Thin green line

For the first four days of July this year, I was in Larnaka, on the island of Cyprus, observing a dialogue on interfaith issues between representatives of Asian and European countries. The group is called the Asia-Europe Meeting (ASEM), to which none of the Southasian countries belongs. I also participated in a journalists' colloquium on media and interfaith issues hosted by the Asia-Europe Foundation (ASEF) to coincide with the ASEM dialogue. In what can perhaps be seen as a reflection on the state of interfaith relations today, the ASEM dialogue collapsed, with the so-called Larnaka Declaration failing to achieve consensus among member states. Next year, the dialogue will be held in China, but it is not clear what document future participants will work from or build upon.

Even for an Indian, coming from a country rife with interfaith conflict, watching the Larnaka summit unfold and then fall apart was difficult. I was disturbed by the inability of states to manage or mediate the differences, prejudices and disagreements between the communities of faith – some of which are responsible for much of the violence in our world today. The small group of journalists brought to Cyprus by ASEF, an organisation based in Singapore, had a rich and productive conversation in a closed-door meeting on the sidelines of the ASEM event. But the diplomats, ministers and religious leaders participating in the formal inter-governmental dialogue could not so much as draft a two-page statement reflecting some common ground on how to lessen conflict, promote democracy and protect civil liberties in many countries of Eurasia.

Cyprus itself is not exactly a model of Christian-Muslim communal integration. Malaysia, this year's co-host, has its own trouble dealing with the mismatch between a booming economy and a still-conservative society that treats women, non-Muslims and immigrant populations unequally. Next year's host, China, is a country that takes the maximum economic advantage of globalisation, but leaves much to be desired in terms of how it manages internal divisions of religion, class, language and ethnicity. A certain lack of strong leadership on interfaith issues from any of these countries was perhaps to be expected. But that they would fail to steer the ASEM dialogue to any conclusion at all came as something of a shock – especially to the invitee journalists, who found a way to argue without anger, and managed to hammer out a statement of their own that reflected the concerns of the group.

Clarity from without

Being on the deeply divided island of Cyprus, and that too at an international summit on interfaith issues, gave me occasion to reflect afresh on communal conflict in India. Cyprus is fractured into predominantly Greek and Turkish zones, with further fine distinctions made between Greek Cypriots, Turkish Cypriots, settlers from the Turkish mainland, as well as a number of minority groups, including Latins and Armenians. The Greek-Turkish divide is projected backwards into Cyprus's history, which included phases of Byzantine and Ottoman rule, and forward into the fates of both Cyprus and Turkey as members or aspirant members of the European Union. Both past and future are contaminated by the current conflict, and Cypriots are unable to speak either of their history or of their emerging European identity without bitterness and blame.

Turkish troops occupy northern Cyprus. The Cypriot government retaliates against this occupation of more than a third of the island by threatening at every step to jeopardise Turkey's entry into the EU with its veto power. Meanwhile, Greek Cypriots clandestinely sell off their properties in occupied Cyprus and want nothing to do with either Turks or Turkish Cypriots. They reject the idea of co-existence, preferring instead to have the two communities be permanently segregated, referring to the state structure they would prefer as a "bi-zonal bi-communal federation". Though it was only in 1974 that the Turkish army arrived, no one seems to be able to remember a time when Cypriots of different faiths lived together rather than segregated, or when many were bi-lingual in Turkish and Greek.

Moreover, the demonisation among Greek Cypriots of all things Turkish – Ottoman rule, the Turkish language, mainland Turkey, Turkish Cypriot culture – is exacerbated by the general hostility, post-9/11, against Islam and its adherents. Those who practice Greek Orthodox Christianity now feel an irreconcilable difference between themselves and their Muslim countrymen, as well as with Muslim neighbours in the region. They seem to have forgotten that it was a rightwing junta in Athens that, together with the CIA, tried to stage a coup against the Cypriot government led by Archbishop Makarios in 1974, going so far as to attempt his assassination. The Turkish forces first arrived in Northern Cyprus in order to overturn the pro-Western puppet regime installed by the Greek junta. (It might be pertinent to recall, at this point, that the very word xenophobia is Greek.)

Conflict has a way of making sense when it involves one's own community, nation or other groups with which one identifies. It is only the quarrels of others that illuminate the pathology and pointlessness of conflict per se, as I discovered in Cyprus. The unending recriminations of Cypriots against one another, combined with the inability of either side to see things from the other's perspective, seemed completely irrational and counter-productive. But Indians, Pakistanis and Kashmiris – to name three of the many parties deadlocked in conflict on the Subcontinent for the past six decades – are just as absurd in the way they go about relating to one another and addressing (or, rather, failing to address) the issues that divide and agitate them.

It is obvious to an outsider that Greek Cypriots should embrace their Turkish compatriots; that Turkey should withdraw its armed forces from Cyprus; that Turkey and Cyprus should both enter the EU on amicable terms with one another, and abandon their mutual hostility in favour of larger European goals that exceed their conflicted bilateral relationship; that Greece should restrain itself from meddling in the affairs of Cyprus by tugging at the loyalties of Greek Cypriots; that the US should play a constructive role in promoting peace on the island, which stands at the gateway to the entire war-torn West Asia; that the UK, which retains sovereign bases on what ought to be Cypriot territory, should play a palliative rather than obstructive or indifferent role, and so on. Perfectly obvious.

