Mention of Kartarpur Corridor
in the Journal of Religion, Conflict and Peace
Dear
readers, slowly, now the global community has started realizing the great
potential of Kartarpur Sahib Corridor. The corridor has now figured in the
Journal of
Religion, Conflict, and Peace.
Journal of Religion, Conflict, and Peace is a publication
of Plowshares: a peace studies collaborative of Earlham,
Goshen, and
Manchester
Colleges. The journal addresses both the problem of
religion and conflict and the possibility and practices of peace, giving
particular attention to peace. As a contribution to addressing this great
need, the Plowshares Collaborative established an online scholarly journal
dedicated to the themes of religion, conflict, and peace. It is marked by
the following features.*
- While JRC&P will address both the problem of
religion and conflict and the possibility and practices of peace, we will
whenever possible give particular attention to peace.
- JRC&P will interpret its themes broadly, publishing
work on everything from interpersonal relationships to international
politics.
- JRC&P will draw from any discipline or combination
of disciplines that can illuminate its central concerns.
- While JRC&P's first audience will be scholars, we
intend that it will be relevant and accessible to peace practitioners and
anyone else concerned about these themes.
- JRC&P will be shaped by, but not confined to, the
perspectives of the three historic peace churches-Society of Friends,
Church of the Brethren, and the Mennonite Church-associated with the
colleges that compose the Plowshares Collaborative.
Published twice yearly, the journal is an open access, online
publication.
Rita Kiki Edozie of
Michigan
State
University has commented on the work our dear Mr.
Tridevish Singh Maini. Please read the following:-
++++++++++++
South Asian Cooperation and the Role of the Punjabs. Tridivesh
Singh Maini.
New Delhi: Siddharth Publications , 2007
South Asian Cooperation and the Role of the Punjabs is a book that
approaches the topic of conflict resolution with a difference. Trividesh
Singh Maini’s book does not approach peaceful cooperation from the
normative security framework. Nor, for that matter, does the author take the
increasingly emergent economic approach to conflict resolution despite the
fact that the book’s content deals with the subject of regional
cooperation. Alternatively, Maini’s book helps its reader understand the
dynamics of cooperation and peace among members of the South Asian
Association for Regional Cooperation or SAARC (India,
Pakistan,
Bangladesh,
Nepal,
Bhutan,
Afghanistan and the island nations of
Sri Lanka and
Maldives) by presenting a cultural analysis.
This use of culture is persuasive. The author posits himself and
his book as scholarship that thinks outside the bureaucratic box of normal
research on
South Asia with its vested interests in the region to reveal the
“emotional” trajectory of cooperation that is occurring in this region.
Using culture to support his thesis, Maini illustrates for the reader
various cultural exchanges between two cities,
Amritsar in
East Punjab in
India and
Lahore in
West Punjab in
Pakistan. These include visits to religious shrines, literary
exchanges and especially recent transportation events such as the initiation
of bus services to help people meet their relatives on the other side of the
border.
Significantly, as a core thesis of the book, Singh demonstrates
rather eloquently that where border provinces and regions have some common
cultural characteristics and a common heritage—as do the two Punjabs—the
keenness for improving conflictual relations between the regions is higher.
In this respect, this book represents for its reader a much-needed
refreshing proposal for conflict resolution in the India-Pakistan conflict,
the conclusions for which can be extrapolated and applied to other conflict
prone border regions in other parts of the world.
In achieving its objective, Singh’s book begins by providing
the reader with an analysis of SAARC that offers an important political and
regional context for the later examination of his local-national case
studies of cultural cooperation in
Amritsar and
Lahore. Of the four SAARC objectives, just one—to provide all
individuals the opportunity to live in dignity and to realize their
potential—is directly related to Singh’s own argument about the way to
achieve peace and cooperation in the region. Significantly, however, Singh
feels that even with this objective, SAARC has failed to fulfill its
potential, as serious consideration to the free movement of people within
the regions’ boundaries is rarely considered and a state of violence and
insecurity between the border regions continues, especially between
Jammu and Kashmir regions, which have exclusively dominated
SAARC’s conflict resolution strategies. Singh blames the security politics
and foreign policies of
India and
Pakistan for having created the limitations and shortcomings in
achieving South Asian cooperation and peace goals in the region.
In reinforcing his core theme, Singh’s presentation of
collaborative events in West and
East Punjab are offered as examples of alternative, understudied,
cultural routes to South Asian cooperation compared to SAARC. Giving
background to his case studies, Singh provides a rich repertoire of
historical and geographical context of
India and
Pakistan for the scholar of comparative studies. He uses maps to
direct his reader to the ways in which colonialism reproduced place and
fostered displacement caused by the 1947 Indian partition. In doing so he
demonstrates how
Punjab, or the “five rivers of
Sutlej,
Beas,
Ravi,
Jhelum and
Chenab,” became two separate countries, peoples and identities.
Pakistan Punjab, with 25 percent of the original
Punjab territory, currently makes up 56 percent of that country’s
population, while
India’s state of
Punjab, representing only 1.6 percent of
India’s territory, holds a meager 2.3 percent of
India’s population. In
Pakistan, the
Punjab identity is a majority while in
India the
Punjab constitutes a very small minority.
Subsequently in a third chapter, “Initiatives Taken by the Two
Punjabs,” Singh drives home his book’s thesis. In examining what he
refers to as the meaningful and rational Punjab-Punjab consultation, which
he describes as a “path of peace” between the two big brothers of
South Asia (India and
Pakistan), Singh’s book goes on to demonstrate the ways
|
