Hindus and Muslims in Gujarat, India, still have hope of regaining the peace they once knew, despite the violence that surrounds them, a graduate student said Monday at the Cohen Lecture at the L.A. Pittenger Student Center.
Jui Shankar, a guidance service and counseling psychology graduate student, presented her award winning research project on "The Hindu-Muslim Conflict: Understanding Two Communities in Gujarat, India."
The Hindu-Muslim conflict has escalated since 1947 when India gained its independence from Britain and was divided into a mostly Muslim Pakistan and mostly Hindu India.
In Shankar's quest to reflect on the personal experiences of individuals in Gujarat communities in her research paper, she defined peace as more than just the absence of violence.
"People were coming up with very practical solutions for what could happen in their community," Shankar said.
One scholar Shankar used in her research, Dr. Varshney, "believes the civic society is responsible for the Hindu-Muslim conflicts," Shankar said.
The Hindu-Muslim conflict is complex, Shankar said, and no amount of research on her part would be able to fully explain the problem.
"I will never be able to justify or do justice to Gujarat," she said.
After Shankar finished her research study of nine participants and 13 themes, she concluded that the Gujarat community still has hope for the Hindu-Muslim conflict to come to an end and for the people of Gujarat to regain peace.
The Benjamin V. Cohen Peace Studies Fellowship was established by the Cohen family as a memorial for Benjamin Cohen, who passed away in 1983.
"The fund presently supports research on the establishment and maintenance of world peace, supporting the work of Ball State faculty and graduate students as Cohen Research Fellows in alternate years," according to the Academic Research and Sponsors Program.
Interested graduates are encouraged to apply for next year's fellowship by Nov. 14.
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