ACHA PEACE BULLETIN
http://www.groups.yahoo.com/group/ACHAPeaceBulletin
A
publication of Association for Communal Harmony in Asia (ACHA)
www.asiapeace.org & www.indiapakistanpeace.org
Editor: Pritam K.
Rohila, PhD asiapeace@comcast.net
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Volume
XIV, No. 02: February 15, 2010, Next
Issue March 15, 2010
_____________________________
CONTENTS
EDITORIAL
*Let there be love in South Asia and let it begin with me! Pritam K. Rohila, Ph. D.
ARTICLE OF THE MONTH
*Peace means
the summer of 1965, M J Akbar, January 30, 2010
BOOKS
*Overtaken By Events: A Pakistan Road Trip,
Ethan Casey, March 2010
*Jihad, peace and inter-community relations in Islam: Maulana Wahiduddin Khan,
*The
great Partition: the making of India and Pakistan, Yasmin Khan, Yale U.
Press, 07
EDUCATION & TRAINING
*May-June 2010, Brattleboro, Vermont, USA: PEACEBUILDING PROGRAM
EVENTS
*July 9-11, Brisbane, Australia: COPING RESILIENCE & HOPE BUILDING
*Sept 27-Oct 1, 2010, Chandigarh, India:
5th INTERN. YOUTH PEACE FEST
EVENT REPORTS
*PESHAWAR
Declaration: Eliminating Terrorism and Establishing Sustainable
Peace in the Region
MEMBERS’ CORNER
*Dr. Stephen Gill
*Dr. Lenin Raghuvanshi
PEACE & HARMONY NEWS FROM
INDIA & PAKISTAN
PEACE & HARMONY NEWS FROM
SOUTH ASIA
UPDATE: KASHMIR
UPDATE: NEPAL
UPDATE: PAKISTAN
UPDATE: SRILANKA
*Megnanimity in
both winning and losing is the better way, Dr. Jehan Perera, 01 Feb 10
____________________________________________________________________
EDITORIAL
*Let there be love in South Asia and let it begin with me! Pritam K. Rohila, Ph. D.
February is the month of love. It’s time to give and receive love, and to make peace with people around us.
Let us take this opportunity to look beyond ourselves. Let us transcend our limitations and hesitations. Let us take a chance to attempt to live in peace and harmony with our social and natural environment.
Let us do so, just because, as human being, we are capable of controlling our animal instincts, and being kind, loving, and compassionate to others. Just because, as rational animals, we can rise above our personal needs biases, and work for the welfare of others.
On any day this February, let us dedicate some of our time to make a deliberate effort to infect others with our love of humanity, and with our desire for peace and harmony.
Let us, by our selves, or in small groups, make a deliberate effort to commit acts of kindness, compassion, and love in our families, neighborhoods, work places and towns.
We can forgive someone, who may have wronged us in the past.
Reconcile with a relative or an old friend, with whom we have lost contact.
Help clean or beautify our neighborhood.
Help someone in need.
Thank a parent, spouse, sibling, teacher, or someone else who has done something for our welfare.
Greet people we
don’t know with a smile, handshake, a flower, or do something else along the
lines of the Free Hugs campaign, which had been conducted a few years ago, at
different places around the world, http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=31A99892D5AF7ED9&search_query=free+hugs&rclk=pti
While demonstrating our love of others, let us not forget ourselves. Charity should include our own selves also. We can quit smoking or another bad habit, which harms us as well as others, and instead start exercising regularly.
ARTICLE OF THE MONTH
*Peace means
the summer of 1965, M J Akbar, January 30, 2010
http://www.mjakbar.org/mjblog.htm
There is a
duality but not a contradiction running through the complexities of the
India-Pakistan relationship. Friday’s newspapers, for instance, reported a
confrontation between Home Minister P. Chidambaram and Prime Minister Yousaf
Gilani: the former is convinced that Islamabad is protecting the
widely-acknowledged principal architect of the 26/11 Mumbai terror attacks,
Hafiz Saeed, chief of the Lashkar-e-Tayyaba. Gilani thinks India has not
supplied sufficient evidence against Saeed. Chidambaram counters this with,
“What can I do if a Government closes its eyes to the evidence?”
