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Aman ki Asha and the bad

times in Indo-Pak relations

Wednesday, January 28, 2015

By Saeed Ahmed Rid

People-topeople contacts
are necessary
to keep the ball
rolling but what
is really needed
is top level
interventions,
like the Aman ki
Asha strategic
seminar series
and economic
conferences
that have the
real potential to
make a bigger
impact

re bad times here again in

the cyclical India-Pakistan
love-hate
relationship?
There's talk of Pakistan International Airline's New
Delhi flights being suspended as PIA has has
been told to "dispose of"
its office in Delhi since
the purchase was
"unauthorized". Violations of the
2003
ceasefire
along the Line of Control and
the working boundary between Pakistan and India
have become routine. Indian
Prime Minister Narendra
Modi's talk of "boli nahin,
goli" (not dialogue, bullets)
and National Security Adviser Ajit Doval's offensivedefence doctrine indicate
that the Modi government is
on the offensive with Pakistan, as many had feared before last year's elections.
The euphoria generated
by Modi's invitation to
Nawaz Sharif along with
other SAARC leaders at his
swearing-in ceremony has
evaporated. In Pakistan, several factors have led to
Nawaz Sharif being cut to
size, though his congratulatory letter to Modi for India's
66th Republic Day on Jan 26,
wishes "the people of India
progress and prosperity" and
reiterates Pakistan's commitment to "developing friendly
relations with India on the
basis of sovereign equality,
mutual respect and commonality of interests".
The peace process has in
the past survived worse situations than the current stand
off - the 1998 nuclear detonations, the 1999 Kargil crisis,
the 2001 Indian parliament
bombing, the 2006 Samjhota
Express bombing, the 2008
Mumbai attacks. Jingoism
and the war discourse get
more attention, as media
tend to focus on bad news.
It is in such trying times
that the peace lobbies in
India and Pakistan become

even more relevant. This is

when the peace lobby must
work to make its presence
felt and keep the peace discourse alive, as the Pakistan
India Peoples' Forum for
Peace and Democracy
(PIPFPD) has done in the
past along with other peace
groups.
Since its launch on January 1,2010, Aman ki Asha
(AKA) has led this discourse
supported by, and supporting, other peace groups.
On November 26, 2008,
the heads of the Jang Group
and the Times of India met at
the Taj Mahal Hotel in Mumbai to discuss AKA, the joint

Imran Khan at the Economic Conference 2012, Lahore: trade for peace

AKA Strategic Seminar, Delhi, 2012: C. Raja Mohan makes a point

peace initiative that they
planned to launch on Jan 1,
2009. The launch was delayed by a year due to terrorist attacks in Mumbai later
that night, including at the
Taj Hotel.
The Mumbai attacks derailed the India Pakistan
peace process at the government level, as the attackers
no doubt intended. The loud
media hype and outrage in
India against Pakistan overshadowed any talk of peace.
Although thousands came

RIP Dr Rajni Kothari

ome 75 members from around Sindh attended the provincial convention of the Pakistan India Peoples Convention
in Karachi last week, chaired by prominent journalist I.
A Rehman, President of the PIPFPD, Pakistan Chapter.
Participants adopted a Resolution expressing concern at
the increasing tensions and cross-border firing incidents and
demanding that both government initiate dialogue however instead of resuming dialogue from both sides are alleging each
other through media. The Resolution urged both to relax visa
restrictions to enhance people-to-people interaction. It demanded the restoration of secretary level talks as a first step
towards talks to improve cooperation in the fields of trade, culture, education and most importantly fighting common issues
like poverty and terrorism.

Anis Haroon, I.A. Rehman and Asad Butt: peace resolution

stowing the Most Favoured

Nation (MFN) status on
India while in India Hindutva
groups managed to get the
government to stall the
newly agreed liberal visa
regime. Renewed activity by
peace groups and several
joint statements by Indian
and Pakistani peace groups
condemning the incidents
and calling for immediate implementation of the MFN
and the visa agreement
helped de-escalate the conflict gradually. However the
MFN status for India and the
visa agreement are still
awaiting implementation.
Another significant role
AKA plays is to bring various
peace groups on one platform, sending a strong message to the two governments
and the opposition parties.
In Jan 2013, AKA volunteers
took the lead in organisingan
unprecedented "India Pakistan Peace Now" global vigil
that individuals and peace
groups in India, Pakistan and

in more than a dozen countries joined in.

