of 99 per cent children and some adults. Eight members of Friends without Borders crossed over to Pakistan with thousands of letters of friendship from Indian children to their counterparts in Pakistan. Children had written these letters over several months in 2005 and early 2006. March 2006 also witnessed the launch of Amritsar-Nankana Sahib bus service giving hope to the people of South Asia that the bilateral relations would soon improve.
There are some wonderful videos available on the net regarding these events, reminding us that the people of South Asia -- irrespective of their ages -- have craved harmony and love in this region. Now a few words about Education Without Borders and Friends Without Borders are in order. Readers should not confuse it with Friends without a border which is an initiative of a Japanese photographer Kenro izu working in Southeast Asia, particularly in countries such as Cambodia and Laos. Education Without Borders was an initiative for peace-building through education.
Eminent educationist Baela Raza Jamil launched this initiative in Lahore at a conference in February 2006 titled ‘Local governance, texts and contexts: Perspectives from South Asia’. The conference concluded with the formation of the ‘South Asia Forum for Education Development’ (Safed). Indian academic and educationist Krishna Kumar and historian Aysha Jalal were the keynote speakers who urged South Asians to rise to the challenge of education without borders. The thrust of the conference was to seek answers to education relevance and children’s learning so that South Asian countries could work together to undertake fundamental education reforms.
From 2008 onwards, Safed teamed up with Indian institutions like The Pratham Education Foundation; Jamia Millia University in Delhi; Women in Security, Conflict Management and Peace (Wiscomp); National Council of Education Research and Training (NCERT) and Ankur Society, to find common grounds for solving educational problems in South Asia. It is worth recalling that the first Wiscomp conflict transformation workshop, titled ‘Rehumanizing the other’, which brought together students from several renowned educational institutions of India and Pakistan took place in Delhi in 2001.
For this initiative, Prof Radha Kumar – a former director at the Nelson Mandela Centre for Peace and Conflict Resolution, Dr Janaki Rajan -- a distinguished professor of education at the Faculty of Education, and Veena Sikri Chairperson of the Bangladesh Studies programme, Jamia Millia, played an instrumental role. They also spearheaded the South Asian Women Network (Sawn) across eight sectors including education, health, peace, and microcredit with women and men of South Asia -- not to be confused with another Sawn established in 2019 as a corporate entity.
In 2009, Safed and Sawn invited Sharmila Bhagat, Director of Ankur Society for Alternatives in Education, New Delhi, to a week-long workshop in Lahore for a discussion on documenting narratives of young women living in disadvantaged conditions. Then there was a conference on ‘Women of South Asia: Partners in Development’ which was an initiative of Jamia Millia Delhi. Its first conference took place in March 2009 with Nobel Laureate -- now PM of Bangladesh – Prof Muhammad Yunus inaugurating it. This conference brought together in partnership women from across the countries of South Asia.
The conference established seven South Asian Women’s Networks so that women working in similar areas could network with their counterparts in other countries. Through these networks, they hoped to share experiences and learn from each other. The second conference took place in Chandigarh in March 2010 with the theme ‘Women Guiding the Destiny of South Asia’.
At this conference, the eighth ‘Sawn’ on Women in Media of the South Asia Women’s Network was established to give ‘Voice to the Voiceless’. In the same month (March 2010) two other conferences on education leadership brought delegates together in Delhi and Karachi simultaneously with over 60 educators from India, Pakistan and the US. Some of the prominent names were Dr Usha Nayar, Dr Anil Sethi, Yasmin Lari, Romana Hussain, and Prof Radha Kumar.
The Pakistan Peace Coalition that Karamat Ali, B M Kutty and Dr Tipu Sultan led also organised a Peace Caravan from Karachi to Peshawar through Khyber Mail in February 2010 to express solidarity with the people and workers of terrorism-hit Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.
To be continued
The writer holds a PhD from the University of Birmingham, UK. He tweets/posts NaazirMahmood and can be reached at: mnazir1964yahoo.co.uk