Daily Times

The Initiatives of Change (IofC)
five-day (Feb 1-5) conference on “Making Democracy Work” took place at the Asia Plateau, the name of the IofC buildings and gardens complex at Panchgani. At 4,500 feet above sea level, Panchgani has a cool climate, which reminded me of Abbottabad (minus Osama bin Laden).

I was very pleasantly surprised to learn that the current president of IofC is a Muslim, a distinguished Egyptian lady, Dr Omnia Marzouk. The biggest representation was understandably from India. I met political activists, writers, artistes, retired senior civil servants, and young and old men and women who had given up lucrative careers to devote themselves fully to the IofC Charter of ‘building trust across the world’s divides of culture, nationality, belief, and background’.

The international representation was equally impressive. Australia, Cambodia, Cameroon, Canada, Egypt, Fiji, Germany, Malaysia, Myanmar, Nigeria, South Korea, South Africa, Sri Lanka, Sweden, Switzerland, Syria, The Philippines, Tibet, UK, US and Vietnam. A young man from Tibet was also present. A delegation from Pakistan had also been invited, but just then the infamous firing and beheading incident on the Line of Control had taken place. As is standard practice, the Indian foreign and home ministries decided that Pakistanis coming to attend the conference devoted to trust building should be penalised. And so I represented both Sweden and Pakistan.

I had a long conversation with the executive vice-president of the IofC, Mr Edward Peters. I learnt that the Moral Re-Armament (MRA, later renamed Initiatives of Change, IofC) helped rebuild the friendly relationship between France and Germany after WWII. Similarly, the MRA had worked hard to help repair relations between Japan and its neighbours. During decolonisation, the MRA played a quiet reconciliatory role in helping avoid or minimise bloodshed. More recently, sustained peacemaking work has been undertaken in Burundi and reconciliation in South Sudan was also being facilitated. “Usually IofC’s involvement comes about organically through personal contacts, and through changes of heart in particular individuals who then ask for IofC’s help,” he told me. One day, reconciliation between India and Pakistan would also be on the cards when a change of heart occurs on both sides of the border, I thought. On that occasion the IofC would surely play a historic role.

During the conference, one heard moving accounts. Mr Graeme Cordiner from Sydney narrated his campaign to set up a memorial to 28 unarmed Aboriginal people killed by a gang of stockmen (Australian herd owners) in 1838. Bo Bo Oo, a member of Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy spent 20 years in prison just for protesting military rule, but met his future wife as he walked out of prison on his release: both had been released the same day! Marites Dañguilan Vitug’s account of her fearless investigative reporting from the Philippines entailed death threats and libel suits but she remained undeterred.

Helen Yogo, born in a polygamous family of Cameroon, escaped to neighbouring Nigeria where she succeeded in getting a university education, working as a translator of English and French language documents and in other such positions. She supported the education of her half-brothers but refused to marry a rich old man. She wanted to go back and start a campaign, ‘Cameroon I Care’. Hani and Amani Sultan from Egypt shared their experiences of the Arab Spring and the problems it has run into. Amani thought my name Ishtiaq was beautiful and regretted the Arabs did not use it ordinarily as a name. She also found Sajida a beautiful name that Pakistani and Indian Muslims use but not Arabs.

A brother and sister managed to come from Syria. Their account of the atrocities being committed overwhelmed us. The Bashar al-Assad regime as well as the opposition had their hands drenched in innocent blood, and without more international engagement the bloodbath would continue. A special session was arranged where I read out some interviews from my book The Punjab Bloodied, Partitioned Cleansed. Those who attended the session were visibly moved by the stories.

There were, of course, stories that lifted our spirits. Cricket White told us about the reconciliation she was facilitating between descendants of former slaves and slave-owners in Richmond, Virginia, once the citadel of slavery in the United States. In South Africa, Dr Myrna Lewis applied her Deep Democracy psychological therapy to promote good relations between formerly hostile individuals.

Dr Jared Buono from the United States works with Grampari, IofC’s Rural and Ecology Initiative, at Panchgani. He said, “My goal in life is to eradicate extreme poverty in my lifetime.” We visited the farm where new techniques of conserving irrigation water were being tried. Such technology would become crucial in many parts of the world, not least in India and Pakistan. A number of peasant and Dalit women were being trained to learn some skill and earn a living. The main sessions were lit up by beautiful songs sung by IoC choruses, which the very young and very old had been rehearsing together for days.

One evening I went sightseeing. The sun was just setting when the muezzin gave the call for prayers. I was standing at a great height and could get a truly panoramic view of the deep valleys and ravines all around. The azan was recited from valley to valley. In my heart I acknowledged Mahatma Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru and Dr Ambedkar’s sincerity to make India secular, pluralist and inclusive.

That such a vision is under attack from rightwing forces is undoubtedly true, but it is equally true that Indian democracy is resilient enough to thwart such threats, if not fully then to a large extent. If people in isolated valleys feel free enough to chant the call to prayers then the battle for making democracy real is being waged every day many times in the hundreds and thousands of urban and rural communities that constitute the Indian cultural mosaic. It is a struggle that can be won.

The writer is a PhD (Stockholm University); Professor Emeritus of Political Science, Stockholm University; and Honorary Senior Fellow, Institute of South Asian Studies, National University of Singapore. Latest publications: Pakistan: The Garrison State, Origins, Evolution, Consequences (1947-2011), Karachi: Oxford Unversity Press, 2013; The Punjab Bloodied, Partitioned and Cleansed: Unravelling the 1947 Tragedy through Secret British Reports and First-Person Accounts (Karachi: Oxford University Press, 2012; New Delhi: Rupa Books, 2011). He can be reached at billumian@gmail.com