Wednesday, November 9, 2022

(Democracy Dialogue lecture Video) Partition Split Us Up: Can We Live in Peace as Neighbors ? By Dr. Vinod Mubayiat




The 20th lecture in the Democracy Dialogues series  was delivered by Dr. Vinod Mubayiat on 30 October 2022 where he  spoke on "Partition Split Us Up: Can We Live in Peace as Neighbors ? "




Theme :Partition Split Us Up: Can We Live in Peace as Neighbors?

 Future Challenges and Reflections

75 years have passed since Partition and the prospects of peace between the two largest countries of the region, India and Pakistan, whose conflict impacts the entire South Asia region look dimmer than ever. The reasons and justifications offered by the protagonists for the separation, such as the two-nation theory, have been discussed at length in various forums and while the past is commonly understood to be prologue to the future it behooves us to imagine a future without all the baggage of the past.

This talk will refer at times to the past and the misdeeds of the present but focus mostly on possibilities for the future. A good amount of experience has shown that despite the most fraught and tense relations between governments, common people of south Asian countries, whether in the diaspora or while visiting each other’s countries, are able to establish bonds and friendships very quickly and easily. Perhaps 75 years cannot easily extinguish long standing cultural and linguistic bonds established over millennia. Dialectics also teaches us that opposing and contradictory views and ideas can co-exist within a society or group and which will prevail depends on the context in which the opposites interact.

Groups such as South Asia Peace Action Network (SAPAN), whose founding charter states that its minimum common agenda is reclaiming South Asia, have attracted members from all South Asian countries. SAPAN calls for soft borders and visa free travel between countries in the region in addition to demands for human rights, peace and justice. The talk will discuss possibilities of expanding the activities of people-to-people groups that can create civil society pressures for peace and prosperity as well as joint actions to counter existential threats like climate change.

About the Speaker :

Dr Vinod Mubayi is a reputed American Physicist of Indian origin.PhD in Physics from Brandeis University, taught at Cornell University and was a research fellow at TIFR, Mumbai before joining Brookhaven National Laboratory, New York.

A member of the American Nuclear Society, the American Physical Society and the American Association for the Advancement of Science, he was also a Consultant to agencies of the United Nations on Energy Issues ( 1981-1985)

He joined INSAF bulletin as co-editor in 2004.  A keen observer of socio-political events in India, Mubayi has been close to progressive groups, espousing human rights issues and the cause of the downtrodden

His book 'Where is India Headed ? - An Historical Critique ( 2021, Media House) which chronicles the contemporary Indian History during the last few decades has also been translated into Hindi 

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