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SINGAPORE: A standoff between an Indian soldier and a Pakistani ends in laughter and applause when a Microsoft investor threatens to pull funding for a documentary about the Kashmir dispute.
This unlikely scene was acted out by high school students from Pakistan and India participating in a conflict resolution conference at the United World College of Southeast Asia, which recently hosted a programme called “Initiative for Peace”.
“There is no point in blaming each other for your troubles. After all, I have all the money,” quipped the smiling Pakistani actress wearing a headscarf and playing an investment representative from the US computer giant.
The week-long educational programme was set against a backdrop of fears that Pakistan and India would go to war over Kashmir.
The programme brought together some 40 students chosen from several hundred applicants from both countries to work to resolve their differences under one neutral roof.
There was a special twist. In the “meeting” with Microsoft, where students were training to articulate their positions to people of influence, the Pakistanis played the roles of the Indians, the Indians those of the Pakistanis. And both sides spontaneously showed compassion for the other’s predicament.
“The soldiers are tired of deployment. Everybody’s sick of the violence. And what’s more, when I’m on the front, I miss my wife,” improvised Ali Inayat, 17, of Lahore, in his role as the Indian soldier meeting the pretended executive.
With that remark, laughter erupted from Ali’s audience, but the point was not lost on anybody in the room, including the real-life former head of the Indian Navy, retired Admiral L. Ramdas, a peace activist and one of a few elder participants.
“Being young, they are not yet unduly polluted by external influences. They are spending this valuable time simply getting to know more about one another as humans with common hopes and fears,” said Ramdas, a founder of the nine-year-old Pakistan India People’s Forum for Peace and Democracy.
Though many of the students from the two countries are already involved in peace efforts at home, most have never been to Kashmir. Fewer still have ever crossed their nations’ common border.
Each expressed hopes, however, that they could return home with new communication skills that some day would make travel to Kashmir safe for people on each side.
PREJUDICE: “Kashmir is the paradise of our two countries but we cannot go there because of the terror. After discussing our problems with these Pakistanis we are able to share their ideas,” said Gaurav Jain, 18, of Kota, Rajasthan.
But even for these young diplomats, seeing eye to eye was clouded by prejudice at first.
“We came here thinking that Pakistanis are rude but, after the second day, we noticed that they are so friendly and cooperative. It’s just that they were just brainwashed by the teachers in their schools,” said Prateek Agarwal, 16, of Kota.
Where they learned their prejudice, and how, was the focus of another exercise in which the students dissected both Indian and Pakistani history books and newspapers to get at the truth.
“We’ve learned that whether Pakistan attacked or India attacked is of no consequence. (Fixing blame) keeps people back and increases the conflict,” said Ragni Kidvai, 17, from Karachi.
Instead of teaching them to fix blame, a handful of United World College students trained by conflict resolution professionals helped the Indian and Pakistani students to articulate their mission statement.
“We are a youth movement united in our efforts to build mutual trust and understanding for sustainable peace.”
But youthful idealists these students are not, with some saying their work would continue at home just as it began a month before the conference — on the Internet in email groups.
“My Web site is under construction and when it’s ready I will publish Pakistani views,” said Agarwal of Rajasthan.
One ethnic Kashmiri whose family fled for New Delhi when she was a small child pinpointed the importance of youth to the peace movement when she confessed she had not told her grandparents of her participation in the conference.
“They would not be happy and I have little hope of changing their minds. Now it is for us to build the bridges. The hope lies in future generations, with people who have not personally witnessed the pain and torture,” said Diva Dhar, 17.
“This conference marks a turning point in my perception. If we don’t interact with Pakistanis we have the concept of ‘the other’ in our mind, which is irrelevant because culturally we’re almost exactly the same,” Dhar said.
“Sustainable peace. That’s our buzzword,” said Dhar, who plans to publish stories about the conference in her school newspaper at the Puna, India campus of United World College.
—Reuters
