Reaching
Across Faultlines: Initiatives for Reconciliation in Gujarat
A
roundtable discussion titled Reaching across Faultlines: Initiatives
for Reconciliation in Gujarat was organized by WISCOMP on December
20, 2008. It brought together some 50 activists, scholars and practitioners
to engage with the ongoing processes of reconciliation in Gujarat.
An attempt was made to foreground the experiences and perspectives
of women involved in these processes, and further identify some of
connectors and dividers that become manifest in the processes of reconciliation.
The roundtable also provided a platform to practitioners to share
with a larger audience their learnings from the field.
The
focal point of the roundtable was presentations by three Ahmedabad
based organizations, namely Ahmedabad Women’s Action Group (AWAG),
Samerth and Aman Biradiri.
In
the first session titled Challenges and Spaces for Dialogue/ Engagements
the initiatives of the Ahmedabad Women’s Action Group (AWAG)
on reconciliation and social healing were discussed. Further an assessment
of the creative methodologies employed by AWAG to bring women together
across faultlines was also done. The second session titled Gujarat:
Problems of Communalism and the Next Generation engaged with
a specific initiative on education by Samerth where an attempt has
been made to generate a dialogue on issues related to identity and
diversity in a polarized context like Gujarat. The third session titled
Nyayagraha: A People's Campaign for Peace, Legal Justice and Reconciliation
looked at the Nyayagraha Project of Aman Biradari in Gujarat,
to understand the variables of a community based approach to justice.
The roundtable concluded with an innovative theatre workshop on Theatre
of the Oppressed that provided the participants with certain tools/
skills that they could employ in their ground level work on reconciliation,
with a broader focus on team-building and capacity development.
