Beena Sarwar, Boston-based Pakistani journalist and South Asian peace activist speaks with Tarun Basu | SAM Conversation
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00:00 (upbeat music)
00:02 - Welcome to SAM Conversation.
00:10 I'm Tarun Basu and I'll be speaking to Bina Sarwar,
00:16 Boston-based Pakistani journalist,
00:20 South Asian peace activist,
00:23 and cruel educator among many other hats that she wears.
00:29 You, good to have you on this program, Bina.
00:34 - Thank you, Tarun, it's always a pleasure talking to you.
00:36 - Yeah.
00:37 You and a clutch of fellow activists from across the region
00:41 have been championing the cause of peace
00:43 between India and Pakistan for quite a long time,
00:46 not just India and Pakistan,
00:47 but the entire South Asian region.
00:49 Now in the current antagonistic relationship
00:52 between India and Pakistan,
00:54 it's not downright hostile,
00:56 isn't it kind of, what should I say,
00:59 kind of oxymoron to talk of peace?
01:01 I'm sorry to be cynical,
01:03 but if you talk to anybody on either side of the border,
01:06 they'll say, why talk of peace now?
01:08 Where is the atmosphere?
01:09 Where is the environment?
01:11 So you have to be quite brave to be championing
01:14 a kind of lonely furrow in the cause of peace
01:17 in South Asia.
01:18 - Yeah, I don't know, there's so many people with us.
01:22 We have 83 organizations that have founded
01:24 and around the world that have endorsed
01:27 the SouthAsiaPeace.com.
01:29 So 82 organizations, 83 organizations is not a joke.
01:32 And this is without any marketing, without any promotion,
01:36 more than 500 individuals, very big names.
01:39 We've been doing this for the last three years.
01:41 And actually, Tarun, when you say
01:43 that this is not the atmosphere,
01:44 this is exactly the atmosphere.
01:46 You can't see behind me, but that's the atmosphere.
01:52 You can't see behind me, but that's the Asma Jahangir,
01:56 my mentor, there's a conference,
01:58 the Asma Jahangir conference is taking place this weekend.
02:00 My background is blurred, so you can't see that poster.
02:03 That's from when she, conference for her after,
02:05 just after she passed away.
02:07 But the point is that, you have to,
02:10 I don't know if it's brave or not,
02:11 but it's something we have, I feel like,
02:12 we feel we have to do.
02:14 You can't, this is the time when people are talking
02:21 and the atmosphere is being created for bigotry
02:25 and hyper nationalism and hyper religiosity
02:28 in the name of, and as they say,
02:30 caravan chalta gaya, kaafla barta gaya.
02:34 So that's what's happening, I think.
02:36 - What made you and your fellow activists
02:40 start this movement?
02:42 When did the seeds of this movement actually,
02:45 were planted?
02:47 - So I can't speak for others, but for me,
02:49 the seeds of it were from my childhood, actually,
02:52 because my parents are from the Allahabad, Pertabgarh area.
02:55 And my mother came to Pakistan as a teenager.
02:59 So she came in the fifties
03:01 and she actually learned Hindi, not Urdu.
03:04 She had to learn Urdu.
03:05 And as children, she took us,
03:07 I think, though, the in the fall, we went to India.
03:09 We went to Bombay, Delhi, Allahabad, Pertabgarh,
03:14 Agra, of course.
03:19 And so we have family there.
03:21 But then after a long gap,
03:25 I went for the first time as an adult in the early 1990s.
03:29 And I reconnected with a lot of peace activists
03:34 at that time, like Shabnam Hashmi,
03:39 at that time was running Sin Now It's Unheard.
03:41 And people that I connected with then
03:46 are still some of my very close friends,
03:48 Anand Patwardhan in Bombay, Shabnam Hashmi.
03:51 And then through my work,
03:53 with the Pakistan India People's Forum
03:56 for Peace and Democracy,
03:57 which Asma Jahangir is one of the founders,
03:59 Dr. Mubasher Nazim Nair, people like that,
04:01 all of whom I had the privilege to meet,
04:04 cross-border people.
