DISMANTLING PREJUDICE -THE JOURNEY TO A PEOPLE BASED PEACE STRATEGY

By IBN ABDUR REHMAN Director,
Human Rights Commission of Pakistan
Presented at the 2004 Magsaysay Awardees’ Lecture Series
Magsaysay Center, Manila, 27 August 2004

Prejudice is a common human affliction and no society has always been free of it. It has generated conflicts and disputes and otherwise caused unhappiness to people in all parts of the globe. One of the areas where it has been creating hardships and unhappiness for a large segment of humankind is South Asia.

The people of Pakistan and India, who are closer to one another than to any other people, who have a fairly long history of common struggles and shared triumphs, have been unable to overcome the effects of deep-rooted prejudice against each other. Their attitude towards one another resembles tribal feuds of ancient times when allegiance to a particular tribe was enough to invite implacable hostility from another tribe.

Fifty-seven years after the partition of the subcontinent, India and Pakistan refuse to behave as modern states and their references to one another echo the communal debates of the pre-independence era. The Indians perceive Pakistan as the successor of medieval military commanders who invaded India repeatedly. They harbour and exploit fears of Pakistan’s aggression, despite Pakistan’s proven inability to militarily harm its more powerful neighbour. Pakistanis in turn keep convincing themselves that India has not reconciled itself to the establishment of their State and cannot therefore be expected to wish well of Pakistan. It is this mass surrender to prejudice that has obstructed all efforts at establishing normal, good neighbourly relations between the two great South Asian neighbours.

How can the people of India and Pakistan be helped to overcome their prejudices? Saner people including academics and politicians and experts in various disciplines have tried to answer this question in a number of different ways. I can only discuss the method to fight prejudice that I know of and that is to raise edifice of peace with the help of people of both countries.

I came to this approach after a series of experiences during a five-year quest. As a peace activist I had always believed that war was no solution to any dispute or difference between peoples and therefore India and Pakistan must find peaceful settlements for their disagreements in accordance with the spirit of the age. Apart from associating with almost every initiative to further understanding between India and Pakistan launched in the country, such as Pakistan-India Friendship Society of the 1970s, my serious involvement with efforts to promote peace in the region began in 1989 when I joined a friend from Kolkatta to launch a dialogue between eminent citizens belonging to different walks of life in India and Pakistan. These dialogues were good as far as they went, which was not very far. What worried me especially was the fact that these dialogues were held in both India and Pakistan behind closed doors and the people at large came to know little of what the participants in the meetings had discussed and what conclusions, if any, they had reached.

I was then involved in a broader dialogue that included participants not only from India and Pakistan but also from other South Asian states, namely Bangladesh, Nepal and Sri Lanka. We had five rounds of discussions and nearly all issues that caused tension in the subcontinent were examined. The reports of these discussions were carefully compiled and published. This experience was better than the earlier one, though it also suffered from the exclusion of the beneficiaries, that is, the people, from the thinking process.

During the same period I had the opportunity of participating in two rounds of discussions on Kashmir attended by Kashmiris from both sides of the line of divide, along with a few Indians, Pakistanis and Americans. This experience had a decisive impact on my mind. When the Kashmiris spoke on the most contentious issue between India and Pakistan, no other party could find much to say. This was my introduction to the effectiveness of people to people contact.

However useful these initiatives may have been, my dissatisfaction with them was rooted in the belief that absence of involvement of broad sections of masses restricted their effectiveness. With each dialogue I became more and more convinced that these efforts were like imposition of reforms from above which could never be wholly successful because the people, especially the direct beneficiaries, had not been the part of the thought process.

I seek your indulgence to say a few words about what I consider a pre-requisite to implementation of ideas of progress. Experience in many countries including Pakistan shows us that even the best ideas fail to achieve the desired results if the ownership of these ideas does not belong to the people. Neither democracy nor land reforms nor judicial changes can yield maximum benefit unless the people are convinced that they are the authors of all good schemes. No country can win a war that is not supported by its people and no peace can endure if it is only a compact between custodians of power and doesn’t enjoy the conscious support of the masses. In case of South Asia, the bitterness and prejudice of centuries cannot be washed away by state protocols only. Indeed confrontations have continued for so long that national elites are afraid of betraying an inclination for peace even while they are convinced of its dividends.

The experience of dialogues enabled me to welcome and join the initiative taken by a small group of Indian and Pakistani peace lovers when they met in Lahore and adopted on 4 September 1994 a declaration to work for peace and democracy under the banner of the Pakistan-India Peoples’ Forum for Peace and Democracy (PIPFPD).

Setting Trends. The Forum has completed ten years of its existence and within a few days many of its members from India and Pakistan will gather at Lahore in Pakistan to celebrate a decade of their joint struggle. So far the Forum has organized six joint conventions, the first in New Delhi in February 1995; the second one at Lahore in November 1995; the third at Kolkatta in December 1996; the fourth one at Peshawar in December 1998; the fifth in Bangalore in April 2000 and the sixth at Karachi in December 2003. These conventions established some new and healthy traditions in people-based bilateral enterprises.

1. Each convention was a sizable gathering and except for business meetings all proceedings were open. The average size of gatherings at these conventions was 400 including 100 plus delegates from across the border.
   
