Mumbai: In the pursuit of improving relations and people-to-people ties between India and Pakistan, ordinary people from both sides have brought out a unique calendar featuring students’ messages in an effort to create unwavering bonds of friendship.
The 5th annual Indo-Pak Peace Calendar will be launched in Mumbai on January 30 by Observer Research Foundation (ORF), a think tank, and Aaghaz-e-Dosti, an Indo-Pak Friendship Initiative, to be followed by a panel discussion highlighting the need for peace and cooperation between India and Pakistan.
Selected paintings of students of Class 8-12 from India and Pakistan are part of the calendar and depict the innocent and straightforward attitudes and expressions of youngsters in several cities in India and Pakistan. The youngsters’ artistic expression fly beyond borders and long for meeting each other, shaking hands that show how strongly young minds from both sides think about peace. Along with the paintings are peace messages from renowned peace activists.
Aaghaz-e-Dosti, which means ‘the beginning of friendship, is a joint initiative with Mission Bhartiyam (India) and The Catalyst of Peace (Pakistan), seeking to create bonds of friendship between the two nations.
To achieve this goal, the organisation curates art produced by students that features messages of harmony in the Indian subcontinent. It produces calendars that highlight that common yearning for peace and friendship.
The calendar has already been released in New Delhi, Chandigarh, Panipat, Ayodhya and Nashik in India and in Karachi, Islamabad, Lahore and Toba Tek Singh in Pakistan.
An initiative of the ORF, founded by Sudheendra Kulkarni, is the Mumbai Karachi Friendship Forum which hopes to bridge the cultural divide between the two countries. The ORF says that Mumbai and Karachi are sister cities sharing racial, cultural and civilisation ties. The Forum seeks to harness those shared bonds by increasing people-to-people contacts between Indians and Pakistanis.
To that effect it has organised events such as Tasveer-e-Mumbai and Tasveer-e-Karachi, a photography exchange programme. “We have also launched the Gandhi-Edhi campaign in an effort to bring together humanitarians from India and Pakistan to work towards equality and social justice,” said a ORF member.
