When minds and hearts meet on Kashmir and Jaffna, can peace be far behind asks Chithra KarunaKaran
Ok, I admit it, I am a webhead. I spend hours keywording on google and selectively replying to numerous messages on ICQ. I am rapidly deploying my sociology and psychology courses online to encourage my students to probe slavery databases and assess the volume of traffic in human cargo during a particular decade, or to consider whether we have an innate preference for beauty and whether that alleged preference confers an evolutionary advantage. In addition I have visited URLs where the talk is about the geopolitics of South Asia and where usually the K- word looms large, often ferocious, but is generally uttered in a collective pain reflecting past hurts and sad anticipation of hurts to come, whether dealt by the Hizbul or the BSF.
Because spontaneous meeting and greeting is not my forte I avoid chatrooms of every persuasion. I don’t do well at the heated exchange, the instant insult, the baited retort, the sarcastic rejoinder. Besides, I run the risk of being enlisted to provide therapy for someone who wandered in because his shrink is vacationing in the Berhsires for all of August.
Instead, I tend to gravitate to the message boards where one may leave a fragment of thought or a full-fledged analysis and return to find that someone has responded. Of course the message boards are as prone to the aforementioned excesses as the chatroom variety. But I find I need the extra time to reflect on what is being said by someone else and then framing my reply. I also like the opportunity to create or be tempted by a catchy headline that may start a discussion thread that sends messaging well into the double digits before everyone’s patience runs out and a new more provocative headline appears, starting yet another discussion thread. So, it’s definitely message boards for me.
South Asia message boards are of particular interest. For the last several months I have joined virtual discussions at a Pakistani and a Sri Lanka website respectively. At chowk.com one is immediately aware of the esthetic appeal of the opening page which recreates a serene neighborhood with its Dilpasand Café, Chaathouse, Leafy Glade and University Avenue. In this cosy niche, chowkwallahs are invited to “read, write and think.” Literary efforts abound and a lively if occasionally crudely abusive exchange ensues around these offerings. A current favorite going the rounds recounts a young Lahore writer’s comic efforts to get the right size shoes for her relatively large feet. A nice change from the heated K-word exchanges is provided when the sales assistant calls out “golden jooti, jumbo size!” to the chagrin of our young writer and shoe-seeker. At Forums and Chat, another chowk venue there is the usual invective provided by a few post-Partition diehards who make Southern Baptists look like innocent cherubs. Among these shrill voices I discovered a young student bemoaning General Musharraf’s partiality towards private colleges, and a Lahore-based human rights activist who is currently visiting India. Both make it possible for me to believe that people-to-people exchanges are the true measure of the potential for a just and lasting peace between India and Pakistan.
On Peaceweb at infolanka.com there is a similarly intense exchange of messages focusing on the pros and cons of the Sinhala-Tamil faceoff. Again, the stories of pain and loss are laced with anger and hatred. The discussion threads wind around stories of Tamil children killed by Prabhakaran’s adherents, of expats writing from Australia or Canada about stories they have heard second third or fourth hand of some alleged atrocity perpetrated against the Tamils by the Sinhala army.
What is striking about the exchanged messages on both dotcoms are their shared themes – ethnic strife, religious fundamentalism, explicit violence, political betrayal. The themes remain the same though the specific cultural content and the location changes. Jaffna and Kashmir begin to merge and blur, mountains and snow give way to highland jungles and coastal plains. There is the constant virtual pushing and pulling between those who desire peace and those who want to continue to make war. The discussions break down, verbal assaults are freely traded and then the discussion threads are mended by a few stalwart souls who have withstood the attacks and continued to present reasoned arguments. The perennial doomsayers will always be present. But at least among a few messagers there is the growing recognition of the common, ordinary humanity that binds them. Tapping away at their keyboards to launch a salvo at some unsuspecting virtual visitor, they slowly realize that they eat and sleep, dream and wake up like all the others. To some this becomes a source of strength and optimism. I have been grateful for such moments. These people-to-people exchanges, the elusive meeting of minds and hearts, precious because they are few, sharing neither space nor time, make the virtual seem possible. Not yet real but possible.
Chithra KarunaKaran
August 13, 2000
New York City
