Networks for Peace

by Farrukh Hussein Malik and Meghna Philip

As the world shrinks through globalization, and people and cultures are more accessible to one another than they have ever been before, a cosmopolitan mindset seems to be emerging. Through the proximity to one another that technology and cultural diffusion affords us, it becomes more evident daily that there are powerful ties that transcend religion, culture and politics, and connect people all over the world on certain fundamental levels. In this new global context, international cooperation is becoming more and more important, and long-standing international conflicts seeming more and more out of place.

The India-Pakistan conflict, begun in 1947, has remained one of the most enduring and unsettled of our time, and despite the fleeting successes of occasional peace initiatives, has lingered in more or less its original form for 60 years.

However while the political disputes underpinning the conflict may not have changed very much, the dimensions, political, military, cultural and economic have expanded and evolved rapidly. This has meant that what 60 years ago was largely just a territorial dispute fought over a piece of land that the majority in neither India nor Pakistan would ever set foot in, has over time become a dispute that has had an impact on every aspect of interstate and social relations between the two nations, and has in its magnitude come to encompass all of south Asia; damaging its economic growth, engendering social radicalization and terrorism and encouraging massive, costly and dangerous nuclear militarization.

While this new global context is at one level frightening, at another level it opens up new opportunities for peace. This is because it is clear that given the new threats posed by continuous conflict, and the increasing possibilities that exist in cooperation, peace, based on a negotiated settlement, is in the greater national interests of both countries. The new technologies of globalization also allow us to streamline efforts for peace in ways that were impossible earlier.

Keeping this in mind we are aiming to use the instantaneous and wide ranging connectivity offered by internet-based forums to bring together students on either side of the border, to have a policy oriented discussion on the India-Pakistan conflict. Not only does this allow students to make positive contributions to an important dialogue from their own college and university campuses, but the inherent scalability of blogs means that many more students can be integrated into this conversation than may have been possible using conventional methods.

Eventually we will use this conversation to construct the basis on which we can hold a conventional conference at the conclusion of which real and meaningful policy recommendations can be made. As students who want to learn from what came before us, while embracing the best of what is available today, we hope to use this hybrid model as a way in which an inclusive, far reaching and progressive conversation can be initiated and sustained.