Dialogue Processes in India: Prospects and Problems

WISCOMP Fellows’ Symposium

Special Research on Reconciliation and Justice in Gujarat

Roundtable

Gujarat: Creating Spaces

for Dialogue, Justice and Reconciliation.

WISCOMP organized its first Fellows’ Symposium on Dialogue Processes in India from August 26-28, 2006, in New Delhi. The symposium aimed at providing a forum for thirty of the peace scholars across different cycles to meet, exchange findings and draw from their collective learning experiences.

Dialogue was identified as a cross-cutting theme that linked the varied experiences of the fellows across all cycles, working in different geographical areas of conflict. The symposium had three major thematic rubrics:

1. Understanding Dialogue and building a framework of analysis

2. Experiencing Dialogue through a “sustained dialogue” workshop

3. Framing Dialogue: sharing of findings of completed fellowship work, as well as work in progress, and framing a dialogue around areas of commonality.

To facilitate the understanding of dialogue as a process, the colloquium proceedings concentrated on zones of active conflict in the North-East of India, Kashmir and Nepal. The presentations were led by the WISCOMP fellows who live and work in these regions and hence helped provide a holistic picture of ground realities that prevail in these regions.

The issues highlighted at the colloquium included:

• The structure of dialogue processes, justice mechanisms as well as models of conflict transformation need to be democratic. All the parties to the conflict, however weak economically, socially or politically they may be, should be involved in the dialogic engagement.

• Gender was foregrounded in the deliberations. It was recognized that the dynamics of power and the patriarchal orientation of the concepts of rights and justice often go against women. Thus it is crucial that they engage as active participants in processes of dialogue.

• Conventional notions of power, domination and control, pose significant structural challenges to dialogue processes.

• Caution should be exercised in replicating models of dialogue. Contextualizing the dialogue process to the political and cultural ethos of the region is important.

The fellows participated in working group discussions. They were divided into groups on the basis of their areas of interest and their fellowship projects. The groups discussed: Gender and Armed Conflict in North-East India, Gender and Issues of Displacement, Gender, Law and Conflict Resolution, Gender, Identity and Interfaith dialogue, Gender, Media and Armed Conflict in Jammu and Kashmir, Gender and Security and Gender and Peacebuilding: Space for Creative Expressions.

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