04:05 And then I was being involved in
04:07 other various South Asian initiatives,
04:09 like Himal South Asian, Pan-Australia South Asia,
04:12 South Asians for Human Rights.
04:14 So I have always had,
04:15 I mean, it's been nothing that is happening now
04:20 has come out of the blue.
04:21 It's all being built upon a lot of initiatives,
04:24 riding on a lot of the inspiration
04:29 and the legacy of a lot of people,
04:31 some of whom I mentioned,
04:32 but there are too many to mention,
04:34 you know, Tappan Bose, Rita Manchanda,
04:36 you know, like Nikhil Chakravarty,
04:39 who I never had the pleasure to meet,
04:41 but he was one of Dr. Mubasher Hassan's close friends
04:45 and Dr. Mubasher Hassan gave a talk in Delhi,
04:48 which he sent me after I joined Aman Ki Aasha,
04:52 the Pakistan India Peace Initiative
04:54 started by the Jajang Group and the Times of India in 2010,
04:57 that was launched in 2010.
04:59 And Dr. Saab then sent me, who was one of my mentors,
05:01 he sent me this paper he had written
05:04 for the Nikhil Chakravarty lecture in Delhi,
05:06 he had presented it.
05:07 It was called "The Walls Must Come Down."
05:09 So this was back in like 2000s, he had given this talk.
05:14 And then he said something to me,
05:15 Dr. Mubasher said something,
05:16 he passed away a couple of years ago.
05:18 He said something to me that,
05:20 which came back during the COVID times.
05:22 He said, "If France and Germany can be part of the EU,
05:25 why can't India and Pakistan be part of a South Asian Union?"
05:28 So I said, "Dr. Saab,
05:29 (speaking in foreign language)
05:30 "This is not going to happen,
05:31 you know, exactly what you say,
05:33 you know, like this is, why even talk about?"
05:35 So he said to me very, in his gentle way,
05:38 he was very gentle, very beautiful man.
05:40 He said, "Magar hum baat toh kar sakte hai na,
05:43 we can talk about it at least."
05:45 So, (speaking in foreign language)
05:47 I left, you know, I moved to Boston.
05:49 - But (speaking in foreign language)
05:51 even that dialogue, that conversation,
05:53 even some kind, any kind of track to,
05:55 even that is not happening.
05:57 So, I mean, of course, one, you know,
05:59 tends to become cynical about all this.
06:02 No, I understand.
06:03 I mean, I completely, you know,
06:05 not just, you know, appreciate what you are doing,
06:09 but you know, one, you know,
06:10 one is silently supporting it.
06:13 But where is the scope to take it further
06:16 unless the government stop?
06:18 Where is the scope for even any kind
06:21 of the minimal cultural engagement?
06:25 - So, this is true that we need the governments
06:28 to issue the visas,
06:30 which is why we actually have a petition online,
06:32 which has been going on for some time.
06:33 It's at change.org/milne do, M-I-L-N-E-D-O,
06:37 which has got thousands of signatures just now.
06:39 It used to be just India, Pakistan,
06:41 but then we included it, added it,
06:42 made it a South Asia thing a couple of years ago.
06:45 The scope is, so we can only do what we can do, right?
06:51 I mean, this is the philosophy of all the great religions
06:54 and philosophies of the world.
06:56 The basic crux of it is be the change.
06:58 You know, in Islam, the thing is the greater jihad
07:01 is a struggle within to conquer your own worst self.
07:05 This jihad is not violence and weapons.
07:07 That's the physical thing is the lesser jihad.
07:10 The biggest struggle is to be the change.
07:13 - The change you want to see.
07:15 - The change you want to see to model the behavior.
07:18 If somebody is behaving in a way that you don't like,
07:21 rather than descend to that level
07:23 and start behaving like that person.
07:25 And we see this all the time in social media,
07:26 all this tutu, mehmeh, and mud slinging.
07:30 And of course, social media has completely
07:32 vitiated the atmosphere.
