‘Bridging Partition: People’s Initiatives for Peace Between India and Pakistan’ – recent publication including my essay – review in Daily Times
Filed under: Pakistan-India | 3 Comments »
‘Bridging Partition: People’s Initiatives for Peace’ review
Posted on August 21, 2010 by beenasarwar
‘What good is a dead body if you can’t see the person alive?’
Posted on July 13, 2010 by beenasarwar
Published in Hardnews, India and The News on Sunday, Pakistan
PERSONAL POLITICAL
What good is a dead body if you can’t see the person alive?
Beena Sarwar
India-Pakistan relations have Nazo Reshi vacillating between hope and despair. Hailing from Srinagar, she is married to a Pakistani and lives in Islamabad. “Every time I apply for a visa for Jammu and Kashmir it is a marathon,” she wrote in an email to Aman ki Asha, the peace initiative of the Jang Group of Pakistan where I work and the Times of India Group.
“The intricacies of the visa application keep increasing. Nobody realises the plight of women like me who are divided from their families, often from villages all over India and Pakistan. Continue reading
Filed under: Pakistan-India | Tagged: foreign ministers meeting, indo pak petition, pakistan india relations, Pakistan-India | 9 Comments »
Competitor to militant Islam: Daata’s langar closed for first time in 927 years…
Posted on July 3, 2010 by beenasarwar
Langar at Daata Darbar
The horrific suicide bombings which claimed over 40 lives on Thursday night at the shrine of the revered sufi poet Hazrat Daata Ganj Baksh, the patron saint of Lahore, are a gory reminder of the urgent need for all concerned to join forces against ‘terror’.
A little over a year ago, after the attack on the Sri Lankan cricketers in Lahore in March 2009, Siddharth Varadarajan urged India and Pakistan to forget the conspiracies and acknowledge that they face the same threat – ‘Lahore attack shows urgency of joint action on terror‘.
Rehman Baba's shrine damaged in the attack of March 2009
He suggested that “Cricket is the most visible icon of secular Pakistan, and perhaps the only competitor militant Islam faces in its struggle to tame the wayward Pakistani mind”. My response was that there is another, even more deep-rooted competitor that militant Islam faces – the deep-rooted, widespread adherence to Sufi Islam and values, superstition, taweez dhaga etc. “I fear (hope hope hope I am wrong) a major attack on any urs taking place at any of the major shrines any time soon,” I wrote at the time.
Two days later Hazrat Baba Rehman’s shrine outside Peshawar was attacked, thankfully without any casualties. Continue reading
Filed under: Pakistan-India | Tagged: ajmer, baba rehman peshawar, daata darbar lahore, data darbar, Lahore, militant islam, Moinuddin Chishti, siddharth varadarj, sri lankan cricket attack, suicide bombing | 19 Comments »
Peace Hankies Chain & QBR at Wagha border – and Milne Do
Posted on July 1, 2010 by beenasarwar
Posted to beena-issues yahoogroup yesterday:
Pakistani and Indian schoolchildren at the white line marking the border. The Pakistanis were about to pass the banner signed by 1900 kids from Abbottabad to their Indian counterparts. And oh look! Someone's actually standing ON the line!! Photo: Beena Sarwar
Aman ki Asha, Milne Do, Peace Hankies Chain & the Queens’ Baton Relay… Much has happened since my last post, the Aman ki Asha Milne Do curtain raiser. The foreign secretaries met in Islamabad and so did the Home Ministers. We had a senior reporter give each of them a set of our Milne Do campaign — editorial, my curtain raiser, op-ed articles by Vazira Fazeela and Manvendra Singh, the Aman ki Asha page of June 23, and the TOI page of June 24, plus the ads we’ve run since last week focusing on the main issues (city specific visas, police reporting, same entry/exit points, no tourist visas etc). Continue reading
Filed under: Pakistan-India | Tagged: Haya Najam Shiraz, Jassi Singh, Jawad Ahmed, Nadia Khan, Najam Shiraz, peace chain, peace hankies, wagah, wagha | 1 Comment »
Curtain raiser: Milne Do (Let Indians & Pakistanis Meet)
Posted on June 22, 2010 by beenasarwar
Milne Do 'teaser' ad created by Pirana Advertising
My curtain raiser in The News today about the new Milne Do campaign launched by Aman ki Asha, the peace initiative between the Jang Group of Pakistan and The Times of India Group.
