A peoples' quest for peace: Part - II

In 2010, the Jang Media Group in Pakistan and the Times of India Group in India launched the ‘Aman ki Asha’ (Hope for Peace) campaign. On January 1, 2010 the entire front page of the Times of India featured doves flying, and the words ‘LOVE PAKISTAN’.

The two groups worked very closely and it became one of the largest Indo-Pak peace campaigns ever. Aman ki Asha had the same heart-to-heart, people-to-people approach that the Pak-India Peace Forum and other people’s initiatives had been promoting so hard. Aman ki Asha featured a series of high-profile concerts and public service announcements with Amitabh Bachchan as the official spokesman in India. Billboards and hoardings were put up, and various campaigns were run to bring together children, business leaders and government officials in the name of better and friendlier relations.

Aman ki Asha attempted to push the peace process through a three-pronged strategy: facilitate a fair and equitable resolution of all disputes through dialogue, strongly advocate economic collaboration as the single most powerful driver of the peace process and increase cultural exchanges through greater people-to-people contacts. The people of the two countries looked at the campaign as a game changer, but since then so many governments have bandied ‘game-changer’ ad nauseam that it has lost its meaning.

Aman ki Asha captured the imagination of the people of the two countries by giving voice to their opinions and also has to its credit many practical achievements. It brought the India-Pakistan business communities closer by holding two of the biggest-ever economic conferences. From business icons and government officials to political leaders, many attended these conferences and articulated the benefits of economic collaboration while setting the direction and mapping the strategy for taking it forward.

The identical surveys that Aman ki Asha conducted in both countries showed the overwhelming desire of the people for the resolution of disputes and normalisation of relations. The campaign also tackled contentious and hard bilateral issues effectively and transparently and facilitated a greater understanding of the complex issues and a better appreciation of each other’s points of view.

The Aman ki Asha website says: “The Jang Group and the Times of India had independent surveys conducted prior to launching Aman ki Asha, and on its first anniversary. The survey results indicated that every single negative perception had declined and that all positive perceptions had increased. Polls revealed that 87% of Pakistanis and 74% of Indians felt that the Aman ki Asha campaign had helped create greater awareness about the core issues between India in Pakistan. The threat perception had gone down by over 20% in both countries. The brand recall of Aman ki Asha campaign was 94%. Most significantly, two thirds of people polled felt that peace was attainable in their lifetime, up 35% from the previous year.”

Within three months after the launch of the Aman ki Asha, in March 2010 a Chandigarh-based lawyers’ collective initiated a campaign to liberate a 16-year-old Pakistani boy jailed in Amritsar. ‘Lawyers for Human Rights International’ represented dozens of people ‘incorrectly’ branded as terrorists in past years, and arranged free legal aid to Noman Arshad to help establish his true age, nationality and other antecedents. The group got in touch with the boy’s family in Lahore and submitted requisite documentation when Arshad was produced before Amritsar’s chief judicial magistrate. A Border Security Force patrol had intercepted the teenager loitering close to the electrified security fence.

In April 2019, fisher-folk activists from India and Pakistan, along with members of the India-Pakistan Joint Judicial Committee on Prisoners and members of various civil society organisations met in New Delhi and discussed the issue of arrested fishermen. In a letter, they urged the prime ministers of both Pakistan and India to resolve the issue of arresting fishermen from the sea. The six organisations that decided to work together towards getting innocent fishermen released from India and Pakistan were: the Pakistan Institute for Labour Education and Research (Piler), Pakistan Fisherfolk Forum, Focus on the Global South, National Fishworkers Forum, India, The Porbandar Fishermen Boat Owners Association and Peace Mumbai, India.

