Gently but adroitly, she persuades the warring sides to engage in conversation, drawing strength from her uncompromising belief in the healing power of dialogue. By facilitating people-to-people dialogues on both sides of the India-Pakistan border, Barve builds civilian bonds that span the border and exert pressure on leaders of the both countries to reach an accord.

Barve has laid the groundwork for future tranquility by teaching young people in Kashmir that there are alternatives to strife and violence. She has brought a conflict-resolution and peace education curriculum to the schools of Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) state, introducing the very notion of peace to a generation that has always lived in an unstable society at war with itself.

Barve has spent two decades in India's most troubled regions encouraging feuding groups and brutalized communities to end the violence, recover from it, and avert further violence. This past-present-future strategy helps communal riot-torn communities rebuild themselves, making them stronger and more united than they were before the conflicts started.

Reclaiming a Tradition

Barve's faith in dialogue was shaped by strong Gandhian ethics that governed her family as she was growing up. She has honed her skills in facilitating dialogue during 30-odd years with the Moral Rearmament Movement,

Sushobha Barve

now known as Initiatives of Change, a diverse, global network that is committed to building trust across the world's divides.

Barve argues that a dialogue-based approach is not an alien imposition but a tradition embedded in South Asian history. But she concedes that genuine dialogue is tough on the ego: it forces introspection aimed at re-examining past actions, a willingness to concede that one has made mistakes or been unjust, and a willingness to see how one can set things right.

Dialogue aims to reconcile differences and create engagements where there is a commitment to understand a different point of view. It is an exchange marked by patient listening and the willingness to accept difficulties as seen from the other side.

Sadly, Barve observes that somewhere along the way this constructive culture of dialogue has morphed into the highly confrontational practice of debate—a competitive exercise designed to score points and sharply identify different points of view. Now that South Asia has had its taste of debate and the region is a mess, "it's time to try out dialogue once again," she contends.

Digging for the Roots of Conflict

Barve's earliest experiments in peace building took place in Bhagalpur, a town in the eastern state of Bihar that had a long history of communal unrest dating back to pre-Independence days. In 1989, a riot broke out there between Hindu and Muslim groups during a religious procession that further heightened tensions. Some estimates put the death toll at 2,000.

Barve visited the area immediately after the bloodshed as a part of a Moral Rearmament fact-finding mission. She listened to the heartbreaking narratives of victims who had lost everything in the pogrom and felt compelled to help them rebuild their lives and find ways to preventing such situations from reoccurring.

Barve stayed in Bhagalpur until 1992, connecting with the Gandhi Peace Foundation and the Lutheran World Service that were working to rehouse and rehabilitate victims of the conflict. She kept talking to the residents, helping them vent their anger and voice their anxieties.

Barve dug deeper, seeking the source of frustrations that had ignited such waves of anger. Although the causes were complex, she discovered that poverty and economic insecurity were particularly powerful motivating forces.

As Barve investigated the reasons for this poverty, she learned that the closing of a once-booming, local silk handloom industry had been a major blow. She worked with the community to press for government aid to revive this traditional source of income. The result: within three months the government provided weavers with a host of financial and organizational aid that helped revive their industry.

Barve felt her efforts were clearly affirmed when a Bhagalpur resident told her that if they had entered into such discussions earlier, "the riots never would have happened."

Knowing she was on the right track gave Barve the confidence to tackle the communal riots that threatened to destroy Mumbai's cosmopolitan fabric in 1992-93. The first round of riots was sparked by demolition of the Babri Masjid mosque—a heritage building and active place of worship—by right-wing Hindu fanatics in December 1992. A wave of Hindu-Muslim fighting surged over Mumbai leaving hundreds dead and forcing more than 40,000 people to flee their homes.

An interschool sports meet: Saher (see story at left) regularly gets children from Christian, Muslim, and Hindu-affiliated community schools to interact at sports meets. This is often the first time that children from different religious backgrounds intermingle.

Even as the city was recovering from this onslaught, a series of bomb blasts ripped through the metropolis in March 1993. Once again, Mumbai was the scene of apocalyptic conflict. This time, the toll from violence was in the thousands.

