The 2004 Ramon Magsaysay Award for Peace and International Understanding

RESPONSE of Ibn Abdur Rehman

Chairman and Trustees of the Ramon Magsaysay Award Foundation Distinguished Guests, Fellow Awardees and Dear Friends.

I am extremely grateful to the trustees of Ramon Magsaysay Award Foundation for selecting me as one of the two winners of the 2004 Ramon Magsaysay Award for Peace and International Understanding. While I am overwhelmed by the honour done to me, I accept this award on behalf of thousands of supporters of the Pakistan-India Peoples’ Forum for Peace and Democracy, who have struggled for a whole decade to find democratic and peaceful solutions for the problems that have bedeviled the people of not only India and Pakistan but the whole of the South Asian region.

You are all familiar with the history of conflict and confrontation between two of South Asia’s largest states, the wars they have fought and the large scale diversion of their resources as preparation for bigger conflicts. The struggle for peace between these two neighbours has acquired much greater urgency since both of them acquired nuclear weapons and started a prohibitively expensive missile race.

It has been our experience in South Asia that absence of armed conflict does not amount to peace. For five decades the governments of Pakistan and India have been frittering away their resources on preparations for war and the people have been paying a heavy price in the name of defence even during periods when there is no fighting along the borders. It has also been our experience that peace is not an ideal that can be pursued in isolation from other concerns of the people. That is why the Pakistan-India Peoples’ Forum for Peace and Democracy has from the outset viewed peace as part of a comprehensive package that includes disarmament and denuclearization, democratic governance, promotion of a culture of tolerance and resistance to extremism in the name of belief and ideology, and democratic resolution of matters such as Kashmir. During the last couple of years forces of peace and justice across the globe have come under strain as a result of substitution of the ideal of peace with the gospel of security. South Asia too has faced attempts to devalue peace.

While facing these challenges we are sustained by the support of a very large number of ordinary women and men in both countries who do not correspond to the images of Indian and Pakistani people the world media carries everyday. These people who constitute a majority in South Asia are neither blood-thirsty fundamentalists nor intolerant zealots out to convert the world. They live by their labour and are striving to realize their dreams of a better life for their children. I am happy that the honour done to my dear friend Admiral Ramdas in India and myself will enable the world to recognize these peaceful millions and also encourage them to pursue the goal of peace and their fulfillment.

I thank you again for the honour.