Upon nomination by their colleagues and admirers, the Association for Communal Harmony in Asia (ACHA) has decided to honour Dr. Mohammad Arif, Jatin Desai, Ashfaq Fateh, Faisal Khan, Dilafrose Qazi and Awais Sheikh, all peace and harmony activists from India and Pakistan, with the ACHA Peace Star Award 2010. They now join the ranks of reputed peace, harmony and human rights personalities from India, Pakistan, like Karamat Ali, Sayeeda Diep, Dr. Asghar Ali Engineer, B. M. Kutty, Dr. Abdul Hameed Nayyar, Dr. Ram Puniyani, Dr. Lenin Raghuvanshi, and Dr. Ingrid Shafer from the U.S.A., who have been honoured with this award in previous years. Also for his services to ACHA, Sharafat Ali of Karachi has been accepted for the ACHA Award.
The awards are given every two years. The ACHA Peace Star Award is given to individuals (and organisations), that have performed meritorious work in promotion of peace and communal harmony, while the ACHA Award is meant for individuals (and organisations), that have performed substantial service to ACHA. These Awards do not have any financial value. They have been set up to recognise some of the unsung peace and harmony heroes and heroines, and those who have performed substantial service to ACHA.
ACHA is a 17-year-old, U.S.-based, non-profit organisation, which is dedicated to promoting peace in South Asia, and harmony among South Asians everywhere.
Brief information about some of the recipients of this year is as follows:
Dr. Mohammad Arif hails from Varanasi. Inspired by Gandhian philosophy he abandoned his academic career to promote communal harmony, composite culture, secularism and democratic values. In this pursuit he has built alliances of Dalits, Tribals and minority groups; organised awareness sessions for the media, and seminars, lectures, conventions, training workshops for peace and harmony workers, and street-plays for the general public; developed training modules; published awareness and training materials; established a library of resource materials to facilitate research on and documentation of sectarian clashes; and has founded the Centre for Harmony & Peace. Some of his initiatives have helped abort severe conflicts in such communally sensitive areas as Varanasi and have aided capacity building in other areas.
Jatin Desai of Mumbai has been a devoted community activist ever since his college days. He has persisted in his efforts in spite of trumped-up charges of attempted murder and armed robbery brought against him by his opponents. He has organised Tribals in Maharashtra to help them fight for their land, forest and water rights; Dalits for their right to draw water from the community well; his fellow journalists to struggle for better wages as well as resistance against curbs on their freedom of expression, threatened by certain fascist organisations. He worked for restoration of peace during the 1992-93 Mumbai communal riots and bomb-blasts, and helped mobilise secular forces during the Gujarat genocide of 2002. For the last 10 years he has been active in the Pakistan-India Peoples’ Forum for Peace & Democracy (PIPFPD), and has visited Pakistan many times, in this regard. To help promote people-to-people contacts and enduring friendship between India and Pakistan, he has organised many meetings in Mumbai and Delhi. Also in 2007, he organized a bicycle march from Mumbai to Pakistan, and helped organise an India-Pakistan conference “A Road Map toward Peace” in Delhi, earlier this year. Besides, he has been working with other peace activists on developing a mechanism through which fishermen, arrested by the two governments, upon accidentally drifting across the maritime boundary between India and Pakistan, do not have to languish in foreign jails, even after they have completed their terms. Finally he has been active in the antinuclear movement; is associated with the Gandhian organisation, Mumbai Sarvodaya Mandal; and at least once a week is interviewed on various TV channels on issues like Indo-Pak relations, human rights, freedom of expression. He has been honoured with Ram Bapat award for promoting peace and social justice through his writings.
A lawyer by professional training, Faisal Khan of New Delhi is a key member of Asha Parivar and National Alliance of Peoples Movements (NAPM), and has the responsibility for organising and coordinating their programmes in the states of Gujarat, Haryana, Jammu and Kashmir, and those in the north-eastern India. He has organised several peace marches and has fasted in order to draw people’s attention to the victims of communal and gender violence, state repression or skewed development in India. He has led goodwill missions at the recent Kumbha Mela and Ajmer Sharif Urs, where he and his colleagues discussed with groups of pilgrims the importance and ways of maintaining communal harmony. In 2006, he led a peace delegation to the Kashmir Valley, where he and his colleagues discussed with common people and political leaders about issues confronting them and the way to confront them. Also he has actively campaigned for peace between India and Pakistan and organised peace marches from India to Pakistan.