One of the worst affected areas was Dharavi, Asia's largest slum and home to some 1 million residents (40 percent Muslim, the balance largely Hindu), all living cheek-by-jowl. In 1992-93, Dharavi saw some of the worst acts of violence as residents mobilized along religious lines to form armies intent on wreaking vengeance against each other.

A Saher workshop on religious stereotypes: Youth groups from different castes and religious communities working out issues of ethnicity, religious identity and tribal realities.

Barve selected Dharavi as her ground zero. Two factors motivated her choice. First, there was a critical need to end the horrifying bloodshed and catalyze the regenerative process needed to knit the community together so that future violence would be averted. Second, she knew that if the dialogue model demonstrated that it could address these challenges, its credibility would be beyond doubt.

Starting at the Grass Roots

Barve listened as people ventilated their anger and fears. She began with small groups, mediating between them and the authorities.

She discovered there was a need for a local-level body that would build a cooperative working relationship between communities and authorities. She took advantage of the fact that Mumbai's police commissioner, Satish Sahney, was a progressive changemaker. With his active support and participation, Barve established citizen-police watch groups or Mohalla committees.

Marathon team: Saher's Run for Peace marathon runners who completed the course that ran through sensitive areas in Mumbai city. Also included were members of the State Reserve Police Force whose behavior during the Mumbai riots was biased against the Muslim community.

The watch groups assured that things would remain peaceful by providing three vital functions. First, they institutionalized a continuous interaction between the community, police, and other law-enforcers so that they proactively monitored the situation and quelled the smallest flarings of violence.

Second, the groups created a community arena in which persons of different faiths could interact and gain an understanding of life on the other side of the fence. Third, the groups helped neighborhoods organize for action that strengthened the social fabric and local economy, thereby reducing the chances of future conflict.

A community sports day function in the Mahim of Mumbai brings together children from all religious faiths who until then had not interacted with one another because of religious differences.

As they probed to uncover the forces that push youth into criminal activity and violent behavior, they found that the high levels of unemployment made them easy prey to criminals and corrupt politicians in need of local muscle. One of the solutions that the groups designed creates employment opportunities through skill trainings (such as computer classes) and linkages with jobs.

Trial by Fire

From mid-1994, Barve worked rapidly to establish watch groups in 24 police station areas across the city. She trained police and citizen members from these committees to use conflict resolution methods, reorienting them from the argumentative, divisive dialectics of debate to the reconciliatory discourse of dialogue.

The decisive test for Barve's experiment came in 2002. In February of that year, the neighboring state of Gujarat went up in flames following the burning of a railway coach full of Hindu pilgrims. This unleashed large-scale retaliatory violence against Muslims.

While Gujarat burnt for weeks, even the most sensitive areas of Mumbai remained peaceful. This success was widely attributed to the activities of the network of watch groups.

Having successfully demonstrated her approach in Bhagalpur and Mumbai, Barve's next goal was to build on these victories and establish the concept of dialogue as a powerful and viable peace-building tool. She launched the Centre for Dialogue and Reconciliation (CDR) in 2000, a non-profit based in Delhi that provides the institutional support and organizational assistance needed to spread the model.

Kashmiri women at a CDR trust-building session in which ordinary Muslim and Hindu women from communities dialogue to overcome their distrust and build trust

CDR fosters and spreads dialogue as a tool for peacemaking. Its mission is to promote dialogue skills that reduce tension and end hostility. People who are equipped with these skills are empowered to defuse situations before they ratchet up to conflict levels, bringing reconciliation to ongoing quarrels and, in the aftermath of conflict, sustaining an environment that allows people to lead secure, meaningful lives.

CDR was launched with a series of lectures delivered by a member of the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission, one of the world's most powerful examples of the wisdom of dialogue and reconciliation. In his keynote address, Professor Piet Meiring, who has worked with Bishop Desmond Tutu, emphasized the difficult yet necessary process of listening, forgiving, and moving on.

Barve is supported by an all-star board composed of some of India's leading peace activists including Teesta Setalvad (founding editor of Communalism Combat and a pioneer in designing school curricula for a pluralistic society), Rajmohan Gandhi (Mahatma Gandhi's grandson who carries forward the legacy of his grandfather through his political commentary and scholarship), Dr. Syeda Hameed (a writer associated with a number of initiatives for South Asian understanding and a former member of the National Women's Commission), and Niketu Iralu (convener of the Assembly of Elders in India's troubled state of Nagaland who is actively engaged in initiatives for rehabilitation and reconciliation in the country's conflict-torn north-east). Together, they provide a rich trove of ideas and experience to advance CDR's mission.

