[sacw] Working for peace [in South Asia] is simple

[Harsh Kapoor]

FYI
South Asia Citizens Web
==============================================

From: THE HINDU (Sunday, February 28, 1999 SECTION: Features)

Working for peace is simple

by KALPANA SHARMA

Date: 28-02-1999 :: Pg: 27 :: Col: a

LAST weekend, even the sceptics felt a small stirring of excitement at the
prospect of peace between India and Pakistan. This weekend, February 27 and
28, a peace conference in Karachi could be a step towards giving real
substance to the hope of peace. There is nothing official about the
conference. It will be a gathering of individuals from South Asia who
believe in investing in peace. Coming as it does on the heels of the well-
publicised bus diplomacy by the Prime Minister, Mr. A. B. Vajpayee, it
should yield interesting and different insights on the question of whether
and how a lasting peace can be built.

In the euphoria following Mr. Vajpayee's bus ride, it was easy to overlook
the fact that the step he took was building upon years of similar efforts
by ordinary people on both sides of the border to influence policy-makers
and ordinary people on the question of Indo-Pakistan relations. And that if
and when any official agreements are reached between India and Pakistan in
the next years, they will only work if there is a constituency that is
willing to sell the idea of peace to people on both sides of the border.

In the context of the Karachi peace conference, I was asked what Indian
women felt on the issue of peace? Had they taken a stand for peace, against
militarisation and against nuclearisation, in particular?

Whatever individual women might feel on this subject, there continues to be
an absence of initiatives from the Indian women's movement on peace issues.
Granted that a unified women's movement does not exist. The official
women's organisations are often affiliated with a political party or are
the women's wings of political parties. In addition, we have numerous
autonomous groups, many of whom are working on single issue campaigns.
Although a number of prominent feminists have participated in the peace
discourse in this country, from none of these three separate categories has
there been a strong affirmation that Indians and Pakistanis must set aside
50 years of hatred.

I have often wondered why this is so. Women have so much to lose from the
business of war. When entire communities are displaced, it is women who
bear the burden of settling in their families in new, unfamiliar and
sometimes hostile surroundings. When there are deaths, it often means the
loss of the sole bread-earning member of the family, thereby placing an
additional burden on the woman. And the emotional burden of all this must
also be carried by women, of dealing with traumatised children, of
countering the atmosphere of violence and hate.

In their moving and inspiring book about the impact of Partition on women,
``Border and Boundaries'', Kamala Bhasin and Ritu Menon pose these
questions: ``How do we disentangle women's experiences from those of other
political non-actors to enable us to problematise the general experience of
violence, dislocation and displacement from a gender perspective? How do we
approach the question of identity, country and religion, of the
intersection of community, state and gender?... How do we, as feminists
concerned with issues of identity politics, unravel the complex
relationship of a post-colonial state with religious communities in the
aftermath of convulsive communal conflict?''

These questions are key to the debate on peace, within or outside the
feminist perspective because they locate the problem within the context of
the lives of people and not as an abstract concept. Even if India and
Pakistan are not at war, the absence of peace affects people in many
different ways. The main and obvious way has been the communal polarisation
which has afflicted every part of this country. The demonisation of
Pakistan, and concomitantly, the entire Muslim community in this country,
has been the lasting legacy of Partition that has failed to disappear after
50 years.

Another fallout is the distortion in the teaching of history so that entire
generations grow up not knowing the truth about their closest neighbour.
Also, natural allies in civil society on a host of issues from workers'
rights to women's rights find it virtually impossible to cross the border
and cross-fertilise ideas. And the biggest burden of all is the sorrow that
divided families must continue to bear year after year as their efforts to
meet their kin on either side are thwarted by horrendous bureaucratic
procedures that are virtually insurmountable.

Of course, merely demanding that there be peace does not result in peace.
It has to be built. This is where the quiet work of several groups in India
has to be commended. The most recent effort along these lines has been that
of the Khoj project in Mumbai, initiated by a journalist, Ms. Teesta
Setalvad. Khoj brought together historians from South Asia to discuss the
teaching of history.

The outcome of such an effort should have received far more publicity than
it did - although in Mumbai it was well-covered by the press. Eminent
historians like Ms. Romila Thapar and Prof. K. N. Pannikar from India. Dr.
Leslie Gunawardana from Sri Lanka and Mr. Mubarak Ali from Pakistan looked
at the way history was being taught in our countries and the distortions
that had come into the texts taught to millions of children.

This is the point where misconceptions and prejudices are planted. Over
time they grow. They come out at the most unexpected moments. Watch an
India-Pakistan match and hear the reactions of ostensibly educated and
liberal people. Their real attitudes come out at such unguarded moments.
What is the root of these negative attitudes towards a neighbour? They lie
in the way history has been taught and in the way the media reinforces
prejudices. This is an area where parents, mothers who constantly worry
about their childrens' education, can intervene.

This brings us back to the role women can play as peace-makers. There are
several different levels at which this can be done. First, prominent women
who have credibility attached to their names should have the courage to
speak up and demand that this circle of hate be broken. If filmstar Dev
Anand can state in Lahore, ``I am an artist, politics is not my ball game.
At the same time I am an alert citizen. I am involved here because as an
Indian, if I can help in attaining peace with a neighbouring country, why
not?'', then why can't prominent women artists also speak up for peace?
Perhaps politics is the ball game of only politicians but peace should be
everyone's game, not just that of prime ministers and political pundits.
The importance of gestures cannot be overlooked.

The next level is one that perhaps does not require publicity but involves
working to remove the prejudices that convey themselves to children through
many different channels. Help children to understand that there is a
difference between governments and people and that if a government does
something wrong, it does not mean that all the people of that country stand
condemned.

And third, a clear articulation by women's groups of why peace is a
feminist issue. Women have to break out of the conditioning that makes them
hold back and not take a stand on something which has been termed
``complex'' for fear of being called ``simplistic''. Even if the minutiae
of negotiating peace may be complex, the determination to work for peace is
simple.

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