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IN CONVERSATION
Learning to live together again
P. ANIMA
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Prof. T.K. Oommen’s says his book on Gujarat looks at the potential for people on the ground to work towards reconciliation.
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Photo: V.V. Krishnan
Towards sustainable peace: Prof. T.K. Oommen.
“Nobody wins in a communal violence. Everyone is a loser,” says T.K. Oommen. Professor of Sociology at the Jawaharlal Nehru University for 26 years, Oommen’s tome, Reconciliation in Post-Godhra Gujarat, published by Pearson Longman, will hit the stands soon.
Godhra and its aftermath is a gnawing memory for a generation of Indians. However, Godhra and Gujarat beyond the carnage and the bloodshed is what Oommen wants to highlight. “There are dozens of books on the Gujarat violence,” says the professor. Relief and rehabilitation in the strife-torn Gujarat and the State apathy too garnered attention. “Even the media to a large extent concentrated on the sensational,” says Oommen. “But it is the other side of violence that I wanted to emphasise — of reconciliation at the grassroots. Every time instigation happens from political parties, people should be able to ask what will happen after the violence,” Oommen elaborates on the concept of reconciliation that needs to be worked upon.
Reconciliation in Post-Godhra Gujarat blends a few theories with experiences in the field. Part of the non-governmental organisation CARE India’s Gujarat Harmony Project, Oommen juxtaposes the post-Godhra realities against the larger Indian historical context and evolves a new pattern of working. When CARE India approached him in September 2002 with the GHP on the relief and rehabilitation in the State after the riots, Oommen prodded them to add a third arc to the project — the aspect of reconciliation. After 27 months of field work and tie-ups between CARE India, two strategic non-governmental organisations and 10 local non-governmental organisations in Ahmedabad, Anand and Baroda, the report was submitted. But an analytical approach to the compilation left the idea of a book smouldering.
“On reading the report many people told me that there was hardly any material in the field with the stress on reconciliation,” says Oommen about the birth of the book. “The work highlights the potentiality of people at the grassroots to come together and work towards reconciliation,” he emphasises.
Building bridges
Making everlasting peace between the scarred communities should be our primary concern, Oommen explains. The stress should not be on the temporary healing of wounds, but building sustainable peace, for, it is the only long-term solution. “When the emphasis is on relief, the victim becomes a mere recipient. Rehabilitation brings together only the victim and people who want to help. But reconciliation brings together the victims and the perpetrators of violence,” he explains. However, building bridges and trust in Gujarat was never meant to be easy.
Dealing as he was with an unprecedented outbreak of violence that transcended the boundaries of the urban and the rural, Oommen evolved a pattern of work that was different. Though he calls reconciliation “the age-old genius of India”, Oommen argues the ideal was always evoked from above and not at the level of the man on the streets. That the concept of reconciliation never really seeped down to the ground level is evident from the Partition, over 60 years ago, he asserts. So Oommen became part of the GHP as the chairperson of its programme advisory group, but he turned the traditional approach of reconciliation on its head. Here, reconciliation began at the bottom of the ladder and worked its way up.
Non-governmental organisations engaged with various sections, be it women, youth or senior citizens, worked in tandem. Attempts at building trust ranged from excursions together to evolving a working partnership where people from different communities performed various aspects of a livelihood exercise.
Planting an idea
“I will not the say the experiment is a complete success, but it plants an idea,” says Oommen. “Though, CARE India’s involvement in the project is over, the idea planted at the grassroots is continuing,” he asserts. “After the project, during interactions with the victims, some said the project met with a fair amount of success while some maintained there has been no change in the situation,” Oommen is candid enough to admit.
Though non-governmental organisations are at the core of the project and the book, Oommen is aware of the general scepticism about them. “There will be different opinions about every phenomenon. In fact, it is a mixed bag,” he admits and says two non-governmental organisations with religious backgrounds were also part of the project.
Oommen also confesses that the book is “not a sophisticated academic work” but can work at different levels. “Some amount of conceptualisation has gone into the book. But policy makers and bureaucrats will find the book beneficial. It has multiple targets,” he says.
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