Outside the squat offices of power, a virtual festival of Indo-Pak peace is
being celebrated in major Indian cities, with full participation by Pakistani
writers, musicians and its cultural elite. Why isn’t this a contradiction?
There has always been a peace constituency in both India and Pakistan, but it
consisted of idealists, regional-romantics and do-gooders. It used to be
drowned out by a coalition of viewpoints and ideologies ranging from
indifference to hostility to blood-thirst. Change has come in most categories of
opinion, on both sides of the border, though not on a mirror-track. The
bloodthirsty lobby in India began to lose its appetite after Bangladesh, an
outcome beyond its imagination. For a while it compensated by continuing to
target Indian Muslims as a surrogate enemy, but that too has waned since there
is no longer any electoral reward in domestic conflict, an important
consideration in a democracy.
Pakistan’s fanatics flourish because they have lifted elements of their
multi-level agenda above the compulsions of domestic power. We should not waste
newsprint on their fantasies, except to note that their terrorism remains the
single greatest provocation for a fourth, and potentially devastating, war
between India and Pakistan.
Perhaps it is just such a prospect that has driven the most useful lobby on the
subcontinent, that of realists, towards peace. Realists have clearly
strengthened Pakistan’s variable and possibly fragile peace constituency
immeasurably. You don’t have to fall in love to be a good neighbour; in fact
romance can have harmful side-effects. But good neighbours do not pelt each
other with stones [through media] or test nerves with sniper fire during their
waking hours.
Peace has to be defined, or it will remain elusive. It has to be a specific,
objective, negotiated condition, neither too ambitious nor too insignificant.
If it is mere absence of formal war, then we have found it already. The search
continues because we know that the present uncertainty is inherently volatile,
prone to exploitation by anarchists and terrorists. If we want a mutually
fruitful peace, we need to diagnose the causes of war.
There are two defining dates in the Indo-Pak relationship, only one of which is
recognised for its spawn of consequences. There have been, in effect, two
partitions of India: the one in 1947 is in every child’s history book; the one
in 1965 has not been adequately understood. 1947 divided the land; 1965 divided
the people. Till Pakistan launched, in 1965, its second effort to seize our part
of Jammu and Kashmir through a formal military offensive, people travelled
freely on easily-available documents, the rail border at Wagah bustled with
business even if the occasional customs officer bristled with pompousness in an
effort to disguise harassment and petty corruption, the border on both wings
was so porous that humans and goods were easily smuggled in both directions,
businessmen retained cross-border investments, media was freely available and
conflict was the prerogative of politicians and military brass. In 1965, we
built a wall between neighbours that the Cold War architects of the Berlin
rampart could have envied.
Those who want to reverse the reality of 1947 are either fanatics or fools.
[Terrible as they are, the former could be less troublesome than the latter.]
India and Pakistan are separate nations, and may they retain their present
borders for eternity. Those Pakistanis dreaming of breaking India should be
sent to a mental asylum, where they can befriend those Indians who want to capture
Islamabad.
Sanity demands a return to the summer of 1965 [war began in September] and not
a return to the summer of 1947 [partition came in August]. This objective has
the merit of being possible. If we link Indo-Pak harmony to a solution of the
Kashmir problem, we will remain frozen in a subcontinent-wide Siachen. Harmony
will induce steps towards a solution; not the other way around, because there
are impenetrable barriers on the way around.
A road with
dual carriageways is logical; a road with contradictions is an invitation to
deathly accidents.
BOOKS
*Overtaken By Events: A Pakistan Road Trip, Ethan Casey, March 2010
Overtaken
By Events: A Pakistan Road Trip is an account of a six-week overland journey
from Mumbai, India to Karachi, Pakistan between February and April 2009. It
documents the human dimension of events in and involving Pakistan since 2004.
The purpose of the book is to report on recent events as they affect ordinary
Pakistanis and to humanize Pakistan and Pakistanis for a global and
particularly American readership. It will be published in March 2010, with 32
pages
of photographs by Seattle-based photographer Pete Sabo. It can be pre-ordered
from www.aliveandwellinpakistan.com/books or the author at P.O. Box 85315, Seattle, WA 98145-1315,
USA.