   
2. All delegates paid for their travel while the host country provided local hospitality and conference facilities.
   
   
3. Efforts were made to open inexpensive travel routes. At a time when the Attari-Wagah land route was closed to Indians and Pakistanis, the Forum succeeded in persuading the governments to allow its delegates to travel from Lahore to Attari by land route in 1996 and the Indian delegates crossed the border on foot in 1998 and 2003.

Apart from holding joint conventions the Forum made consistent efforts to widen its circle in both India and Pakistan. On both sides chapters were opened in states/provinces and main cities. These branches have been charged with the task of mobilizing their communities for peace and understanding in the region.

Factors of success. A number of factors have contributed to the Forum’s success in realizing a good part of its objective. The founders of the Forum decided that they would not confine themselves to asking the governments of India and Pakistan to establish peace, but they would also help the two governments by showing them the way to mutual understanding. At the same time they decided that they would not shut their eyes to any contentious issue and would rather encourage public debate on it so that solutions backed by informed public opinion could emerge. The Forum identified four areas of principal concern and called for: denuclearization of the region and its demilitarization, beginning with a reduction in weapons of aggression on both sides; accelerated progress in both countries towards genuinely democratic governance; systematic and concerted efforts to rid the region of the evil of extremism and militancy in the name of belief; and a peaceful democratic settlement of the Kashmir issue in accordance with the wishes of the people of the territory.

These four themes which have been elaborated and broken down into subheads have provided the foundation of a broad consensus among peace activists of India and Pakistan.

There have been additions to these four themes as well. For instance the issue of discrimination against women and denial of their rights was accepted as a major concern of the Forum at the Kolkatta convention. Earlier on, the Forum had decided to bring together and promote cooperation among trade unions, and professional groups such as lawyers, journalists, doctors, teachers etc. from both sides.

Another factor that contributed to the Forum’s success was its decision to speak out during the long standoff between 2001 and 2003. The Forum was consistent in demanding start of negotiations between India and Pakistan at a time when all contacts had been suspended.

The Forum also achieved success and popularity by its plan to encourage other organizations, especially of students and the youth, to develop exchanges. In 2003 the Forum broke through travel restrictions by organizing exchange of visits between parliamentarians, since they could cross the border without visa. The exchanges of students in particular have been most rewarding. A history teacher who led a group of students from New Delhi on their visit to Pakistan aptly summed up the experience by saying that these students had discovered a Pakistan that was quite different from what they had read about in their history books. Similar were the impressions of Pakistani students after visiting India.

Setbacks. However, the story of ten years of the Pakistan-India Forum has not been one of unbroken successes. There have been setbacks and some of them quite serious. From 1994 to May 1998, the Forum grew in a climate that was not hostile to its objectives even if it was not very helpful. The nuclear explosions of May 1998, first by India and then by Pakistan, strengthened the streak of madness in the psyche of the people of the subcontinent, especially of the elites. Faith in peace was eroded at many places by the flush of power. Worse followed in 1999 when the Kargil conflict broke out. The rise in war hysteria and unprecedented jingoism that we saw posed a serious threat to the Forum and public interest in its activities declined somewhat. However, it is a measure of the innate strength of the slogan of peace and peoples’ yearning for it that the Forum navigated this rough patch with confidence, and the joint convention of December 2003 revealed the organization to be as strong as it has ever been.

At the moment the world is receiving quite favourable signals from the South Asian subcontinent; governments of both India and Pakistan have committed themselves to a process of composite dialogue and have been reiterating their commitment to peace and friendship. The Forum supports these initiatives, at the same time deems it necessary to warn the people against expectations of a quick breakthrough. The Forum recognizes that it is easy to talk about issues but it is far more difficult to resolve them. It is not possible to discount the historical experience that even when India and Pakistan have recognized the futility of confrontation and conflict, they have been found lacking the means of establishing peace. They have no tradition of resolving issues bilaterally. This means that peace-loving countries of the world, especially in Asia will be required to continue persuading India and Pakistan not to allow their peace process to derail. On its part, the Forum has to move from the general to the specific and offer reasonable answers to the anxieties of the people on both sides of the border and offer assurances that peace is not a state to be dreaded more than war.

Unfortunately the task of peace activists everywhere, especially in South Asia, has been complicated by developments following 9/11 and the ongoing campaign against terrorism. Peace has been replaced as supreme ideal of nation states by national security. It has become possible for states to divert resources to defense and also to compromise initiatives directed towards peace. India and Pakistan may not find it easy to break out of the security syndrome, but this only means that peace activists in the region will have to mobilize the masses on a much broader scale than hitherto.

Participation in a people-based initiative is an open-ended learning process. What peace activists in South Asia have learnt over the past ten years is worth repeating and worth sharing with like-minded people. The lessons in brief are:

1. If you have weapons they will be used, so the best security is not to have weapons that can kill the owners.
   
   
2. Defence forces have a penchant for expansion and if they can grow bigger and more powerful than the civil society, then that community will be pushed away from both peace and democracy.
   
   
3. Peace is a value that can not be conceived in isolation from other human rights. No country can have peace with its neighbours unless it has peace within and domestic peace is impossible without justice and peoples’ empowerment.
   
   
4. The most durable peace is the one that the people achieve on the basis of their understanding and through their participation.