07:33 - Vitiated, right.
07:35 - Completely.
07:36 And, but at the same time, it's a double-edged,
07:38 it's like somebody said to me,
07:40 you know, the knife can be used to cut the apple
07:43 or to slice somebody or to cut or to injure somebody.
07:48 So we can use it.
07:49 So we can use it to our advantage and we have,
07:51 we have been using these digital platforms, digital tools.
07:54 - So what are these platforms are you using?
07:56 I'm sorry to interrupt.
07:57 What are these platforms are you using?
07:59 - The digital platforms that everybody uses.
08:01 Yeah, the digital platform that everybody's using,
08:03 you know, the social media, you know,
08:05 Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, website, YouTube,
08:10 WhatsApp, there's a WhatsApp channel,
08:13 the Sapan WhatsApp channel, SAPN.
08:15 And I guess we should put it on the website
08:18 because we are also learning along the way.
08:19 Now, the thing is we don't have troll armies,
08:23 you know, flooding these platforms like the other side does.
08:28 But the other thing I want to say is that
08:31 I don't want to demonize the other side
08:34 because what we are trying to do
08:36 is to go beyond the stereotypes.
08:38 Like I was talking to our friend Mayank the other day,
08:42 who has just come back from Ahmedabad.
08:44 And I just learned a lot about Ahmedabad recently
08:46 because there's an exhibition here at Harvard of SEWA,
08:49 about SEWA.
08:50 And it's a beautiful exhibition just launched last week.
08:53 And some participants from SEWA came and spoke at that.
08:56 And it really brought that whole movement to life for me,
08:59 which I've always admired,
09:00 the Self-Employed Women's Association, SEWA.
09:04 And I was just joking with him and I said,
09:07 "Oh, you know, that's a very right-wing, you know, like area."
09:12 And he said, "Yes, but this is also the heart of Gandhiism,
09:16 you know, Ahmedabad."
09:18 And he says, "I know people who are from the BJP
09:20 who would stand in front of anybody
09:22 trying to attack a Muslim."
09:24 So, you know, there's a stereotype that the media,
09:27 which we are part of, you and I, we are part of the media.
09:30 There are stereotypes that we feed into
09:34 because we follow those formulas that is there in the media.
09:38 So what we are trying to do through SAPAN,
09:39 through South Asia Peace Action Network,
09:41 and then the SAPAN News Network that grew out of that.
09:44 - Before we talk about SAPAN.
09:47 - Just want to quickly mention,
09:48 to go beyond these is to privilege the peripheries
09:53 and to, you know, like talk about the nuances and all that.
09:56 - So before we talk about SAPAN,
09:59 would you talk a little bit about this Aman Ki Asha
10:01 which was started by the two leading newspapers
10:04 in India and Pakistan, and what happened to that?
10:06 One doesn't hear about it anymore.
10:07 - Well, it's there on the online still,
10:10 amankiasha.com, it's there.
10:12 And I will-
10:13 - But it's lost steam and people have lost interest in that.
10:16 - Well, okay, so here's the, yeah, it had,
10:19 Aman Ki Asha had this big corporate backing,
10:21 the two biggest media groups,
10:22 the giants of India and Pakistan.
10:25 In India, it was just the Times of India,
10:27 in Pakistan was the Jung Group, the News,
10:29 and Jio TV, which is the 24/7,
10:31 the first and the biggest TV channel in Pakistan.
10:34 So far, it went at great steam for a while.
10:38 You know, we had brand ambassadors like Amitabh Bachchan
10:40 and Gulzar Sahab and Zia Mohiddin and, you know,
10:43 big, big names.
10:44 And we had concerts with the Strings and Indian Ocean
10:48 and we had Mushairas and, you know, like-
10:50 - I remember that, I remember that.
10:51 - And economic, and the business people came together,
10:54 dividends of peace, economic conferences,
10:57 people like Ganesh Natarajan in Pune,
11:00 who's a, you know, well-known name
11:03 in the world of entrepreneurship
11:05 and other people like that,
11:06 who came and participated.