Ethan Casey is an American journalist who has visited and lived in Pakistan since 1995 and the author of the book Alive and Well in Pakistan: A Human Journey in a Dangerous Time (2004). He can be reached at ethan@ethancasey.com or 206-226-0509
*Jihad, peace and inter-community relations in Islam: Maulana Wahiduddin Khan, Edited and Translated by Yoginder Sikand ysikand@yahoo.com, Rupa Co., New Delhi, 2010, ISBN_HB: 9788129115850, Pages121, Rs. 295
http://www.rupapublications.com/client/Book/JIHAD-PEACE-AND-INTER-COMMUNITY-RELATIONS-IN-ISLAM.aspx
Jihad, Peace, and Inter-community Relations in Islam is a translation of the
key writings by the noted New Delhi-based Islamic scholar, Maulana Wahiduddin
Khan. Originally written in Urdu, these essays seek to explore the issues of
jihad, peace and relations between Muslims and others through an Islamic
perspective.
Yoginder Sikand
works with the Centre for the Study of Social Exclusion and Inclusive Policy at
the National Law School, Bangalore. He has worked on issues related to Muslims
and Islam in South Asia, and has written over a dozen books on the subject.
*The great
Partition: the making of India and Pakistan, Yasmin Khan, Yale University
Press, 2007, ISBN 978-0-300-12078-3, 288 Pages, 19.99 Pounds
Book Review:
“The unruly end of empire,” Hassan Abbas, The Economist July 19, 2007
http://watandost.blogspot.com/2007/07/book-review-great-partition.html
SIXTY years ago
this August one of the greatest and most violent upheavals of the 20th century
took place on the Indian subcontinent. It was an event whose consequences were
entirely unexpected and whose meaning was never fully spelled out or understood
either by the politicians who took the decision or the millions of Muslims,
Hindus and Sikhs who were to become its victims. In 1947, faced with
irreconcilable differences over the demand for a separate state for India's
Muslims, Britain decided, with the consent of a majority of India's political
leaders, to partition the country and give each bit its independence. Tragedy
followed.
The break-up of Britain's Indian empire involved the movement of some 12m
people, uprooted, ordered out, or fleeing their homes and seeking safety.
Hundreds of thousands of people were killed, thousands of children disappeared,
thousands of women were raped or abducted, forced conversions were commonplace.
The violence polarised communities on the subcontinent as never before. The
pogroms and killings were organised by gangs, vigilantes and militias across
northern, western and eastern India. They were often backed by local leaders,
politicians from Congress and the Muslim League, maharajahs and princes, and
helped by willing or frightened civil servants.
Yasmin Khan, a British historian, has written a riveting book on this terrible
story. It is unusual for two reasons. It is composed with flair, quite unlike
the dense, academic plodding that modern Indian history usually delivers.
Second, it turns the spotlight away from the self-posturing in the British
viceroy's palace and the well-documented political wrangling between Congress and
the Muslim League leaders. Instead, it focuses on a broader canvas that leads
the reader through the confusion, the uncertainties, the fear and eventually
the horror faced by those who were soon to become citizens of the two new
states, India and Pakistan.
Today the upheaval on both sides of the partition line would be described as
ethnic cleansing on a gigantic scale. It left two traumatised, injured
nations—suspicious and fearful of one another even to this day—where once there
had been one country of loosely interwoven peoples. Pakistan's present military
ruler, General Pervez Musharraf, himself a child of partition, calls India “the
arch-enemy”. Such thinking has become instilled on both sides—an outcome
unthinkable to all those involved in the independence movement.
The decision to divide India on religious lines was taken with regret but
little foreboding and carried out with outrageous haste and unconcern by the
British government and its viceroy in India, Lord Mountbatten. Asked by a
journalist if he foresaw any mass transfer of population, Mountbatten said,
“Personally I don't see it...Some measure of transfer will come about in a
natural way...perhaps governments will transfer populations.”
No preparation or consideration was given to the central issues of citizenship,
security and property rights in the division of the country. On the other hand,
India's civil servants, the babus of empire, were busy itemising every fixture
in their offices down to ink pots and paperweights that were to be divided
between Pakistan and the new India. Lack of planning, hubris, confused thinking
and a complete void as to the consequences were the fatal flaws in the
partition plan, writes Ms Khan.
