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The Many Roles of a Peace Builder:
Spotlight on Rita Manchanda,
India
The Many Roles of a Peace Builder
Whether as a journalist witnessing the violence of the Kashmir insurgency;
a program executive coordinating projects on women, media, and conflict; or
a founder and committee member of the Pakistan India People's Forum for Peace
and Democracy, Rita Manchanda demonstrates that "without a participatory democracy,
one cannot have an enduring and sustainable peace."
She is an exemplary woman peace builder whose innate courage and determination
has brought together hundreds of people from both sides of the India/Pakistan
conflict to demystify "hate politics" and promote a vision of lasting peace.
Rita Manchanda is the India/Pakistan Local Partner for Inclusive Security: Women Waging Peace and
has been a member since its launch in December 1999.
Working within this tempest of violence and war, Rita Manchanda challenges
years of institutional partition by promoting peace-building activities across
conflict borders and advocating for women's full participation in a democratic
peace process.
As a journalist and human rights activist, Ms. Manchanda witnessed the surge
of fundamentalist politics and routine riots between Hindus and Muslims that
culminated in the violence of the Kashmir insurgency and the Kargil conflict.
Through numerous print and public forums, Rita Manchanda broke the silence.
She confronted the anti-nationalist tension by asking the difficult-but necessary-
questions concerning the denial of democratic rights and the systematic abuse
of human rights. These inquiries escalated into a small, but visible political
movement when, in 1994, Ms. Manchanda and a group of Indian and Pakistani activists
founded the Pakistan India People's Forum for Peace and Democracy asserting
the notion of security and peace from the grassroots people's perspective.
South Asia Forum for Human Rights (SAFHR) www.safhr.org
Ms. Manchanda is currently the Executive Director of the South Asia Forum for
Human Rights (SAFHR), which was established in 1990 as a regional public
forum for the promotion of respect for universal values of human rights,
the interdependence of rights and the indivisibility of rights. They believe
that peace is not simply the absence of war or the management of crisis,
but fundamental to realizing peoples' security of food, shelter, health and
livelihood in a non-hegemonic democratic regional order.
Strengthening Women Building Peace and "Mapping from the Margins"
In July 2001, Ms. Manchanda and SAFHR held the Strengthening Women Building
Peace conference to discuss the role of gender in conflict transformation.
Over 30 women peace builders from South Asia gathered in Kathmandu, Nepal,
to participate in discussions on a variety of topics; including women's participation
in democratic peace processes, reconstruction and rehabilitation activities,
heightening the profile of women's current role in peace activism, and empowering
and safeguarding the progressive gains in gender relations arising from situations
of conflict.
Note: The three-day Inclusive Security: Women Waging Peace Asia
Regional Meeting took place in Kathmandu, following the SAFHR
conference.
A critical component of the four-day conference was the introduction of Ms.
Manchanda's innovative concept of "mapping from the margins." In these sessions,
conference participants mapped out the conflicts in South Asia from a gender
perspective, creating visual representations that reflected their own experience.
Ms. Manchanda describes the maps as highly personal and a vehicle for challenging
state-centric representations of conflict and borders. She sees the mapping
process as a catalyst for discussion and developing new understanding of conflicts. "This
is the newest and most exciting element of what I've been doing," Ms. Manchanda
told Waging Network Director, Amy Roth Turnley, in Kathmandu in July. "Initially
there is some resistance to the idea of "mapping," but when they start doing
it, their energy flows. First, it's pain and then it's creative vision, a vision
of the future. Each map is very different and is a new means [for the mapmaker]
to understanding her own conflict. It is also a means of translating the reality
of her own conflict for someone else. The "mapping" process at this conference
was done by women on-site, working together in groups. It worked for them,
so I think they'll take the concept back with them and use it in workshops
in their own communities."
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The History of the Conflict
by Rita Manchanda
India and Pakistan have a history of fifty years of tension and conflict
marked by three full scale wars (1947, 1965 and 1971), low intensity
wars (Siachin glacier), proxy wars (Kashmir) and "war like situations" (Kargil
conflict). Across the Line of Control in the 'disputed' area of Jammu
and Kashmir, India and Pakistan endemically exchange big gun artillery
fire. In May 1998, their military confrontation acquired a formal nuclear
dimension when first India, and then Pakistan tested nuclear weapons.
India and Pakistan are unique in that the two antagonists are contiguous
nuclear powers with a missile alert warning of barely a few minutes to
avert an "accidental" or "misperceived" nuclear confrontation. The volatility
of the India-Pakistan conflict and the propensity of the two states to
use military force (backed now by nuclear weapons) have made the international
community, led by the U.S., regard the subcontinent as "the most dangerous
place in the world".
For the peoples of India and Pakistan, this hostile relationship has
fostered a national security state complex legitimizing an arms race,
the diversion of development funds and the overt (Pakistan) and covert
(India) militarization of the two polities. It has undermined democratic
institutions and strengthened the rise of ultra-nationalist religious
right wing forces in both countries, stoking the politics of religious
intolerance and hatred of minorities.
Kashmir is symbolically and materially at the core of India-Pakistan
antagonism. Both claim Kashmir as central to the survival of their ideological
raison d'etre - one a homeland for Muslims, and the other a secular state.
The first war over Kashmir in 1947-48 resulted in its territorial division
between India and Pakistan. Since then, the "special status" of the two
Kashmirs has been steadily eroded. There is a third party to this conflict:
the people of Kashmir, whose rights are being denied. Both India and
Pakistan exclude the independence option. India claims that Pakistan
is fomenting a proxy war in Kashmir while Pakistan insists it is supporting
a homegrown insurgency. The Kashmir dispute also constrains the Pakistan
state's will and ability to contain the terrorist fallout of the Afghanistan
conflict in both Indian Kashmir and in Pakistan, spreading a culture
of violent terror and the long term Talibanisation of the country.
At the people's level, the blood of partition has scarred inter-community
relations readily available for political exploitation. In their nation-
and state-building projects- the insecure post-colonial elite of India
and Pakistan have constructed a negative "majoritarian" identity. The
politics of exclusion and discrimination has demonized the "other" within
and across the border i.e. Muslims in India, and Hindus in Pakistan.
Moreover, state policy in both countries has deliberately separated the
peoples of India and Pakistan, creating a perfect breeding ground for
prejudice and hate. It has also made the "nationalism" of the religious
minority in each country suspect and vulnerable to exploitation by fundamentalist
forces on both sides. Managing the internal Hindu-Muslim issue depends
on transforming the hostile relationship between India and Pakistan.
Since the Kargil summer war of 1999 and the subsequent military coup
in Pakistan, there has been a resurgence of belligerence and jingoism.
The "limited war" thesis has gained currency, encouraged by a frighteningly
unstable nuclear deterrence. At the official level, dialogue has broken
down in a battery of blame over "betrayal" of trust, and civil society
peace initiatives have come under increasing pressure with "all' Indians
and "all" Pakistanis tarred as intelligence agents and saboteurs. The
already precarious position of the minority communities in both countries
is damaged even further and politicized religious forces fuel the tension,
strengthening the hold of fundamentalist forces. |
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