Magsaysay awardees join hands across Kashmir

Two men on different sides of the border are brought together by the common vision of peace despite a decades-old conflict that divides their countries.

These men lean on a lasting friendship and devotion to their cause to see reconciliation through.

Indian Laximanarayan Ramdas and Pakistani Ibn Adbur Rehman are in the country to receive the Ramon Magsaysay Award for peace and international understanding.

Ramdas and Rehman are cited for their achievements in reaching across the hostile Kashmiri border to nurture a "people-based" consensus for peace amid an armed standoff between their two countries over issues of religion-infused nationalism, militarism and nuclear weapons.

Ramdas and Rehman are old friends who share a bitter past. In 1947 after India gained independence from Britain, they found themselves on opposite sides when communal violence erupted and Pakistan was born. Soon, India and Pakistan went to war over the disputed territory of Kashmir.

Some 50 years since, both men continue to be at the forefront of efforts by the Pakistan-India People’s Forum for Peace and Democracy (PIPFPD) to sustain "dialogues" between the peoples of Pakistan and India and other peace initiatives.

On another level, both men along with other forum leaders have worked behind the scenes with national leaders and opinion-makers to promote their peace agenda.

The PIPFPD also campaigned for the liberalization of travel between the two countries and for the revision of hate-filled school textbooks.

Rehman is founding chair of the organization’s Pakistani branch while Ramdas has chaired the India branch. Both men guided the organization until 2003.

The forum’s series of joint conventions that started in 1995 have drawn hundreds of Indians and Pakistanis together to promote demilitarization and denuclearization.

The two men have also worked tirelessly for the forum to publish resolutions insisting upon mutual arms reductions and troop pullbacks, an end to cross-border provocation and a peaceful democratic solution to the violence in war-torn Kashmir.

Ex-military man Ramdas and former journalist Rehman are driven by images of brutality from their youth to focus efforts on the elimination of non-violence as a means of resolving the animosity between India and Pakistan.

Rehman and Ramdas, whose lecture yesterday was rescheduled due to inclement weather, are one in saying that "prejudice" needs to be dismantled to further clear the way towards peace, not only in their countries but in the world where "a variety of conflicts" exists.

"We have to appreciate enough that these (prejudices) exist and work around and through it and shed some of it," Ramdas told The STAR in an interview.

While they agreed that prejudice is also an effect of media’s exposure of the India-Pakistan war, Rehman noted how it is also a product of "ignorance" among people about issues, particularly about global conflicts.

These issues, he said, need to be identified and confronted with the people’s involvement in dialogues as they have been doing in Pakistan and India.

The same goes, they said, for the "domestic" conflict in the southern Philippines where Muslim separatist rebels have been engaged in over three decades of struggle with the government for an independent Islamic state.

To the Filipino people, Ramdas has this message: "I can only wish your people well and I hope they will be able to resolve the conflict and remove prejudices."

"The art of peace-making is to respect and learn to live with differences, not to allow it to turn violent," he added.

Rehman, a staunch advocate of human rights in Pakistan, stressed that peace and justice must go hand in hand in ironing out conflicts.

"We must do justice to people and keep the level of the respect for human rights and justice," he said.

Now in their 70s, both men vowed to continue their campaign for peace and go on building popular support for peace on both sides of the border.

They believe that people are generally "well-meaning" and all "want to live in peace."

To them, peace will prevail in the end even if they must work for it for the remainder of their lives.

"There is a great demand for peace. Little steps are taken but they add up and, in the long run, these will make these kinds of movements effective. Today we have a groundswell (of support) which now no longer can be restrained by any government of either side," Ramdas said.

Rehman and Ramdas will hold their lecture this afternoon at the RM Hall at the Ramon Magsaysay Center in Roxas Boulevard in Manila. Prior to that at 9 a.m., another Magsaysay laureate, Filipino Benjamin Abadiano will talk on how the Philippines’ indigenous peoples chart their own progress.

Abadiano was cited by the Ramon Magsaysay Award Foundation for emergent leadership for his steadfast commitment to indigenous Filipinos.

Three more Magsaysay awardees will hold public lectures, including Presidential Commission on Good Government (PCGG) chair Haydee Yorac for government service. The lectures will run until next week.