STATE TIMES NEWS
JAMMU: Forum of Peace and Communal Harmony organised a seminar on ‘Understanding Plurality and Diversity of Jammu and Kashmir’ here on Sunday.
The speakers spoke about plural culture of the State, emerging challenges to plurality and threat of communalism and regionalism and spoke about the way forward.
The seminar had two sessions, one on ‘Evaluating Plurality’ and the other on ‘Way Forward’.
The two sessions were chaired by Prof. Zahur-u-Din and Executive Editor, Kashmir Times, Anuradha Bhasin Jamwal, also Convenor of the Forum.
Earlier, she highlighted the goals of the newly formed forum and said that there was need for a movement from the public to meet the challenges of divisive polity.
Prominent academic, Prof. Rekha Chowdhary underscored the need for strengthening the plural culture by building on the shared spaces. She also highlighted the rich tradition of plural values of Jammu which she said has immense accommodating powers and has always been a safe haven for refugees of all kinds – Muslims, Sikhs, Kashmiri Pandits and others.
Retired Principal, Deedar Singh said that the plurality was threatened by the corporate greed and the flawed policies that were detrimental to the interests of sustainable economy and environment, leading to imbalances in the society and inequitable distribution of wealth.
Prof Lalit Magotra said “we must teach our society to live in peace with each other and suggested there was need to teach history of Jammu and Kashmir in the state with a peoples’ perspective and by highlighting heroes who have been icons of secular values.”
Prof. Zahur-ud-Din spoke about the link between the Kashmir dispute and communalism and Anuradha Bhasin also warned against the influence of the Hindu right wing politics Jammu region on one hand and the influence of the Islamic radicalization. She said that while commercial interests often perpetuate injustices, they can also play the role of bridging the society and everything depends on how the society is being educated and their political conscious created through informed opinion.
Other speakers who expressed their views include I.D Khajuria, Ellora Puri, senior advocate, A.V Gupta, Advocate Tazeem Dar, Randhir Kaur, a scholar of Punjabi Department and Shuja-ud-Din also spoke on the occasion.
Those who were present on the occasion were Santosh Khajuria, Mohan Lal, Balkar Singh, Kali Dass, Rammez Shiekh, Didar Singh, Dharam Pal, Murtaza Agha, Kulwant Singh, Narinder Khajuria, Mohsin Rana, Shiv Nandan, J.S Mangal, Inderjeet, Sandeep Singh, Nirdosh Uppal and R.S Jamwal.