11:09 And for three, four years, this ran.
11:11 And then things happened,
11:13 political happenings on both sides in 2014.
11:17 I'm not going to go into details,
11:18 but political happenings on both sides
11:21 meant that both the media corporations
11:24 kind of just basically dropped the physical meetings.
11:28 And that was the heart of the campaign,
11:31 these physical meetings around which then media campaign,
11:34 that it would be the newspaper articles
11:36 and TV reports and stuff like that.
11:38 So when the physical things weren't happening,
11:39 now all we have on the website
11:41 is the occasional article that I will post
11:44 that upholds this narrative.
11:47 It's still there.
11:48 And there is a huge support for it.
11:50 But as you pointed out,
11:53 and as we were talking earlier,
11:54 people are scared now.
11:55 The atmosphere is so different.
11:57 And, you know, the time when people are scared
12:00 is the time to take courage and take a stand.
12:03 And I'm not saying that people should come out there
12:05 and like chest thumping and flag waving and all.
12:09 No, but just stand for what you believe in.
12:11 And if you believe in peace and dialogue,
12:13 then to not feed into the narrative that counters that,
12:17 at least.
12:19 - And you must persevere.
12:20 I mean, the main thing is to persevere.
12:22 - I think I...
12:23 - Yeah, what we are doing,
12:25 we might not see the results in our lifetime
12:28 or in the next few years,
12:29 and maybe we'll see it in our lifetime.
12:30 Who knows?
12:31 - Who knows?
12:32 Who knows?
12:33 - Who knows?
12:34 - So the Sapan grew out as this movement,
12:37 this Amal Ki Asha kind of petered out,
12:40 if I might say,
12:41 or, you know, what about it?
12:43 So Sapan grew out of that?
12:45 - I think, okay.
12:47 So I think that's really interesting.
12:49 I would say that Sapan South Asia Peace Action Network,
12:53 SouthAsiaPeace.com, as I said,
12:55 it was launched in March, 2021.
12:57 So it's now been a little over three years.
13:00 So I think it definitely has built upon Amal Ki Asha,
13:03 the Pakistan-India People's Forum for Peace and Democracy,
13:06 and the other initiatives that I mentioned.
13:09 It is not something that has just happened out of the blue.
13:12 And I would say that my work with Amal Ki Asha,
13:15 working with Times of India and the Jung Group,
13:17 and I'm still in touch with the journalists
13:19 and some of the other people on both sides,
13:20 and they are supporters,
13:22 but their corporations, it's not a corporate thing anymore.
13:27 But I would say that it grew out of that,
13:31 or like, I would say that what I learned in my year,
13:34 in working with Amal Ki Asha, maybe unconsciously,
13:37 I'm applying it to Sapan.
13:39 Like we have a brand, we have a logo,
13:41 we are consciously pursuing some kind of branding.
13:45 I realize the importance of branding.
13:47 - And it's not just India, Pakistan anymore,
13:49 it's the largest South Asian country.
13:51 - And so we very consciously promote,
13:55 as I said earlier, privilege the peripheries,
13:57 get people from Nepal, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka,
14:01 even Afghanistan, Myanmar, Bhutan, Maldives,
14:05 try and bring them into the conversation
14:07 and break the hegemonic,
14:09 break the hegemonic sort of,
14:17 get past the hegemony,
14:18 like somehow counter the hegemony
14:20 by building this network.
14:23 So what you said earlier about,
14:25 we can't do anything without the governments
14:27 and there's no track two and all that.
14:29 I believe there is some track two going on right now
14:32 from what I've heard.
14:33 But I think every,
14:34 and I also do think that not everything
14:36 has to be in the glare of the media,
14:38 because I think the media,
14:39 the way the media is only spoiling, because-
14:42 - India and Pakistan, South Asia is much larger,
14:45 and there are so many other countries,
14:47 Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Maldives, Bhutan, Afghanistan,
14:52 and all that, they want peace,
14:56 and they want, you have to look beyond India and Pakistan.