Thanks to these efforts, a hundred Indian fishermen, including two minor children, were released from Malir Jail, Karachi, in August 2010. The released fishermen travelled to Lahore on two buses arranged by the government and were handed over to Indian authorities at Wagha Border. Retired Justice Nasir Aslam Zahid, member of the Judicial Committee from Pakistan; Chairman Pakistan Fisherfolk Forum (PFF) Mohammed Ali Shah; Piler Joint Director Zulfiqar Shah; and other personalities, including Syed Iqbal Haider Advocate, Sharafat Ali, BM Kutty, Shujauddin Qureshi, Majeed Motani and Sami Memon played a crucial role in these matters.

Then some prominent Indians sent a letter to Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh urging a reciprocal release of Pakistani fishermen. Veteran journalist Kuldip Nayar, filmmaker Mahesh Bhatt, former navy chief Admiral (r) L Ramdas, journalist Jatin Desai and grassroots activist Mazher Hussain, signed the letter requesting Singh to “look into the plight of Pakistani fishermen languishing in various Indian prisons”. In September 2010, another batch of 140 Indian fishermen attained freedom from Malir jail in Karachi. The Sindh government followed the decision of the Supreme Court of Pakistan ordering the release of over 400 Indian fishermen who languished in jails at Badin, Nara and Naushero Feroz.

In March 2011, then-President Asif Ali Zardari remitted the remaining jail term of Indian convict Gopal Das, who had been imprisoned in Pakistan for 27 years -- days ahead of a visit to India by then PM Yousaf Raza Gilani to watch the cricket World Cup semi-final featuring the teams of the two countries. Zardari remitted the remaining prison term of Das ‘on humanitarian grounds’. The remission was granted on the advice of the prime minister to ‘honour an appeal of the Supreme Court of India to the government of Pakistan’.

In May 2012, Aaghaz-e-dosti (Mission Bhartiyam) emerged as an Indo-Pak friendship initiative whose members were all either students or young professionals who were doing this in addition to their work. Aaghaz-e-dosti joined hands for collaboration on various initiatives with several organisations. It has aimed to create bonds of friendship and peace by involving itself in peace-building and conflict resolution while facilitating people-to-people contact and challenging mutual hatred and suspicion. It has arranged interactive sessions in schools and colleges called Aman chuapals, discussions, seminars and workshops.

There were numerous campaigns that Aman ki Asha spearheaded such as ‘Milne do’, ‘Water is life’, ‘Heart to Heart’, ‘Dividends – the economic benefits of peace’, ‘In humanity’s name’, and ‘Trade for peace’. Despite all these efforts, Aman ki Asha which used to appear on full pages of Jang and Time of India every week, gradually lost its steam due to the changing regional scenario -- especially after 2014 when the BJP government took over the reins of government in India. Both in India and Pakistan at the governmental level the desire for resumption of talks diminished.

For whatever Aman ki Asha achieved, the credit mainly goes to Beena Sarwar and Shahrukh Hasan who managed to float it for that long. In March 2021, Beena Sarwar launched the ‘South Asia Peace Action Network’ (Sapan) utilising the lessons learnt from Aman ki Asha. It came into being after an online meeting of over 80 peace mongers from around the region and diaspora. Then in August 2021, Sapan News came into being aiming to produce non-partisan and reliable journalism that connects and covers Southasia and the Indian Ocean to further the narrative of dialogues and peace

In August 2023, Sapan News became an independent media outlet with its own website launched at the second anniversary of the Southasia Peace Action Network. It has been publishing syndicated stories ever since. Despite the strong desire of the people of South Asia to normalise relations and establish people-to-people contact, it has become much harder to get visas to visit India or Pakistan from across the borders. It is so unfortunate that the establishments in the two countries have been unable to forge any meaningful engagement with each other. It has been nearly 25 years since I last visited India with my family to attend the Bangalore convention of the Paki-India Peace Forum.

We hope that the situation improves in the next few years; the hope is still there and the people of the two countries must not let it wither away.

Concluded

The writer holds a PhD from the University of Birmingham, UK. He tweets/posts @NaazirMahmood and can be reached at:mnazir1964@yahoo.co.uk