Curtain raiser: Milne Do
The loudest lament heard at every single event organised by Aman ki Asha since the launch of this peace initiative on Jan 1, 2010: how difficult it is for Indians and Pakistanis to visit each other’s country given our obstructive, out-dated visa regimes. The loudest demand: let people meet. Continue reading
Filed under: Pakistan-India | Tagged: india pakistan visa restrictions | 7 Comments »
Conversations 13: Meeting point
Posted on June 12, 2010 by beenasarwar
I forgot to upload the last three Conversations published in The News on Sunday, Aman ki Asha page in Political Economy. The entire archives are also up at the Aman ki Asha website
Conversations 13: Meeting point
June 3 2010
Dear Beena,
Right at the start of this missive, I have been wondering just how we will ever reconcile our diametrically different views on what we call POK/what you call AJK. (Let alone reconcile the names). You are taught that it “joined Pakistan voluntarily”. We are taught that Pakistan grabbed it from us in ’47. What’s the meeting point between these two perceptions? How do we resolve this disagreement? Continue reading
Filed under: Pakistan-India | Tagged: 1971, AJK, Dr Mubashir Hasan, india pakistan joint history, kargil, POK, trust deficit | Leave a comment »
Conversations 12: A grounding for reconciliation
Posted on June 12, 2010 by beenasarwar
I forgot to upload the last few Conversations published in The News on Sunday, Aman ki Asha page in Political Economy. The entire archives are also up at the Aman ki Asha website
A grounding for reconciliation
Dilip D’Souza and Beena Sarwar continue their email discussion, questioning state versions of history and politics
May 20, 2010
Dear Beena,
So here you go – on my wife’s birthday I am taking a couple of hours off to write this to you. Please send whatever brownie points I’m eligible for to various powers that be in our countries.
Facetiousness aside, I’m once more in the hills as I write, this time in the south. Such a clean, quiet, beautiful spot. So peaceful, in fact, given our discussions for several weeks now, I cannot help wondering if such peace is the exception in our part of the world, rather than the rule; and if so, will that ever change? Is it meant only for an incredibly lucky few? Continue reading
Filed under: Pakistan-India | Tagged: india pakistan peace, Jinnah, joint memorial, Kashmir, partition, textbook revision | Leave a comment »
Conversations 11: “There is more than truth”
Posted on June 12, 2010 by beenasarwar
I forgot to upload the last three Conversations published in The News on Sunday, Aman ki Asha page in Political Economy. The entire archives are also up at the Aman ki Asha website
“There is more than truth”
May 13, 2010
Dear Beena,
In your last letter, you said that “many Indians feel there’s no point talking to the Pakistan government, given the strength of the ‘establishment’ here.” I should tell you that there are plenty of Indians who feel there’s no point talking to the Indian government, for various reasons. At an extreme we have the Maoist insurgents, who long ago decided that talking to the Government is futile, and have taken to arms. Perhaps at another extreme, we have plenty of ordinary middle-class folks who will not exercise their most basic dialogue with the government — their vote. And somewhere in between are the rest of us, cynical about government’s every move. Continue reading
Filed under: Pakistan-India | Tagged: conversations, dilip d'souz, Kasab, loc, maoists, pakistan dossiers, terrorism, US foreign policy | Leave a comment »
Peace hankies + trade + business = reduce hostilities
Posted on May 17, 2010 by beenasarwar
Happy Home School students display their Aman ki Asha 'peace hankies'. Photo: Naqeebur Rehman
Another Aman ki Asha event in the offing -‘Partners in peace and progress‘, the trade and investment meeting between top Indian and Pakistani business executives, taking place in Delhi May 18-19, 2010. This is the latest in the chain of events since the initiative was launched on Jan 1, 2010, by two media giants of Pakistan and India. Since then, there have been several events in both countries – literary festivals, music concerts, mushaira, editors and anchors’ meeting, a seminar on strategic issues, the ongoing peace hankies campaign, and now this major economic conference. The coverage of these events in the media, especially the sponsoring media groups Jang, News, Times of India and Geo TV, has created a buzz around peace. Crucially, it has helped to create ‘an enabling environment’, as Geo TV President Imran Aslam terms it, that may well have contributed to the thaw in India Pakistan relations. (For more peace hankies photos see my Flickr site). For those cynics and the critics – yes we all know peace is not going to happen overnight, but when the critical mass of people is clearly for it, it might not be so far away as it once had seemed.
Filed under: Pakistan-India | Tagged: aman ki asha, economic conference, Geo TV, Imran Aslam, peace hankies campaign | 2 Comments »
Conversations 10: The trust deficit
Posted on May 11, 2010 by beenasarwar
May 6 2010
Dear Beena,
I am heartened too by our PMs meeting in Thimphu. But let me say that I also have hope from such events as your Aman ki Asha seminar, where there’s discussion between folks from both sides who have less political pressures on them than ministers.
Still, while I don’t mean to second-guess what happened at the seminar, I wonder about the urge to build a “consensus” in discussions like these. Is that always necessary or useful, what do you think? I wonder if we end up watering down our own emotions and concerns in the search for consensus, and thus leave them essentially un-addressed. If that’s at all true, it’s not a good prescription for peace. Continue reading
Filed under: Pakistan-India | Tagged: condescension, fundamentalism, Kasab, Kashmir, nationalism, perceptions, terrorism, Thimphu, water | 2 Comments »
Journeys to democracy 