15:00 - And they're saying that you idiots,
15:02 your stupid, childish behavior
15:05 is spoiling things for the rest of us.
15:06 - Exactly, exactly.
15:07 - You don't have the relations
15:09 between India and Pakistan are making,
15:11 are holding back development for the whole region.
15:14 - Yeah, exactly.
15:15 - How selfish is that?
15:17 How selfish is that?
15:18 And how childish?
15:21 And I really want to tell the leaders of both countries
15:24 to grow up and to show some adult behavior, really.
15:27 Use your words, you know?
15:28 - You know, I noticed you have some kind of,
15:31 you know, online discussion coming up tomorrow
15:34 or later on, a youth centric
15:37 talking about South Asian identity.
15:39 Now that's very interesting,
15:40 South Asian identity and South Asian diversity.
15:44 Would you like to talk a little bit on that?
15:46 And because the future is the youth,
15:48 and if you can motivate them to talk to each other
15:52 and to think about having a South Asian identity,
15:55 that would go a long way.
15:57 - What I find really exciting
15:59 is that it's not just us oldies who are, you know,
16:03 I mean, I don't feel, I'm not saying oldies,
16:05 but us who've been in this thing for decades now.
16:10 - Exactly.
16:11 - For us, we have helped to lay this, you know,
16:14 foundation and the seeds.
16:17 And we are, as I said,
16:18 building upon those who have gone before us.
16:21 And what's really exciting is how young people
16:23 are coming forward,
16:24 reaching out to us through email,
16:27 through social media, whatever,
16:29 and being introduced to us,
16:31 but it's all word of mouth mostly, actually.
16:34 And this conversation that is happening tomorrow
16:37 and the details are at the website,
16:39 SouthAsiaPeace.com under the events tab.
16:41 It's entirely youth-led, it's young people.
16:46 The idea came from Khushi Kabir in Bangladesh,
16:48 who said that, you know,
16:49 I want to know what the young people
16:50 are thinking about South Asian identity.
16:53 And so there are young people from Sri Lanka,
16:55 Nepal, Bangladesh, Pakistan, India,
16:58 and they are just (indistinct)
17:06 being moderated by a very, you know,
17:11 man who is from India,
17:14 already an American community organizer,
17:16 Faisal Lalani, moderating the session.
17:18 And we have young people participating in it
17:21 who are, and by young, I mean all under 35.
17:23 So, most of them.
17:26 - That's very encouraging.
17:27 That's very encouraging.
17:28 You wear so many hats, so how do you fit in?
17:31 I mean, on a personal level,
17:33 how do you fit in so many activities?
17:35 You are a...
17:36 - Okay.
17:40 So, there's just that, sorry,
17:44 I forgot what I was saying,
17:45 because it's something else.
17:46 - A trip to Sri Lanka.
17:48 - I was saying beyond the headlines,
17:50 that it is incumbent upon us as journalists,
17:54 that yes, hard news and breaking news
17:55 and investigative stories, they're all very important,
17:58 but what gets left out is the features.
18:01 And that's what I've always focused upon,
18:03 is the features that look at things beyond the headlines
18:06 and provide explainers and backgrounders and context.
18:11 And this is one of the things I tell my students,
18:13 I teach journalism here in Boston at Emerson College
18:16 and I've taught in other places before,
18:19 is the three things I tell them,
18:21 is to look at the process, to look at the context
18:24 and to take the long view.
18:25 It's not about just what's happening now.
18:27 - So, it was very nice talking to you, Veena,
18:32 and to see the kind of activities
18:34 and the range of activities you're doing,
18:37 more part of your efforts and more support
18:40 for what you're doing in the cause of South Asian unity.
18:43 Even if India and Pakistan don't come together
18:45 in the foreseeable future,
18:46 at least the rest of South Asia can,
18:48 and we should encourage that.
18:50 So thank you for speaking to South Asia Monitor
18:53 and keep the conversation going.
18:56 - Thank you very much.