As journalists from India and Pakistan, currently Fellows at the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists in Chicago, U. S., we registered the shock, bewilderment and anxiety that echoed around the world, and in our countries, when India - and later Pakistan - conducted nuclear tests. We came here to work together in researching women's potential as peace builders between our countries. Instead, we have been forced to address the possibility of war.

The discussion in the U.S. press has essentially revolved around whether India was right or wrong to conduct the tests, did it really face a security threat, was Pakistan justified in following the same path, and whether some of the blame lies with the double standards adopted by Western nations.

In our countries, the media has given primacy to the nationalist rhetoric which has swept both countries. The voices of concern that military prowess comes at an unaffordable price have been overwhelmed. While the BJP-government inspired nation-wide euphoria over "Operation Shakti", Pakistan retaliated with tests to "even the score". Sweets were distributed in the streets in both countries to celebrate and government-owned media played patriotic songs to "inspire the masses". The casualty in such an over-hyped atmosphere is bound to be cold reason and far-sightedness.

What we find missing in much of the discussion both in the media here in the U. S., and what we have seen of the coverage in our respective countries, is the recognition that there are real people on both sides of the India-Pakistan border who will pay the ultimate price for decisions taken by a handful of people.

Ordinary people understand little of how much nuclear weaponisation has cost their governments and do not know how many millions will die a swift death if weapons are ever used. Yet they have been asked to sacrifice and both governments presume that they have given their consent.

Both our countries have been devoting large chunks of their budgets to defence. During 1990-1996 India and Pakistan together spent a total of $70 billion on defence and only $12 billion on education. And while our arsenals have grown, social indicators, in terms of literacy, maternal and infant mortality, and access to basic health and sanitation, have improved at an inexcusably slow pace and even declined in some instances.

Despite 50 years as independent nations, we have not learned the lesson that true strength is displayed by attacking poverty and challenging the social, political and gender inequalities within our own societies. The current escalation of tensions will be cause to further prioritise defence.

If the choices were not mutually exclusive, perhaps there would be no debate. But unfortunately, the more that is diverted to defence - whatever the justification - the less is available for eradicating the evils that keep our societies poor and weak.

Fortunately, even though media depictions of wildly hysterical men and women would suggest that all the people in both our countries have suspended disbelief in their joy at being owners of weapons of mass destruction, there are signs that the generations that have grown up in the shadow of hostility have begun to challenge the status quo and ask difficult questions. Who gains from war and from continued tensions between our countries? How do ordinary people benefit? What respite is there for thousands of divided families who still have close relatives on the other side of the border? How are the poor empowered by militarism and war? And ultimately, who pays the price?

The most unfortunate setback from the current developments in both countries could be to the growing civilian efforts to build peace. The people of India and Pakistan had begun to make a small but significant investment in peace before the recent crisis. The earliest exchanges of ideas among politicised and development professionals from India and Pakistan took place during the 1980s at international conferences. Activists met to work on women's issues, human rights, or environmental problems at various United Nations and other international meetings and discovered to their surprise that delegates from South Asia were united in their positions on these pressing and common areas of concern.

For example, violence against women is a shared problem that both governments need to address through comprehensive legislation and protection to women. Further, the flesh trade which involves smuggling of women across India from as far as Bangladesh to be sold in the Gulf requires a regional solution in order to end it. Also, similar topography on both sides of the border reveals similar environmental problems for which solutions could be jointly devised and shared.

During informal conversations after the day's work was over, Indian and Pakistani participants often voiced their sadness that they did not have more access to each other's countries, and that the intransigent politics of the region prevented them from working together to solve many shared problems. Friendships were made, ideas for change were discussed and stereotypes were shattered.

These early contacts paved the way for a formal civilian Indo-Pak dialogue to take shape in 1994. Anyone can join in the annual meeting of 200 activists, intellectuals and concerned citizens who make up the India-Pakistan People to People Forum for Peace and Democracy, which meets alternately in each country to discuss and debate all the many issues which keep our countries from normalising relations.

"These nuclear explosions have brutally shattered the hope of the people of the subcontinent," said a recent statement issued by the Forum. "Basic needs of ordinary people have been sacrificed to this altar of all powerful 'national security'." Their pleas for Pakistan not to retaliate with further tests were not heard.

Other groups joined in the condemnation. Dr. Haroon Ahmed, former regional leader of International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War - which won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1985 for its work to end the Cold War - stated, "India has conducted these tests at a time when traditional rivals all over the world are sorting out their differences and collaborating with each other."

Not only have the 1990s seen unprecedented civilian collaboration in South Asia, but non-official diplomatic dialogue channels have also sprung up for the first time. In 1991, the United States Information Service brought retired officials and policy-makers from India and Pakistan together for talks at Neemrana. Frank debate and discussion on how to build confidence between the two governments have been held every six months for the past six years. The Shanghai Initiative, non-official talks which include Chinese participants, and the South Asian Summer School in Arms Control, to involve young journalists and future policy-makers in the dialogue, are both on-going Track II efforts initiated by the W. Alton Jones Foundation in the last four years. One estimate by the Washington-based Henry J. Stimson Foundation puts the total number of non-official and civilian dialogue channels at 40.

Much more of this slow and painstaking work, of laying the foundations on which a political accord can be built, will now be affected. Non-official diplomatic efforts, which seek to resolve the nuclear issue on a regional level and address the global balances which have pushed proliferation, may cease altogether. But without dialogue, there can be no language of peace.

If there is to be a real chance for peace in our region we must not let the opportunities for dialogue lapse. Those who have begun the investment in peace must renew their commitment now and every time a crisis erupts because the cost of complacency will be paid in human terms.

It is only through talk that we can find answers to the questions that haunt us all. What do we want our nations to be in the next 50 years? Do we want current tensions to continue in perpetuity? Or is there a chance that like Europe, South Asia could also be an area where mutual interests for peace and economic growth overcome the myopia of military might?

Our research on women and peace in other arenas of conflict has revealed the crucial role played by ordinary women in the most intractable situations around the world. In the Middle East, for instance, over 5000 Palestinian and Israeli women are together part of a women's peace group, Jerusalem Link. A good deal of the groundwork for the recent Irish accord was possible because Catholic and Protestant women demanded of their leaders that they find a way out of the political impasse. And in the Balkans, where conflict has devastated a once beautiful part of the world, Serbian women protested against the rape of Bosnian women by their soliders even as the two sides were at war. Therefore, it is not unrealistic to believe that peace can be a reality, even in South Asia, if ordinary people on both sides want it enough.

Kalpana Sharma and Ayesha Khan
c/o Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists,
6042 S. Kimbark Ave.,
Chicago, IL 60637