Kashmir: A High-Level Dispute

One of CDR's first projects was the Dialogue of Understanding and Trust Building, launched in 2001 to rebuild trust among the shattered communities of Jammu and Kashmir. India and Pakistan have been fighting over India's only Muslim-majority state for nearly 60 years. This dispute has spawned a number of insurgent groups attracting severe army reprisals.

The conflict has grown increasingly violent since the 1990s, with appalling human rights violations that have left more than 50,000 dead, creating some 40,000 widows, an equal number of orphans, and thousands of maimed youth. The majority of Kashmiri Hindus have been forced to flee their home state. Distrust runs high in every neighborhood.

Government-level talks between India and Pakistan, scheduled for later that year, gave hope to CDR and energized its efforts. Yet, as Barve noted in a newspaper article at the time, dialogues would have to start at the ground level for peace to take root in the region.

"Such a process always begins with difficult, painful, and bitter conversations that need to take place," she said. "This demands a lot of courage from both the speaker and the listeners. But the resumption of dialogue, before faith and trust are regained, are vital for a lasting peace, even as the scheduled Indo-Pak summit in mid-July 2001 needs to hammer out differences at quite another level."

The CDR Team's initial visit to the Kashmir left no doubt that ordinary people wanted nothing more than peace. Team member Rajmohan Gandhi recorded a local woman's poignant words: "Each time I hear footsteps coming towards me, I imagine someone bringing news of peace."

CDR's Dialogue project promotes "news of peace" to rebuild trust, the biggest casualty of the ongoing conflict. It does this by bringing together small groups for private meetings in homes or gatherings in semi-public and public spaces, and provides them with a safe opportunity to talk without fear of retaliation or being misunderstood.

Building Trust, Then Leadership

The process helps in two ways. First, it begins the slow process of psychological healing by reassuring each individual that nobody is alone in their suffering. Second, this creates bonds as individuals look beyond their own agony to the cause of their common anguish: conflict. This is the starting point from which resistance to conflict begins as the participants collaborate to start rebuilding their lives.

This transition is critical to begin the process of healing and rebuilding and to sow the seeds of CDR's vision for the future—a robust civil society. As individuals begin to feel empowered to help themselves and their communities, many begin examining how they can help their community in a more organized way. The CDR model has produced vibrant leadership in the civil sector.

For example, Indu Kalam, a Kashmiri Hindu lecturer, had gone into a tailspin of depression and bitterness following violent outbreaks in the Kashmir Valley. But this changed dramatically when she attended a CDR women's dialogue.

Kashmir women's dialogue

After a few sessions she reached a point where she was ready to fight back. In Jammu, she started a citizen sector organization at the Nagrota refugee camp for Hindus that has raised money for education scholarships for camp children, and a library and computers for the school.

Gowhar Fazili attended his first CDR workshop in 2001 while he was still a college student. Inspired by the power of dialogue and discussion, he set up his own student organization in Srinagar called Space—a non-threatening platform for youth to share their doubts, voice questions, and explore solutions.

Each of these initiatives marks a milestone on the road to peace by signaling people's emphatic rejection of violence. These local-level efforts are the building blocks of a foundation for a strong, united civil society that works toward the common goal of a violence-free region.

Extending a Hand to Pakistan

CDR does not limit itself to facilitating dialogues between Indian Kashmiris only. Recognizing that forming a lasting solution to the region's conflict in will require dialogues that engage people from both sides of the border, CDR has spearheaded the Intra-Kashmir Dialogues.

Attendees at the Intra-Kashmir conference in Jammu include government, public, and civil society representatives. The former Pakistan foreign secretary is to Sushobha Barve's right. CDR initiated these conferences as a first-time opportunity for people of "both Kashmirs" (i.e., Kashmiris from India and Pakistan) to dialogue.

These opportunities for communication can play an important role in reinforcing the peace process between the two countries by encouraging "people of both countries to think together, and civil society from both sides of the line of control to play their role in strengthening the process," Barve said.

