Programming:
There needs to be process from dealing with loss to understanding to recovery to constructive action.But, always, we start with taking stock.
This thematic tries to work with material and emotional loss that communal violences have left us with, without getting into the cycle of blame.
Programming:
This theme looks at composite cultures and their sustenance.
In the case of Islam, mainstream theological doctrines have often failed at encompassing the bounteous wealth of syncretic practices in the Indian subcontinent.Sufi doctrines are either misunderstood or clouded in ritualistic and regressive practice, thus depriving us of their liberating, phenomenological and philosophical lineages.
This theme tries to invent new syncreticisms while keeping the old.
Programming:
The modern condition entails freedom of occupation but this freedom often brings with the likelihood of alienation, and the possibility of discrimination.This theme delineates around nostalgia, threat and bonding, all aspects of the creation of community.
[Brought to you by the White Ribbon Abhiyaan.Message also circulated at Blogbharti.]
[ click on the ballot box]
This is a message in public interest circulated by the White Ribbon Campaign for Peace(India).You can also view it here and on Blogbharti.
Please copy and distribute extensively.
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Feminist, blogger and activist Anasuya Sengupta, in an essay called ‘Fundamentalisms of the Progressive‘ wrote,
‘One of our campaigns was to wear a white ribbon for peace (the White Ribbon Campaign for Peace, India) – we used it both as a symbol and as a talking point, to begin conversations about violence of all kinds, including what we call ‘communalism’ in India (the rousing of hatred against particular communities). Initially, some of our friends scoffed at us, and wondered what an insignificant white ribbon could do, to change attitudes and animosities.
But the interesting thing was that there were so many people – both young and not so young – who were unable to be political in the same way as they saw ‘activists’; they felt this meant standing at street corners with banners, or going on rallies, or shouting slogans against the government. They found this too ‘political’ (in their understanding of the term), and yet they were deeply disturbed at the kinds of violence being perpetrated in the name of religion.
So for these people, wearing a ribbon was the beginning of a series of conversations they had with others, which began other processes of change, at least in terms of breaking the silence around violence.
And because it was something everyone could do – and have conversations at whatever level of politics and ideology each was comfortable with – it wasn’t intimidating in any way, and yet gave a sense of belonging to a community against violence, and speaking up for peace.’
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Do you believe in pluralism and justice?
Are you Secular, liberal, free thinking?
Do you believe that all religion has in its essence ways of leading a soulful, integrated and fulfilled life?
Do you believe that religious extremism has done us no good?
Say No to religious bigotry.
Rethinking previous work is necessary.This is one of the photos that spawned off the Shivajinagar Signs project that Namita Malhotra and I did.
And a similar Sarai project on Street-Signs in the city of Pune called Vaartaphalaks spawned off this train of enquiry.
We addressed questions of divisive material, but these issues come back again and again.
Living in Gujarat and then coming back to where you grew up, a largely undivided atmosphere, (although changing).
Saint God, Communalism, Divisiveness.
None of these terms have stand alone meanings.
What about terms like fundamentalism?
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Shivajinagar Signs is now a flickr pool for everyone interested in contributing to it and adding to our archive.Bismillah 
Both these projects were facilitated by Sarai Independant Fellowship Grants.
It’s now also a blog.
During OSSW’07( One State Solution Week, 2007), I wasn’t entirely for having a centralised blog because that would mean isolating audience on one portal, and this event was supposed to have happened on various blogs.
But for all our future campaigns in order to gather consciousness, thinking, action and people, we have a blog.
What you said about the One State Solution Week, 2007.
Two responses of ‘mainstream’ women.
‘I think the question – and therefore a possible ‘answer’ – can be phrased differently. What needs to help the violence in the sub-continent abate? What do we need to do for peace?
And one possible solution to that is not, I personally feel, a campaign against nations and nationalities because that can be historically difficult to comprehend and to change; it is to turn the issue of borders upside down, and to recognise that so much of nationhood is ‘imagined communities’ – different depending on who imagines, and what they imagine… In which case, we can be one state of mind… one state of imagined peace, of harmony, of non-violence. Some of us across the artificial, geographical borders of South Asia already do – to some extent – share this state of being. We share cultural habits of hospitality, social habits like films (!) and best of all, political beliefs in peace.
However, for the future, this imagined community needs to be louder, more visible, more powerful. It needs to express this vision of a shared sub-continent of peace. And pragmatically, it needs to push the fact that cooperation, rather than conflict, is better for trade, for finance, for security and ultimately, for the well-being of our people.’
Anasuya Sengupta, ‘One State of Mind‘.
‘One state solution is a very attractive idea but i don’t think it is feasible. I know I speak very bluntly and seculars don’t like my views. But I speak what I really feel; I don’t care for secular image/credentials.
Why this idea is not possible because
(1) Muslims cannot live peacefully with other communities.
(2)Hindus in pre-partition society were different, they were naive, they were ready to go to any extent to appease their Muslim ‘brothers’. It was easy for mahatmas to suppress feelings of those wounded refugees who had to leave their everything in Pakistan.
Now I don’t think Hindus can be fooled so easily.
(3)seculars (of course Hindus) will never try to understand the real nature of the problem so naturally whenever any communal problem arises they try to equate RSS with Muslim fanatics/terrorists, secondly they will always remember ‘Gujarat’ but will never dare to mention ‘Kashmir’. (See your mail in which you have done the same thing).
As long as these seculars exist in the society communal tension will always prevail.
If Muslims follow leaders like dr. APJ Abdul Kalam or Jinnah of 1920 then only Hindus should support One State Solution.’
Vedavati Jogi, in response to an initiatory mail.
*Please note: the graph is an artistic statement, and was not plotted with demographical data.Any dispute/protest is welcome.And the two responses are set-up by way of contrast, not comparision.
