The Role of External Actors in Trauma and Healing:

Abstract

External Actors’ Role in Trauma and Healing: The Case of India-PakistanProf. Dr. S. Gulden AYMANThe causes of the ongoing adversarial relationship between India and Pakistan could be analyzed focusing on the root causes, proximate causes, regional and extra-regional dimensions of the conflict. However one cannot easily recommend meaningful remedies aimed at conflict resolution without understanding the traumas experienced during Partition. After three hundred years when the British finally left India in August, 1947 the subcontinent was partitioned into two independent nation states: Hindu-majority India and Muslim-majority Pakistan. Immediately, there began one of the greatest migrations in human history. Across the Indian subcontinent, communities that had coexisted for almost a millennium attacked each other in a terrifying mutual genocide. By 1948, as the great migration drew to a close, more than fifteen million people had been uprooted, and between one and two million were dead. Partition continues to influence how the peoples and states of postcolonial South Asia envisage their past, present and future.The painful memories and wounds of the Partition have left both parties with the experience that each side is fundamentally unreliable and malicious. Moreover, unfortunately efforts toward truth and reconciliation in the context of India-Pakistan relations are characterized by “competitions for victimhood”. Opposing historical narratives that are built upon individual stories of massacres committed during the partition era still affecting the nature of the two states’ relationships. At the societal level people who were affected by shock, fear, ill-health and trauma often focused on their survival and tried to cope with this tragedy by forgetting the horror of their experience. Yet the consequences of such a coping strategy are not without further complications. In order to restore durable peace between India and Pakistan not only the psycho-social impact of this tragedy has to be evaluated but the British role; a major factor that contributed to the root causes of India-Pakistan rivalry has to be acknowledged as well. On the literature on trauma, healing, apology and forgiveness external actors’ roles often undermined. However, true healing of several intractable conflicts at the international arena can only occur when a dialogue focused on truth started with meaningful efforts toward apology and forgiveness that include all responsible parties. In order to understand conflict and conflict resolution comprehensively an approach that can accommodate conciliatory mechanisms as well as remedies for grievance is needed.