Husband-and-wife duo Sanjay and Tula are products of Jayaprakash Narayan’s Total Revolution movement in the 1970s. They live in Mehsana, Gujarat and run a small organisation called Vishwagram, which hosts less than 20 children who were found at railway platforms.
However, Sanjay is also leading a silent peace initiative in Jammu and Kashmir. It may never have a macro-level impact, but provides a healing touch in an area where the government has largely mishandled the situation and alienated people.
Supported by Srishti and the National Innovation Foundation, initiatives of Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad professor Anil Gupta, Sanjay first led a team of 25, mainly school teachers from Gujarat, to Anantnag district for a three-week stay in 2017. They visited 25 government schools during this period and interacted with teachers, students and villagers.
In the subsequent years, groups of 50, also mainly teachers, visited Baramulla and Doda districts. Ordinary citizens from Gujarat mingled with people from about 100 villages and visited about 150 schools in these districts. These visits are now an an annual event. Teams of ten people each visit a school and carry out activities like origami, puppetry, music, painting, story-telling, games, card-making, robotics, science and mathematics exercises, etc. Sanjay insists the visits will be not just an event; he intends to make then into a process.
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The Kashmiris were impressed by this group of people who would come armed with all the material they would need for their activities, including food. The Gujarati group cooked their own food so as not to be a burden for local people.
Three groups from Jammu and Kashmir, including teacher and education department officials, have also undertaken return visits to schools in Gujarat. They were taken to schools were pedagogic innovations were being attempted. The Kashmiris were impressed with local-language education in Gujarat, something that they miss in J&K where English has become the medium of learning.
The entire effort is driven by the spirit of volunteerism. The groups travel to each other’s states on own expenses. Once a group from J&K arrives in Gujarat, their stay is taken care of by their Gujarati friends. The Kashmiris live and eat at the homes of supporters of this initiative.
The teachers and education department officials from J&K have to take permission from the state government to organise workshops conducted by Gujarati group in their schools, or to visit Gujarat. The teachers from Gujarat, though, plan their visits to J&K during their vacations. Interest in the programme is now so high that Sanjay has a hard time choosing from all the volunteers.
The Gujarat group has now decided to create libraries in 35 schools that they have visited in J&K. They will also be building the infrastructure for the library in two places, using appropriate building technology from Gujarat. People from Gujarat will travel to J&K to build these two libraries.
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In addition, 100 meritorious and needy students of J&K are now receiving Rs 6,000 annual scholarship courtesy their friends from Gujarat. Seven young students from Kashmir are enrolled in engineering and pharmacy undergraduate programmes at privates institutions in Gujarat. Their expenses are being entirely borne by the host institutions. Sanjay says that if more young people from Kashmir are willing to come to Gujarat, there are more institutions willing to host them.
Sanjay has also organised programmes for Kashmiri folk singer Gulzar Ahmed Ganai and his group in Gujarat. Him and his friends have also addressed 40-50 meetings to share their experiences of visiting and working in J&K, which have received a very positive response. They are breaking the stereotypes of Kashmiris created by mainstream politics and the media, and also helping Kashmiris meet people from the rest of India who want to form real bonds with them.
That people from Gujarat have undertaken this initiative is even more reassuring. Gujarat was described by the deceased former president of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad, Ashok Singhal, as a laboratory of communalism. If Sanjay’s efforts succeed, it could also become a laboratory of communal harmony.
Sanjay believes that destructive activities can be replaced by creative activities, and creativity will lead to cooperation. He has firm faith in Gandhian ideology and repeats what Vinoba Bhave said during his Kashmir visit repeatedly, “I don’t want to know your religion, neither do I want to know your thoughts, I just want to understand your pain and see if I can do anything to remove it.”
The amount of interest his initiative has generated in Gujarat as well as J&K shows that common people would like to live in peace and communal harmony. The more people understand this, the better it will be for our societies. Sanjay has patience; he is in it for the long haul. He believes that just like people have sowed the seeds of hatred and violence, his team can work to replace those thoughts with love and peace.
Fortunately, darkness is only the absence of light. There is no source which emits darkness, whereas sources of light are well known. One only hopes the light will overtake the darkness rather sooner than later.
Sandeep Pandey is a scientist, activist and Magsaysay Award winner.
Note: In an earlier version of this article, an unrelated photograph was inadvertently used.