The topic of my discussion is “Role of media in peacebuilding between Pakistan and India”. These two nuclear countries are neighbours, but unfortunately, there are some major conflicts between them, although they share many similarities.
Speaking on the platform of the GMEC is a wonderful experience for me and it is an honor for me, I am sure that GMEC will become the media’s largest media educational research council in the world. I am impressed that GMEC has many experienced professors, media professionals, and researchers from different countries. There is a gap between educational and media professionals and GMEC will be reducing this gap by bringing them all on one platform.
The topic of my discussion is “Role of media in peacebuilding between Pakistan and India”. These two nuclear countries are neighbours, but unfortunately, there are some major conflicts between them, although they share many similarities.
The other speaker, Buchan Ram, very well explained the history of Indian media, and it is the same history of Pakistani media before the partition. It started in the 17th century with the publishing of Gazettes in Bengal. We teach the same media history in Pakistani media institutions before the partition. Then, you can judge the similarity between the two countries. The mainstream media should change their attitude, not only the Pakistani media but Indian media also, towards promoting peacebuilding and strengthening the relations between India and Pakistan.
Unfortunately, the media conglomerates of both countries don’t realize the advantages of peace and tolerance. Even though there are a lot of opportunities for media to generate revenue, peace and good relationships are in the favor of the media industry. It will be helpful for the media to generate revenue in multiple ways, like Drama and the Film industry can work together and generate revenue. It is observed that the recently coproduced Punjabi movies like “Chal Mera Putt” were some of the most famous movies in India and Pakistan. That’s why the producers made the two more parts of this movie by casting top Pakistani actors. The media can help their governments build Peace between these two nations, which is not very difficult, by promoting just two diplomacies: Cultural and Sports diplomacy.
How can we build peace easily?
The first one is cultural diplomacy. It is a very good tool to build relations between Pakistan and India, these nations are having many similarities in different aspects of lifestyle like Just the food “Biryani” which is very famous across the border, and the people in India and Pakistan love the same food. The living style, clothes, and weather conditions are the same, Even the language is similar in both countries. So, I think it is time to change our attitude. Just focus on the new generation, teenagers, and university students. They have friends across the borders and are working on many educational assignments and projects together, and things are progressing slowly. There are many good examples of cultural diplomacy on social media; a Facebook group with 260K members from India and Pakistan is encoded as an example whose name is “India Pakistan Heritage Club”. This group is building peace by sharing the culture of both countries. If we look at a post about the Ukraine war, People from both sides are concerned about this conflict. Many of them are commenting that the Leadership of Pakistan and India should play their role to stop the war by talking with the European Union, Russia, and the United Nations. On the other hand, they are promoting the Urdu and Hindi languages as well. All of us may have observed these kinds of social media groups; they have many stories of care and love across the borders. On the death of the Indian Queen of singing, Lata Mangeshkar, the people and media in Pakistan feel the same pain and sadness.
The second thing we should promote is sports through Sports diplomacy, even if we can promote cricket only. If we look at a cricket match between India and Pakistan, the ground is full of spectators, no matter where they are playing in the world, the stadium is full. We have experienced in every match that we filled any cricket ground in Dubai, Australia, and the UK with more than 100 thousand people. Unfortunately, we are not playing cricket on our home grounds for the last decade, and we are generating huge revenue from these matches for the other countries but not for Pakistan or India. Our cricket boards are collecting the revenue from the people of both countries and giving it to the third country. There are some other sports like hockey, traditional wrestling, and Kabaddi which can be promoted to build peace. The people from both sides are respecting the players without any discrimination, this can be observed in the previous matches that Indian People were happy to show respect towards Pakistani players and Pakistani People are doing the same for the Indian Players. Also, when the media is covering the match between India and Pakistan, the TV channels and media organizations are generating a lot of revenue by getting advertisements and a rise in viewership, but the media don’t know how to get revenue by promoting peace among the two nuclear nations?
In the sense of cricket, both nations are mature now. In the previous decades, a match between India and Pakistan was like a war, but now people and the media both are taking this as a game, they support the game not only their team, after and before the cricket match the media is discussing that how to promote the cricket. India is a larger country and India has a larger infrastructure of media networks and media institutions. They should have to play their role as they did in two famous movies “Main hoon na” and “Bajrangi Bhai Jaan”. It is observed that most of the movies that have hate against other countries have flopped at the box office. Both sides of media should understand that their benefit is in positivity, they must learn that the revenue in positivity is higher than the negativity and they can generate more revenue through peace.
- Waqas Mahmood
"I am a lecturer, Ph.D. student, journalist, media trainer, and social media expert. I have been serving as a Lecturer of Mass Communication & Media Studies at GIFT University Gujranwala, Pakistan since March 2018. Furthermore, I am doing a Ph.D. in Media Studies from the Department of Media Studies, The Islamia University of Bahawalpur, Pakistan, and working on my dissertation on “Misinformation on Social media”. Currently, I am in the Department of Communication, the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, USA as a “Visiting Graduate Student” on the six-month IRSIP fellowship program funded by HEC Pakistan. I am engaged in journalism since 2013, and have experience in Print, Electronic, and digital media, as a news reporter, editor, and News and Content Producer."