The announcement that India was to be partitioned and independence would follow
not less than a year later was made in the House of Commons on June 3rd 1947.
By August 15th the British were gone. They accepted no responsibility for the
carnage that was taking place and they refused to allow the British troops
still in India to keep order or protect people.
The movement of people and the privations they suffered were extraordinary.
Muslims made their way west to Pakistan; Sikhs and Hindus moved east to India
in “foot convoys” that involved 30,000-40,000 people, wagons, carts and animals
spread out over 45 miles (70km). In one month 849,000 refugees entered India by
foot. Trains that were impossibly overloaded, and dangerously targeted by the
killers, ran across Punjab from Rawalpindi and Lahore to Amritsar and Delhi and
back again as soon as they had refuelled and watered. Many families left for
reasons of safety, taking only a few belongings because they expected to
return. Not everyone imagined the journey across the partition line would be
final.
When Jawaharlal Nehru made his famous speech on August 15th declaring that at
the midnight hour, when the world slept, India would awake to life and freedom,
massacres were taking place almost daily on both sides of the line. Nehru later
wondered if his fellow countrymen knew how close India had come to imploding.
The violence was simply uncontrollable.
Despite the pledges of equality for all communities in the new India and
Pakistan, the driving force behind the violence was to eliminate or devour the
other community, writes Ms Khan. It took the shock of Mahatma Gandhi's
assassination on January 30th 1948—by a Hindu extremist opposed to Gandhi's
conciliatory policy towards Muslims and his peace overtures to Pakistan—to stem
the violence and bring India, especially, to its senses.
The illusions of partition are not overlooked by Ms Khan, including the premise
that a common religion is strong enough glue to hold different and suppressed
ethnic groups together in a nation state: Bangladesh, once East Pakistan, is
the prime example of how wrong that premise can be. Above all, she nails the
propaganda lie that the transfer of power in India was an example of peaceful
decolonisation that the rest of the world could follow. The unruly end of
empire in South Asia was “a shock of epic proportions”, she writes. It was
ill-conceived, unplanned and only just escaped from spiralling into an even
more devastating civil war.
EDUCATION & TRAINING
*May-June 2010, Brattleboro, Vermont, USA: PEACEBUILDING PROGRAM. SIT Graduate Institute invites applications (from human rights workers, non-profit and NGO middle and senior level managers, government employees, mental health professionals, educators, graduate students) for a three graduate credits training course in which participants from 20-25 countries develop new skills for peace-building and new relationships with each other. Education takes place in and outside the classroom as participants live and socialize together in structured and unstructured activities. The wide variety of regional, ethnic, and cultural background provides abundant possibilities for participants to deepen their proficiency in intercultural communication and peacemaking practices.
Topics of Study
include Conflict analysis and interventions, inter-communal dialogue, negotiation
and mediation, peacebuilding and development, healing and reconciliation, peace
education, training skills, issues of global relations, and more. Apply by April
15, 2010. More information visit www.sit.edu/contact or contactprogram@sit.edu
EVENTS
*July 9-11, Brisbane, Australia: COPING RESILIENCE & HOPE BUILDING, an Asia Pacific Regional Conference will bring together
practitioners, researchers, community activists and academics working in the
trans-disciplinary area of human coping with diverse challenging life
circumstances.
The Conference is interested in the
fascinating capacity of human resilience to most adverse life events, as they
unfold. The conference aims to advance evidence-based practices in
resilience promotion and hope building. It will look at interplay of individual,
family, community and social responsibility factors in resilience and provide
directions for future practice and research.
