Building bridges of understanding

Mediation for resolving conflict, is a welcome wind of change blowing into schools and communities worldwide as a strategy for restoring calm in troubled waters. As an Australia-based educator-mediator, trained in the Harvard method of mediation, I discern a need for teachers, lawyers, community and spiri-tual leaders in India to develop mediation skills in one of the most challenging fields,viz, cross-cultural conflicts, where the courts, politicians and gladiatorial lawyers routinely fail their clients. An appeal for help from Sunil, an old school friend, recently prompted me to fly from Perth, Australia to Chennai to mediate in one of the most challenging experiences of my life, and one that could very easily have ended in tragedy. Sunil, a Hindu teacher had fallen in love with Fauzia, a young Muslim girl, and wished to marry her. Her father, Ali Khan, a successful merchant, Sunil and I were childhood friends. On the flight over, I reflected upon the cross-cultural dynamics that I would need to use to mediate this potentially explosive situation. I knew that the allocentric (interests of the group) in the case of Ali and Sunil would be more important than the interest of the individual which is paramount in the Western world. Family opinions and approval would be central and family could include grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins and even close friends, unlike the Australian nuclear family. I was only too aware that if I failed as an intermediary, violence involving family members on both sides, was a real possibility. I realised that because I was well-known to both parties, it strengthened my role as a mediator. In sunny Australia, this special qualification would have immediately disqualified me from mediating. To facilitate my role, I sought out a Muslim cleric who was a close friend of Ali’s family, to co-mediate with me. He was highly respected, had more knowledge of the family and events, and could advocate options that were in keeping with the Quran and the Hadith (words and deeds of the Prophet Mohammed). After years of association with Muslim and Hindu friends, I was aware that authority to mediate is enhanced by family connections, religious merit, prior experience and knowledge of customs and community. As a prelude to the resolution, I visited the Muslim cleric and we discussed several issues pertaining to Islam and Christianity. I listened as he quoted from the holy Quran, to repudiate Western propaganda which depicts Islam as a ‘fundamentalist’ religion. He cited references from the Quran which endorse equality of all human beings, and state that women and men are made of the same soul. This wise, influential scholar was aware that the issue before modern Muslim women (and men) is not to comply with Western traditions, but to implement the rights accorded to women in the Quran which are liberating, and which “enjoin the doing of what is right and forbid the doing of what is wrong” (9:71). My assistant’s position to this scholar-cleric was a great honour accorded to me, as a long-time friend…