ISLAMABAD, Feb 10: The conflicts between Muslims and Christians in Pakistan should not be tied with religion and efforts must be made for their resolution through cultural mechanisms, Dr Andrew Jilani, former education adviser, Aga Khan Education Service, said.

He was speaking at a seminar, on “Exploring cultural practices of conflicts and their resolutions in a society: A case study from Sri Lanka and Challenges for Pakistan”, organized by the SDPI on Monday.

“Christians here have more commonalities with Muslims than differences, as the two speak same language and wear same dress,” he said. Protection against all conflicts lies in culture, provided it is based on secular lines, he said.

Dr Jilani presented his studies on the inter-personal conflict resolution practices of a Tamil plantation labour community in Sri Lanka, and applied the model to the Pakistani society.

The plantation community comprises Tamil people who were brought by British colonizers from India to pluck the leaves of tea and, thus, permanently settled there.

Dr Jilani said the migration caused them cultural and social dislocation and they lost their traditional cultural mechanics of conflict resolutions by shifting from Panchayat to modern ways of settlement of disputes.

Drawing a comparison between Plantation Tamils and Pakistani Christians, he said Tamils made contribution to economy, language and music, whereas Christians contributed through education, health services, art and games. He said both faced institutional discrimination as citizenship rights were denied to Tamils for long, besides they were given limited access to higher government jobs.

Similarly, he said, Christians were subjected to discriminatory laws and were not provided opportunities of business and higher education. He maintained that the two communities were meted out societal discrimination and were looked down upon owing to their low-caste background.

Mr Jilani lamented that Christians in Pakistan were considered aliens and identified with the West.

Dr Jilani defined conflict as a struggle between two independent parties and termed it natural in society.

He made a distinction between individualistic and collectivist society, saying the former was a social pattern of loosely-linked individuals driven by personal goals. The other pattern is of tightly-linked individuals driven by collective gains.

Dr Jilani said conflict resolution training workshops, inter-religion dialogue were a must for peaceful co-existence.

Some of the participants called for revising syllabus to eliminate the scourge of discrimination against other communities.