CDR is pushing to make these dialogues as inclusive as possible, driven by its belief that the most diverse points of view must join the dialogue for reconciliation to occur. The very first of these dialogues, held in Srinagar in 2004, broke new ground because it marked the first time that a conference in Srinagar attracted participants from remote Baltistan, Gilgat and the Northern Areas of PoK (Pakistan occupied Kashmir).

Srinagar, July 2005: Section of the attendees of an intra-Kashmir conference organized by CDR. In white is separatist leader Yasin Malik.

Ultimately dialogue participants must be responsible for "keeping the lines of communication open and widening the scope of discussions, so that the present day peace initiatives and opportunities are not missed," Barve noted. While local initiatives are essential, it is also important that governments and decision makers participate in establishing the nuts and bolts of peace.

Prodding Governments to Act

CDR maintains unrelenting pressure on the Indian and Pakistani governments to accelerate the slow pace of the peace process. It regularly submits reports to policymakers on both sides of the border that summarize the concerns and aspirations of people from different regions and communities.

CDR's documents its findings from interviews, dialogues, and conferences that it facilitates and these findings have led measures enacted by India and Pakistan that make it easier for people on both sides of the border to interact. Dubbed "confidence-building-measures," or "CBM" in politicalspeak, these include more bus routes between the two countries and more civilian crossing points along the Line of Control.

Findings from another CDR research project exposed the gross injustices and inadequacies of the government's compensation system for those who have lost family members to violence in Kashmir, especially children and those who have been widowed. These findings combined with CDR's pressure on the government to respond appropriately caused the government to make changes to the compensation packages. Rollout of a redrafted, more equitable policy is imminent.

The conditions underlying conflict seldom remain constant: they are continuously shifting and changing, demanding a correspondingly dynamic response. The biggest challenge for any organization working in this field is determining how to respond swiftly and creatively to the shifting situations and demands of peace building so that its interventions remain relevant.

Planting Seeds with the Next Generation

Sometimes this can mean entering a completely new area of activity. For example, CDR realized that its peace building activities had to reach out and engage even the youngest children in order to truly root the concept of peace within Kashmir's society.

One of the lessons offered by peace building throughout the world is that long-term conflict creates a generation that is ignorant of peace—a terrible perversion of normal society. Children from such societies accept that the mundane minutiae of their daily existence include machine-gun wielding soldiers on sandbagged main streets, bomb blasts, and curfews. Never knowing peace, these young persons need help to imagine and believe in it.

CDR's work with Kashmiri women revealed how profoundly preoccupied they are about how their children are affected by growing up in an environment where violence is the norm. A senior professor expressed how warped life has become in the region during a meeting of educators: "There is training available for starting a conflict and waging violence. But there are no educational courses available on how to resolve conflict and build peace."

Barve recalled that this simple but chilling statement motivated CDR to bring peace education to schools. After all, she reasoned, "the one sure way you ensure peace in the future is by teaching the next generation to recognize its language."

By the middle of 2002, CDR had crafted a Peace Education Curriculum and an accompanying Peace Education Handbook for educators who want to teach conflict resolution, non-violent compromise, and peace.

Significant Victories: a New Curriculum

The Peace Education Program is aimed at children aged 12 and higher. It equips children and young adults to handle every-day disagreements and conflicts by helping them better understand themselves and their environments.

The curriculum is activity-oriented and packed with modules that are built around role-playing, storytelling, and forum theater. In the latter, performers present a situation and invite members of the audience to present different resolutions, each of which are incorporated into their performance to explore the different possible outcomes.

A peace education program in progress in a school classroom in Srinagar

The curriculum explores the following themes: Communication, Differing Viewpoints, Discrimination, and Understanding Conflict. A section titled "Individuals Can Make a Difference" documents exciting, inspirational real-life stories of young persons who have succeeded in establishing peace in their environment.

Each lesson is designed to promote discussion and dialogue. After launching a pilot program with a small group of teachers from government schools, CDR gradually started spreading the curriculum through a growing number of training workshops for groups of 25 teachers.

CDR scored a major victory when it secured government support in the form of a grant from the Human Resources Ministry in early 2005. Today, CDR works with the state government to introduce the curriculum through the government school system across the Kashmir Valley and in four districts of Jammu. More than 150 teachers have taken the training and are now using the curriculum guided by the Peace Education Handbook.

