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This is a talk delivered by Rukmini Iyer, Director, Exult! Solutions (www.exult-solutions.com) at the BuildPeace Borderlands Conference in 2019, held at San Diego and Tijuana. Here is her introduction about the talk:
The world witnessed the largest democratic exercise panning out through April and May 2019 in the form of the Indian parliamentary elections. In the last few years, like in a lot of other parts of the world, polarization has come to the fore in India and is experienced in daily lives in many forms. I am a leadership development professional and peacebuilder. As a woman, a peace educator, a person born into what is considered 'upper caste' (and therefore privileged) in India and as a conscious citizen, I felt the need and the urgency to engage voters to vote after taking into consideration the national shadows: elements of religion, casteism, gender, ethnicity, etc. that are not spoken about and yet have an impact on how we vote. This led to a series of virtual dialogues that I hosted under the theme of Conscious Politics, open to anyone who was willing to engage within a safe space to reinterpret a lot of social myths we unconsciously carried. You can read more about the conversations here:
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The elections of course, saw the reelection of what is considered a right-wing nationalist government. This further fuels the need for such conversations not just before elections, but in a consistent manner, such as citizen engagement in politics is active and conscious. One does not have to become a politician, but needs to fulfill one's duty as a citizen through engagement with personal and national biases in order to contribute towards building a world that works for us all. Therefore, I am now in the process of building a series of online dialogues as well as local conversation spaces that will bring the values and techniques of peacebuilding into mainstream conversations. I would like to utilise the opportunity at Build Peace to share my experience and ideas to create conscious communities around the world. Peacebuilding cannot be left only to Track One processes. Civilian engagement is key and using virtual spaces along with localised dialogues is an important part of the process.