In the heavy fog of artillery fire, drone attacks and shrill rhetoric, the mere mention of peace or even dialogue seems inconceivable. Early on May 7, the Indian military struck nine locations in Pakistan and Pakistan-occupied Kashmir in response to the April 22 Pahalgam terror attack. Public discourse was triumphant, even encouraging further military action.

In a quiet corner of the internet, a petition by the Southasia Peace Action Network or Sapan urging both sides to end hostilities, had garnered nearly 3,000 signatures in the 24 hours since it was issued on May 9. It may be a drop in the ocean but it reflects the tireless efforts of peace advocates like Lalita Ramdas.

On Saturday evening, when India announced that the two countries had agreed to a ceasefire, Ramdas was relieved – as, she said, “any sensible person would be”.

“I hope this will be the start of a positive, constructive dialogue as the way forward,” she said.

As far back as the 1970s, Ramdas was an anti-nuclear activist. She recalls how her husband, the late Admiral Laxminarayan Ramdas, reacted to India test-firing nuclear weapons at Pokhran in 1998. “He said, ‘this is probably the worst thing we have done because very soon I know what’s going to happen’,” she said. “And sure enough, on the 11th of May…was when India detonated the nuclear weapon in Pokhran and on the 28th of May Pakistan followed suit.”

India and Pakistan are nuclear-armed states at hand-holding distance, she noted.

But now, peace activism in the subcontinent has never been more difficult. “Many people still ask me where I still find the energy to stay engaged. I happen to be 85 at the moment. I can’t answer where it’s coming from,” she said. “For me, and for many of us in the women’s movement, the personal actually becomes the political. I believe that contributes in large measure to keep us going.”

Ramdas recalls being deeply affected by her husband’s accounts of his formative experience as a young boy during Partition when he watched his parents stand up to a mob demanding that they hand over the Muslim family sheltering in their home. Her own efforts through the 1984 anti-Sikh pogrom were just as defining: she organised peace marches, helped at relief camps, wrote down the testimonies of Sikh widows and even testified before the Ranganath Mishra Commission of Inquiry knowing it could risk her husband’s naval career.

“I think it’s important that you have a clear, steady belief in the fact that what you’re doing is right, what you’re doing is in line with your conscience,” Ramdas said.

A week ago, Ramdas wrote two letters of support to Himanshi Narwal, the widow of naval officer Lieutenant Vinay Narwal who was shot dead in Pahalgam. Himanshi Narwal was viciously attacked online. “Because she talked of peace and love and no hatred for Muslims and Kashmiris – the trolling she’s been subjected to that I never thought I’d live to see it,” said Ramdas.

“If we really want peace, we have to look at some of these underlying systems and structures – including militarism, patriarchy and misogyny – which also militate against peace,” she said. “There are all of these layers and layers that go into making it such a difficult thing to achieve.”

“But we have to keep going.”

Excerpts from an interview.

What does it feel like to speak for peace in the midst of jingoism and when there seems to be no place for any talk of opposing war?

I’m not even using the word peace. I’m saying if one suggests maybe there are other ways, maybe we need dialogue, maybe we need to look at another’s point of view…it’s then immediately…sort of completely… people scream at you and say therefore you are anti-national when you even make that suggestion. So, all forms of reasoning or dialogue or critical thought are not only seen as negative but are actively discouraged.

We need to remember what [Rabindranath] Tagore had written about nationalism being the real menace in India. He was convinced that his countrymen will really gain their idea of India by fighting against an education system which teaches them that a country is greater than the ideas of humanity. Of course, everyone turns around and says “oh come on now, that’s a very long agenda and it will take forever”. But he said this a 100 years ago and we actually never took him seriously.

It’s gone so deeply into our collective psyche that it is going to take a lot of work – it is like unlearning and then relearning – to look at the whole thing in a different context. I don’t know if that is an answer but it’s the best one that I have at the moment, to explain I think the place we have arrived at.

There is a vacuum in peace activism when it comes to the younger generation, which has only known heightened tensions and the influence of highly polarised societies.

We’ve just had a two-hour-long absolutely wonderful meeting over Zoom where about 50 people from Pakistan and 50 of us from India talked, shared our pain and our feelings. It was so reassuring because we were all saying and hearing the same message, “no, we don’t want war; we need to talk, we need to have dialogue”; but the refrain everywhere was we need more young people. And I think that we have not actually given serious energy and time to bringing in more people to tell them what all this is about. Peace sounds dull… certainly not something which will excite people.

[We need to] reach out, talk to young people, get them involved, not by saying “hello, hi I want to talk about peace”. But let’s have conversations, in which these options about what happens with the ugliness of war. And in some senses, in a very perverse way, maybe today is the right time. Because we’ve seen young people willing to put their freedom on the line, sometimes their lives on the line, because they have stood up for Gaza and the Palestinians.

How do we find a way of drawing in young people? Let’s hear what they are saying without giving them lectures about what has to be done. I think we have to now clearly focus on that; there’s not many of us who’ll carry on for much longer.

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