The role of the peace
constituency has been recognized at the top level,
when, addressing party leaders at a public gathering on
January 18, 2013, Prime Minister, Manmohan Singh acknowledged the existence of
Pakistan's peace constituency. Responding to
those urging him to send a
strong message to Pakistan
after the alleged beheading
of the Indian soldiers, Mr.
Singh said the Indian government has to take the
peace process forward keeping the Pakistani peace constituency in mind.
In the last five years, no
major crisis has emerged between India and Pakistan although border skirmishes
have continuously hindered
progress in the peace process. The current running
tensions, far more complex
in nature compared to the
mini crises over the last five

The writer, a faculty

member at Quaid-i-Azam
University Islamabad, did
his PhD on "People-to-People contacts between India
and Pakistan" from the department of Peace Studies,
University of Bradford,
UK. Email:
saeedrid@qau.edu.pk

Our cross-border production is ambitious given the restrictive visa regime and tensions between India
and Pakistan but we are ready to take on this daunting task

PIPFPD urges talks

AKA brought together the

Confederation of Indian Industries (CII) and the Pakistan Business Council
(PBC), the two top most representative bodies of the
business community in India
and Pakistan and made them
partners in peace.
In fact the roots of the
India and Pakistan governments' pragmatic policy on
enhancing bilateral trade and
investment during 2011-12
lay in AKA's first business
meeting and the accompany-

ing and subsequent discussions.

AKA also organised several other events during
those critical times, like two
strategic seminars, a water
conference, a conference of
media groups, peace hankies, a series of cultural,
music and art performances,
and campaigns like 'Milne
Do' (against visa restrictions) and "in the name of
humanity" (for prisoners).
The strategic seminars specially helped to bridge the
gap at the top leadership
level and prepared the
ground for the new trade
regime between India and
Pakistan.
AKA and peace groups
also helped the two governments to avert rising tensions in the wake of the alleged beheading of Indian
soldiers along the LoC that
led to serious violations of
the 2003 ceasefire in January
2013. These tensions halted
progress on Pakistan's be-

years, may well be the first

real test of AKA. This time,
the conflicts are not restricted to firing incidents
along the LoC or a particular
terrorist event. Now, it is
more about policy changes
at the government level in
both countries. This will require more robust and longterm efforts on the part of
the peace lobby.
Given that the current impasse directly involves the
top-most decision making
levels in both countries, middle range, grassroots peopleto-people contact events
may not help improve the situation. They are necessary
to keep the ball rolling but
what is really needed is top
level interventions, like the
AKA strategic seminar series
and Economic conferences
that have the real potential
to make a bigger impact.
Through this article I urge
the Jang Group and the
Times of India to plan more
events along these lines.
That is what is in the
larger interest of the people
and economies of both countries. Those who believe that
India can forge ahead without resolving their disputes
with Pakistan, and feel smug
at seeing Pakistan grappling
with terrorism and other internal challenges are badly
mistaken. The fate of both
countries is so intricately interwoven that one cannot
prosper at the cost of other.
As the former Indian Prime
Minister, Manmohan Singh
said, "We can choose our
friends but not our neighbours".

Milne Do and a visit to Lahore

B R I E F S

akistani activists paid tribute to prominent political

scholar and peace activist Dr Rajni Kothari who passed
away in Delhi on January 19, 2015, aged 86 years. Dr
Kothari, born on August 16, 1928, was one of the founding
members of the Pakistan India Peoples Forum for Peace and
Democracy (PIPFPD).
Participants at the Sindh PIPFPD meeting remembered Dr
Kothari's services to the people of South Asia. Advocate
Aabida Ali Advocate presented a citation for Dr. Kothari, who
authored several books and was associated with prominent
research institutions, including the Center for the Study of
Development Societies that he established in 1963.

out on December 12, 2008 to

form a human chain for
peace across Mumbai, tensions between the two governments remained high.
Aman k iAsha's launch a
year later greatly boosted efforts at normalisation.
Arguably AKA's most important contribution towards
improving relations has been
its promotion of business
and trade by bringing the top
level business community
heads on one platform and
helping them set the main
contours of agreements on
business and trade which
later became the main thrust
of the new rapprochement.

By Imran Zahid
e have been
back in Delhi
for
some
weeks now but
it feels like yesterday that we visited Pakistan,
strolling along the Lahore
streets I and Danish Iqbal, my
friend and director of our
forthcoming theatrical production 'Milne Do'.
'Milne Do' is an intense love
story between two culturally
crossed individuals during
times of hatred, like Shakespeare's immortal 'Romeo and
Juliet'. An attempt to find common ground between India and
Pakistan, it will be a collaborative cross-border project produced by Mahesh Bhatt and
Sandip Kapoor (Promodome
films) in collaboration with
Azad Theatre, Lahore.
In India, we see Pakistan
and its popular culture through
the world of celluloid, an industry close to the hearts of
our countrymen, or through
television news, usually negative. Even personally, my imagination has run wild when it
came to Pakistan. It was only
in 2011 that I first got a chance
to understand Pakistan.
It was only when I joined
the campaign to free the Pakistani prisoner Dr Khalil
Chishty, unjustly convicted of