For a generation that is growing up in an environment where violence is an everyday reality, CDR's Peace Education is opening their minds to the possibilities and potential of peace. Children are learning the benefits of peace and the cost of conflict, Barve notes. "For the first time, a space is being created in schools to explore peace."

Already there are important victories that involve changes in behavior by students. For example, two teachers of S.P. High School, a Srinagar institution infamous for vandalism, participated in CDR's Peace Education workshops.

Equipped with these new tools, the teachers launched a dialogue with their students about how and why the school could become violence-free and more conducive to learning. Some 20 students volunteered to help with the process of building a consensus that ensures classes remain undisrupted. Remarkably, since 2003, the school has remained trouble-free. These types of impacts convinced the central government to include CDR's Peace Education in the national curriculum in 2005.

The same commitment to creating responses that combat present and future threats to peace have fuelled CDR's latest project: Connecting Communities. This Mumbai-based initiative, launched in 2004, re-examines multi-faith community relations in the wake of the climate of suspicion and fear that has been created by global events such as 9/11 and the London subway bombings.

Children from different faiths and religions are singing Muslim, Hindu, and Christian prayers in a program organized by the Aspire youth group for communal harmony, supporting the Connecting Communities project (see story at left).

A skit on communal harmony. Each of the couples is dressed to represent different religions and cultures. Left to right: a Christian couple, a Marathi Hindu couple, a Muslim couple, and a Punjabi Hindu couple.

The impact of local events has become increasingly global in this age of globalization, instant communications, and television channels that beam real-time images of the latest terrorist atrocity from all corners of the world. As a result, there is an alarming worldwide trend toward ghettoization in areas with multiple ethnic and religious groups and, what one columnist calls "voluntary apartheid." As communities hunker down behind their invisible ramparts, people beyond these limits become the alien "other"—faceless, homogenous groups whose existence is defined by their differences and that are saddled with negative stereotypes.

Ashraf Ahmed Shaikh (see story at left) addressing a community peace session in which religious festivals of Hindus (Diwali), Christians (Christmas) and Muslims (Eid) were celebrated all together on November 10, 2006.

Mumbai is no exception. Bulu Saldana, who helped Barve establish Mohalla Committees in her locality, Mahim, during the early 1990s describes how "in recent years Mahim has becoming increasingly ghettoized. The three communities that live here-Christians, Hindus, and Muslims-have almost nothing to do with each other. Each stays within its demarcated territory, looking at those outside with mistrust. There is an urgent need to address these fears and get people talking again, otherwise it's a time-bomb waiting to explode."

At a Connecting Communities event, Joint Commissioner of Police for Mumbai (Law and Order) Ahmad Javed presents flowers to his junior officer Senior Inspector Mr. Chavan for his contribution to peace and harmony within his jurisdiction of Mahim.

CDR's Connecting Communities Project demonstrates that CDR is reacting to the changing realities on the ground and is willing to constantly evolve new solutions to new challenges. CDR recognizes the limitations of existing peace mechanisms, such as citizen-police watch groups, for tackling new challenges. It is working with a small group in Mahim to launch an intervention designed to break down self-erected barriers between groups through carefully mediated conversations.

A Connecting Communities sports event, organized for children of different religions. Their parents also participate to promote peace keeping.

But these are difficult dialogues that demand courage both from those voicing their fears and often trigger anger from those who are willing to listen. Fortunately, the discussions are happening and the walls are coming down (see the stories at left).

Poised to Expand

Now that the CDR model has been successfully launched in some of India's worst trouble spots, and the Peace Education Program is up and running in schools, Barve is poised to take her model into conflict zones across South Asia.

As the roster of countries scarred by violence keeps growing (the last UN survey counted more than 40 countries troubled by violent conflicts), the need for lasting solutions to peace grows more urgent. Governments and world leaders are scrambling to broker treaties, cease-fires, and accords.

But the success of these agreements will depend on whether ordinary citizens are empowered to say "no" to violence. Barve is demonstrating how dialogue can be the key to this process.

Centre for Dialogue and Reconciliation
J 1346 Palam Vihar
Gurgaon, Haryana 122017
Phone/fax: (Gurgaon) 646-0602 (dial 91 before the number if calling from Delhi or 0124 if calling from elsewhere)
Email: cdrec@vsnl.in