The conference will be held in the
beautiful City of Brisbane at the Griffith University, Nathan Campus. More
info from Dr.Venkat Pulla
dr.venkat.pulla@gmail.com
*September 27-October 1, 2010, Chandigarh, India:
5th INTERNATIONAL YOUTH PEACE FEST. To is to promote peace, equality and
living in harmony with nature and to provide a platform for increased
cross-fertilization of ideas through greater interaction among the young people,
Yuvsatta, in cooperation with other organizations, is organizing this event, at
the Peace City of Chandigarh http://chandigarh.nic.in/. Around 10,000 (Ten Thousand) youngsters from
around the world, and different states of India are expected to participate,
many of whom will stay with a local y0uth of the participant’s age and gender. Some
of the things planned for this initiative are; A Peace Parade, Carnival games
& Quiz Contests, Make and take crafts, Multi-cultural performances, Peace
Talks & Peace Stalls, Face Painting & Photography contests, Film Shows
& Music to UNITE, Deliberations on Environmental issues, Cricket for Peace, and One Sky One World Kite fly. Last date to
register is July 30, 2010 (May 30 for participants from Pakistan due to visa
process). Registration fee of Indian Rs. 100 is payable at the start of the
Festival. More information from www.yuvsatta.org To register, send your resume with details of your interest in
promoting a culture of nonviolence to yuvsatta@gmail.com
EVENT REPORTS
*Eliminating Terrorism and Establishing Sustainable Peace in the Region: PESHAWAR Declaration
On December 12 and 13, a two days workshop/conference was held in Peshawar with
the sole agenda “Terrorism - the ways out”. The workshop was attended by the
political parties and civil society organizations that actively opposed
terrorism.
The workshop was attended by the provincial leadership of political
parties; representatives from all the agencies of FATA, Swat, Malakand and
Buner; and businessmen, doctors, lawyers, teachers, students, laborers and
intellectuals. Peshawar Declaration was adopted by consensus at the end of the
conference. A ten members Coordination Committee was constituted to jointly
struggle to translate Peshawar Declaration into actions.
Several recommendations to
eliminate terrorism formed the Declaration. More info from the Society Rights
and Development at srd.org.pk@gmail.com
MEMBERS’ CORNER
*Dr. Stephen Gill stephengillgazette@gmail.co,
www.stephengill.ca
Dr. Gill has been appointed to the
faculty of European-American University (www.thedegree.org)
as an adjunct professor.
*Dr. Lenin Raghuvanshi pvchr.india@gmail.com
P. Chidambaram Indian
Minister of Home Affair and Mr. Salman Khurshid, Minister of State (Independent
Charge) Minister of Minority Affair took the cognizance on the petition sent by
PVCHR on the Bazardiha police firing case on 23rd November, 09.
The petition
emphasized for the implementation of Section D of Prime Minister's New 15 Point
Programme for Welfare of Minorities and raised demands: (1) To provide compensation
to the families of the deceased and injured persons. (2) To direct National
authority to order state & district authority for the fair investigation by
the independent agency such as state CBCID. (3) To provide psychological
support through testimonial therapy to the survivors of torture and organized
violence (TOV), for the Rehabilitation of victims of communal riots and
Prosecution for communal offences as the unfragmented self suffering will
facilitate in the speedy trial. Please see the complete petition http://pvchr.blogspot.com/2009/11/regarding-implementation-of-section-d_23.html
PEACE & HARMONY NEWS FROM
INDIA & PAKISTAN
*http://groups.yahoo.com/group/IndiaPakistanPeaceDay/
PEACE & HARMONY NEWS FROM
SOUTH ASIA
*http://groups.google.com/group/peace--harmony-news-from-south-asia
UPDATE: KASHMIR
*http://groups.yahoo.com/group/KashmirSolutionsForum/
*www.drshabirchoudhry.blogspot.com
*http://kashmirforumorg.blogspot.com/
UPDATE: NEPAL
*http://www.nepalasiacenter.com/
UPDATE: PAKISTAN
UPDATE: SRILANKA
*Megnanimity in
both winning and losing is the better way, Dr. Jehan Perera, 01 February
2010
The result of the Presidential election that was held last week has a potential of further dividing the country on both political and ethnic lines unless the spirit of magnanimity prevails. One of the important challenges for President Rajapaksa will be to address the sense of alienation of the ethnic minorities and provide a political solution for their problems and grievances by way of devolution of power. The President said he called for early Presidential Elections because he wanted a mandate from the people of the North and East who were unable to vote at previous elections due to intimidation by the LTTE. During most of the election campaign both major candidates gave considerable attention to the issue of inter-ethnic harmony and reconciliation…