THE FIRST STEP

LET US KNOW WHAT YOU THINK

Feedback, contributions, photos, letters:

Email: amankiasha@janggroup.com.pk
Fax: +92-21-3241-8343
Post: aman ki asha c/o The News,
I.I. Chundrigar Road, Karachi

With 'Milne Do' director Danish Iqbal: at Lahore railway station

Street food in Lahore: with Taimur Rahman of Laal
murder in India that I was introduced to the real Pakistan. I
interacted with Pakistanis as I
tried to create public awareness about the case and contacted friends in the Indian
media to take up the story.
With people from both countries working together, we had
an unprecedented success. Dr
Chishty was acquitted in December 2012.
The title of our play 'Milne
Do' was also the title of a 2006
documentary by journalist
Beena Sarwar about Kashmiris
separated across the divide.
The peace initiative Aman ki
Asha launched by the Times of
India and Jang Group, Pakistan, also has a campaign
called Milne Do, against visa
restrictions between India and
Pakistan.
Moved to look beyond the
surface, I discussed the idea of
this play with my mentor Mahesh Bhatt who has long been
working on India-Pakistan
peace along with the journalist
Kuldip Nayar.
With his go-ahead, Danish

At a tea stall: outskirts of Lahore

Iqbal and I began discussing
the script, music and actors
with colleagues in Pakistan.
We now had to visit and get a
taste of life across the border
in order to take the project forward.
To be honest, I was a bit
nervous about the prospect.
That changed when I met Mansoor Ahmad Khan, Deputy
High commissioner of Pakistan to India. His appreciation
of our efforts boosted my
morale and I became excited
about the prospect of a cultural collaboration between
talented Indians and Pakista-

nis. In Lahore, not for a moment did I feel that I was not in
India. The food reminded me
of the old Delhi lanes where I
wander often to satiate my
taste buds. The culture was
rich, much like back home and
I was simply bowled over by
the warmth of my hosts.
On my return, when I told
friends in India about my experience in Pakistan, how I felt I
have a second home there that
I will visit again, they could
sense my joy. Earlier, when I
discussed this project, I could
see an element of suspicion
and fear in their minds. Now,
to my surprise, they said they
would like to go with me next
time, and share my happy experience.
In Lahore, Danish and I
were taken aback by the
amount of young talent we witnessed when he held a workshop with members of Azad
Theatre. We re-connected with
the band Laal again whom we
had met in India earlier. Taimur
Rahman, the lead singer, not
only took us around the city
but agreed to be on board for
the play.
I found so many similarities
and so few differences be-

tween the two nations. We

hear a lot in the media about
the worsening law and order
situation in Pakistan. The truth
is that like our citizens, the
people there are also fighting
back. Like us, they too are affected by terrorism. I was a
witness to that when Pakistan's heart bled after the inhuman attack on children in
Peshawar.
We were in between workshops for 'Milne Do' when we
heard about the Peshawar attack. Everyone was shocked. It
was sad and painful to see people of all age groups come out
on the streets of Lahore to
protest peacefully through a
candle light march just like we
have done at India Gate. I realized that we have the same
blood and the same soul.
I heard radio channels playing the heart-rending duet
"Lukka chupi bahut hui
saamne aaja na" by the nightingale of India Lata Mangeshkar
and Mozart of Madras A. R.
Rahman from Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra's 'Rang De Basanti'. Even at that moment of
emotional havoc the Pakistanis
could connect with Bollywood.
The lyrical genius of Prasoon

Joshi in expressing the pain of

a mother searching for a lost
child echoed with every
mother in Pakistan that day.
Our cross-border production is an ambitious plan given
the restrictive visa regime and
ongoing tensions between
India and Pakistan but we are
ready to take on this daunting
task. We want to conduct rehearsals in both countries, and
stage the play in Calcutta,
Delhi, Mumbai, Karachi, Islamabad, Lahore, and other cities.
We hope to open the play on

With Azad Theatre's Malik

Aslam and Sarfaraz Ansari:
outside their office
April 15 at New Delhi's Kamani
Auditorium, and in Lahore and
Karachi in May.
For me, Aman ki Asha is
not just a few pictures and articles in newspapers but the aspiration to get people from
both nations together on a platform and create something
beautiful and magical. I believe
it's time we bridge the divide
and push for peaceful relations
between both countries. I hope
that our production will fill at
least some gaps between us.
Imran Zahid is an Indian
actor, and Director of Take
One School of Mass
Communication, New Delhi.
Email: syimza@gmail.com

A peace initiative whose time has come...

Destination Peace: A commitment by the Jang Group, Geo and The Times of India Group to
create an enabling environment that brings the people of Pakistan and India closer together,
contributing to genuine and durable peace with honour between our countries.