There are certainly a great many conflicts in the world, several of which hold the potential to destabilize the entire planet. Tension in South Asia is widely acknowledged as a serious issue, but few recognize the scope of potential havoc it could unleash if allowed to proceed unchecked.

Our pilot peace-building project, “ShantiSalaam,” is founded on an eight-week arts and public education tour through northern India and Pakistan in Winter 2006-07. Assembling a team of artists, educators, musicians, and human rights activists from across the region, our team will explore intercultural tolerance through several tools. In addition to conscious performances, public speaking engagements, a series of interfaith pilgrimmages to holy places revered by various faith traditions, independent journalism, and street diplomacy, the team will facilitate interactive creative writing and visual arts workshops with young people and artists.  Each of these programs will aim to build interpersonal solutions to communitarian violence by promoting mutual understanding across borders: “ShantiSalaam."

A vigorous pursuit of peaceful resolution to the Indo-Pak conflict can only come once people on both sides of the border recognize their cultural similarities. As long as there remains limited understanding of the other’s art, music, culture and thinking, the people of India and Pakistan will remain divided along religious, political and military lines. And while battling war, intolerance and animosity with art may seem a meager response, it is both all we can do, and among the few strategies that holds any hope of ultimately succeeding.