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The Arts: a Gateway to
Understanding Others
By Arundhati Ray
Islamic extremists boarded a train at Godhra in the western Indian state of Gujarat in 2002, and systematically massacred a group of Hindu
Peaceworks' theater production "Peacewards" is based on a series of disturbing monologues on the theme of peace
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pilgrims who were returning from a religious convention. Within hours, Gujarat was in flames, ignited by the hatred of communal violence.
Hindus and Muslims killed and maimed each other in terrible acts of senseless brutality that spared no one: from infants to old men and
women, everyone was fair game for the murderous and rampaging mobs. PeaceWorks, a year-old initiative of the Seagull Foundation for the Arts in Kolkata (Calcutta), emerged in the wake of these terrible riots that tore apart the state.
"The scale of the violence and hatred forced us to confront the fact that to merely be horrified was no longer enough: we had to act," said
Anjum Kaytal
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Anjum Katyal, trustee and editor of Seagull. Because Seagull was an arts resource hub, its members felt best equipped to pursue this goal through the media of theater, film, and music.
PeaceWorks is based on the premise that the arts can play a vital role in empathy building because they allow one to enter other realities, and to imagine another person's landscapes. The arts have the potential to enhance a person's emotional capacities to imagine and therefore to empathize.
"Any social group has differences, but the important thing is to respect these differences," Katyal said. "We are not suggesting a utopian, tension-free world. Instead, we must see how these tensions can be diffused and resolved before they ramp up to the scale of war and riots. And this can happen when there is mutual respect and a willingness to dialogue – that is, to listen to the other's point of view and engage with a different understanding from one's own. For this we need to open up our minds, make ourselves receptive, and be aware. We need to be able to empathize."
Art: A Gateway to Others' Reality
Peaceworks set out to sensitize young people and shake them out of their insulated worlds. Its challenge was to design a program that actively uses the arts as a powerful resource to make young people understand that the wars and riots tearing apart our world are not happening "out there," disconnected from their realities.
Peaceworks sought to help young people understand that bigotry, intolerance, aggression – the negative character traits that cause situations like the riots in Gujarat – are not confined to a particular geographical place, but pervade society, and that they will be threats to safety until they are addressed.
To accomplish, this PeaceWorks organizes events, workshops, exhibitions, and interactions that are designed to sensitize young people, to
make them aware of what's going on, and to push them to take a stand and act on it. It is planning a wide range of activities that aim to explore peace issues and get young people to think about them and get engaged. These include FM radio shows created and run by young people, music concerts, poetry writing sessions, poster exhibitions, and interactions with leading human rights advocates.
"We've formed a volunteer network comprising students from high school and college,"
Sukanya Ghosh
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said Sukanya Ghosh, Peaceworks program officer, describing the Peaceworks strategy for mobilizing young in the city of Kolkata (Calcutta). "There is a core membership of about 20 students from about 12 educational institutions in the city, but during an actual event a much larger number gets involved."
Peaceworks hopes to engage young people in a program for which they will later assume ownership and move ahead under their own initiative. The program is off to a powerful start with a theater production called "Peacewards," based on a series of disturbing monologues on the theme of peace.
Peaceworks volunteer network
In the weeks leading up to the play, the participants underwent an intensive workshop where they explored and interpreted the concepts of peace and freedom. The sessions combined intense introspection and no-holds-barred expressions of feeling and positions.
There was a lot of role-play and story-building on the theme of violence and being violated. The students were deeply affected by the workshop, and the moving production that they mounted reflected that.
Creating Activism Through Empathy
"The experience completely changed me," said Purti Simon, a class 12 (12th grade) student at La Martiniere for Girls in Kolkata, and a member of the PeaceWorks Volunteer Network who participated in the workshops and the final production. "It's the most important thing that has happened to me.
"Previously, I knew the Gujarat riots had happened and had sympathized, but it was
First prize winner in an inter-school poster competition
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something happening to someone else. By the time we did the production, I could feel what those people had gone through – the pain, the outrage, the fear.
"The exercises at the workshop where we role-played, analyzed our own feelings, and debated with each other were powerful triggers that
opened my mind and ability to understand another's situation in a way I could not do before. And I know now that others need to feel this too: we cannot have any more Gujarats."
The most positive outcome has been students' readiness to advance the movement on their own steam. The volunteer network is growing every day, and students can rattle off ideas and action plans that they are pursing.
These activities include street theater on themes like ethnic and religious conflict, and organizing thought-provoking debates in their schools on issues such as "Can War be a Solution?" One student is considering taking a year off from school to make a film about the Gujarat carnage, focusing on her generation's reactions and thoughts about ethnic and religious conflict and the role of religion.
"This is fantastic, because we have always modeled ourselves as facilitators: we'll give the students the tools they need," Ghosh enthused.
"We'll organize theater workshops, lend them films from our archives and the like, but the momentum must be created and maintained by them. The fact that they are taking the initiative shows the extent to which they've internalized the peace and empathy agenda and made it their own."
Peaceworks' latest strategy is targeting teachers so that they too can promote the twin values of empathy and peace to their students. It is
Second prize winner in an inter-school poster competition
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planning workshops that will equip teachers to effectively incorporate values of tolerance, respect, and sensitivity in their teaching.
To do this the teachers need first to look inside themselves to become aware of their own prejudices and biases. In that initial session, they will undergo a process of self-analysis.
There will be workshops for teachers from ten informal learning programs run by citizen sector organizations. "In this way, we are reaching out to students and teachers," Katyal said.
Contact:
Seagull Arts and Media Resource Centre
36c, S.P.Mukherjee Road
Calcutta 700025
Tel: 4556942/43.
Dr. Arundhati Ray is a freelance journalist and co-author of a book on Sikkim, an Indian state in the eastern Himalaya. Based in Calcutta, she runs a placement service for women and is a consultant with Ashoka's Innovative Learning Initiative in India.
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