Alas, the United Nations, especially under Kofi Annan, has hit a wall with every proposal to bring this internecine conflict to a sustainable resolution. But before we bemoan this fact, it would be good to remember that the UN is at least allowed to have a role in Cyprus. In Southasia we have not allowed the UN to intercede on Kashmir at all in the recent past, not even with plans that we might then accept or reject through elections, referenda or negotiations. Ever since the armed insurgency against India began in Kashmir around 1990, positions have simply hardened on each side. Even the militarisation of the entire Kashmir region and the escalation of the Indo-Pak stand-off to include nuclear preparedness have not been reason enough for any side to concede ground.

Turning from Cyprus to Southasia. Some 70,000 people have died in this war of, for, in, about Kashmir. Nearly 10,000 have gone missing. India can afford to keep losing soldiers, civilians and money – and indefinitely so, we're told. 'Afford' to? India may have the GDP and the defence budget to afford so much death, but which family can afford to forfeit the lives of its men, the sources of its livelihood, the honour of its women, the future of its children? Who can afford to be at war for 16, or 59 years? The Indian state can, perhaps; the Indian Army can, perhaps; but the people of India cannot, the people of Kashmir cannot, and neither can the people of Pakistan. The people cannot afford the sheer and prolonged suffering that is the Kashmir conflict. To an outsider, surely – a Cypriot, say, or a Turk – this would be crystal clear.

Bi-communal development

In Nicosia, the divided capital of Cyprus, I saw churches and mosques that have changed places and come to occupy one another's space, depending on what side of the dividing Green Line they happen to be on. There are Arabic inscriptions under Gothic arches, the domes and vaulted ceilings are all mixed up, steeples and minarets confused. All of this makes for interesting architectural dissonance, but it struck me that some degree of violence hides in the very structure of these places of worship that testify to the triumph of one faith at the cost of the other. In India our anxiety is about the outright demolition of temples, mosques, gurudwaras, churches. But the kind of hostile takeover seen in Cyprus presents another form of erasure that is equally violent, or so I felt.

The Greek Cypriots belong to the Greek Orthodox Church. The Turkish Cypriots and settlers from the mainland are mostly Sunni Muslim, but rather secular in comparison to Sunnis elsewhere in West Asia. These two communities inhabit Nicosia together, but this perfectly circular city is divided into northern and southern halves. To take over the shrine of another faith, to surrender the holy space of one's own faith – these are not acts of acceptance or accommodation. When religions enter into conflict with one another through the vicissitudes of history, they seem to acquire an intransigence that is not in itself a feature of any faith as it is conceived or practiced. The paradox is that religions preach tolerance but often
breed intolerance.

From the Ledra Museum Observatory in south Nicosia you can look across to the northern side; from the Ledra Palace Hotel checkpoint on the Green Line you can actually walk from south to north Nicosia. For the southern side you need a visa from the Republic of Cyprus; for the northern side, a separate visa is issued in the name of the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus, the TRNC, an entity that lacks international recognition but continues nonetheless to exist, even flourish. Only Turkey recognises the TRNC. On a mountainside just north of Nicosia, the Turks have painted two enormous flags, one Turkish and one of the TRNC, both red and white, which are visible from just about anywhere in the city. Whatever the political merits of the Turkish presence in Northern Cyprus, this is a symbolic gesture that is plainly offensive

The purpose of these observations is not to berate Cyprus – far from it. After all, Cyprus did host the ASEM Interfaith Dialogue this year, and if this event ended without consensus, the responsibility lies equally with participating countries, sponsors and future hosts. In fact, on its own soil Cyprus is undertaking a massive project of heritage restoration called Bi-Communal Development, with monies from the EU, UN, USAID and others. The project appears to be working well in both the south and the north, and many buildings of historical importance have already been restored under a scheme that benefits Christians and Muslims alike. My purpose, rather, has been to think critically about India, to allow myself to be prodded to do so by the sights and sounds of Cyprus.

Naturally as I traversed the fractured city of Nicosia with its mosques-turned-churches and churches-turned-mosques, going back and forth across the Green Line, I thought about the razing of the Babri Masjid in Ayodhya back in 1992, and the catastrophic effect that one act of destruction had on the psyche of India as a whole – polarising Hindus and Muslims as never before, except perhaps during Partition. The sanctity of religious spaces and the integrity of political orders are both fragile, and this fragility must be acknowledged and respected. Communities and countries cannot mess with either sacred spaces or territorial borders without paying a terrible price, it seems, whether these be their own or those of others.

Like India, Cyprus too brings a great deal of its repressed hostility and hatred – in Cyprus's case, self-hate – to the politics of nomenclature. In Cyprus proper, place names have been Hellenised with a vengeance; in Northern Cyprus, Turkish versions of place names are revived or invented. To a foreigner this is bewildering – every town and city, apparently, has a series of historical names dating from different periods and, in addition, three contemporary names: one Greek, one Turkish and one Anglicised. When the clash of identities becomes this cacophonous, all identity is lost, and one comes away from a place like Cyprus feeling that its signatures are confusion and prejudice, not two ancient and glorious cultures in a delicate and beautiful balance. Is this how visitors to India feel, especially if they happen to be present in the midst of one or another 'communal clash', riot, curfew or attack? Can one not then begin to understand the severe criticism of Indian civilisation, the sentiments of chastisement and disgust, expressed by a traveler with some insider status, like V S Naipaul or Pankaj Mishra?

Israel's recent aggression in Lebanon saw refugees pour into Cyprus in great numbers. As this small island gave temporary shelter to others in the neighbourhood who were fleeing the consequences of interfaith conflict, it might have paused to consider the fineness of the line it walks every day – between a tense and reluctant coexistence of cultures, and outright civil war. We in Southasia might do well to consider, likewise, where it is we draw the line.