Student Voices from New Delhi, India: Oriented to Peace

• In Event: Peace education and youth- and gender-inclusive peace

Proposal

Rationale for the Proposal
Aligned with CIES 2026 goal of proposing “actionable strategies for incorporating peace into curricula and educational policies” this study echoes that it is essential for direct stakeholders such as students and educational policy makers to share a bi-directional relationship so that voices on-ground can shape educational policies and programming. Duckworth et al. (2012) affirm that only when student voices are incorporated into matters of local, national, or global policies can there be a social transformation.

Research Questions
Recognizing that young people witness and experience the ubiquitous nature of conflicts that emanate from dominant socio-political, economic, and cultural forces, which tend to shape school practices, the author listened to the voices of students who attend schools that aspire to resist this socialization for conflict through their focus on peace education. Guided by, ‘In this world of conflict, how are young people imagining, engaging, and enacting a peaceful world?’ and ‘How are middle school students interacting with notions of peace and conflict as they make meaning of their social worlds?’ a methodological approach of youth participatory action research (YPAR) was undertaken with 12 students across two schools in New Delhi, India across 13 virtual sessions that were held twice weekly.

Problem Statement
Specifically, in the Indian context, post-independence, there has been structural and cultural violence, marginalization and discrimination based on socio-cultural stratifications such as religion, socio-economic status, gender, sexual identity, caste, language among others (Das, 2008; Panda & Gupta, 2004). This culture of conflict continues to manifest itself in recently introduced laws such as N.R.C (National Register of Citizens) and C.A.A (Citizenship Amendment Act) that are intended to identify and alienate religious minorities, categorically Muslims by rendering them Stateless. Furthermore, given the contemporary political landscape as well as the government’s close involvement with education, a new National Education Policy 2020 omits the words secular and secularism posing a challenge to India’s core constitutional values (Mirza, 2019). Additionally, changes are being made in textbooks that are intended for students to think that “our true identity begins with the identity of our nation” (Javedkar as quoted in Mustafa, 2018) glorifying the role and narrative of dominant groups.

Definition of Conflict and Peace
Literature notes that a culture of conflict and all kinds of discrimination, including religion-, gender- or caste-based continue to be practiced within schools. In this study, conflict is being defined as a culture of conflict, which is based on discriminations and stratifications such as religion, gender, caste, color, sexual identity, language among others (Thakkar et al., 2020; Ramakrishnan, 2019; Srinivasan, 2010; Das, 2008; Panda & Gupta, 2004). There is a power imbalance between dominant and nondominant groups, which is not only reflected in schools (Mishra, 2017; Bar-Tal & Rosen, 2009) but also maintains itself in schools through indirect violence (Galtung, 1969; Brantmeier, 2007) such as stereotypical representations and biases.
While defining peace, peace researcher Dietrich (2019) contends "there is no globally valid or naturally objective denotation of the word peace" (p. 253). Affirming this perspective, scholars such as Chernus (1993) speculate whether there could ever be a culturally neutral definition of peace with Galtung (1981) arguing that “there is an intimate connection between peace thinking and the geo-political situation of the country/region that produces it" (p. 193). Even though peace is a contested term, scholars have attempted to define peace to reduce the violent effects of conflict. Galtung, a principal founder of the discipline of peace and conflict studies, distinguishes between the constructs of negative (absence of personal or direct violence) and positive peace (absence of structural or indirect violence).

Conceptual Framework
Relatedly, as a wide-ranging field of scholarship and practice, peace education is concerned with dismantling all forms of violence (e.g., direct, structural, and cultural) and examining ways to create and sustain a more peaceful and just world (Hantzopoulos & Bajaj, 2021; Hantzopoulos et al., 2021; Bajaj & Hantzopoulos, 2016). In recent years, there has been a recognition that “localized experiences may shape perceptions of peace” (Hantzopoulos & Bajaj, 2021, p. 28), resulting in the re-emergence of critical peace education as an approach to peace education (Bajaj 2008). Initially advanced by Wulf (1974), a critical peace education framework aims to challenge unequal power relations that have been established through a universalized and dominant narrative by focusing on local realities/context and agency (Hantzopoulos & Bajaj, 2021). Through an emphasis on “context-specific structural inequities” (Hantzopoulos & Bajaj, 2021, p. 28), the framework gives precedence to localized interactions, embodiment, and experiences of peace and conflict, with an aim of nurturing a sense of agency.

Methodology
Resonating with the conceptual framework, YPAR emphasizes a bottom-up approach with a focus on local perspectives, knowledge, and context, where local realities are not only acknowledged but also form the basis for research and planning (Cornwall & Jewkes, 1995). When young people are the community researchers, examining problems and proposing solutions based on their own lived experiences, the process is referred to YPAR (Smith, Davis & Bhowmik, 2010). As part of the holistic research design, additional sources of data were employed to complement this YPAR-inspired study. These included surveys and individual semi-structured interviews with elicitation tasks.

Findings
The study revealed that despite living in a world that is embedded in conflict, these young people move beyond despair and offer hope and possibilities for imagining, engaging with, and enacting a peaceful world. With an orientation to peace, these young people illuminate their imaginations of peace, which help us to think about ways in which we can live as peaceful beings characterized by harmonious co/existence with the self, one another, and the environment. Living in this world of conflict, these young people do demonstrate an awareness of existing conflict, and their engagement with conflict also tends to take them back to a place of peace. Starting from and returning to a place of peace could contribute towards building a peaceful world.

Author

• Kamiya Kumar, Bluebells Educational Society