Berkley Center

Background: With 20 years of field experience working in regions shaken by violent conflict, Rama Mani combines her passion for art and her intellectual fascination with broad issues of peace and social justice. Her most recent venture is a creative effort to communicate this through performance art. The aim is to jolt people both to a keener awareness of the grave problems facing the world and the urgent need to find solutions. These exchanges between Rama Mani and Katherine Marshall began in Oxford in May 2012, sparked by a conference on religion, spirituality, and global governance, and continued in Caux, Switzerland, in July 2012 and 2014. The discussion explored Rama’s journey towards the complex of global issues that are her current focus. Her long history of engagement on issues of religion, peace, and women’s rights drew the conversation towards the WFDD/Berkley Center work on women, religion, and peace. All draw on her broad country experience, which includes work across the African continent (for Oxfam) and, under various institutional hats, Afghanistan, India, Egypt, Uganda, Ethiopia, Guatemala, and Sri Lanka. She speaks about her part in shaping the global conversation on the UN mandated Responsibility to Protect, a central theme during the Caux discussions. The significance of spiritual dimensions of peace and development work is, she argues, critical but long neglected in most academic literature and discussions. Her aim is to draw the strands together in her passionate effort to forge new solutions for global peace.

You are taking a fascinating career step by venturing into dramatic enactments that focus on stories that convey both messages and your sense of urgency about the need for fundamental shifts in handling of world affairs. How has this come about?

It is no coincidence and no accident that my life is taking this new direction! It comes as the culmination of a long reflection on how to combine my sense of the power of compassion and humanity—we could call it spirituality—with my urgent concern about the sorry state of global affairs, especially in the Middle East. It also grows from my passionate commitment to unlocking the power of women for peace and to heal those suffering in the world. I can trace what I am doing now to a moment of inspiration and insight long ago in Somalia, in June 2000. I understood then that the pull of the arts and the power of the spiritual were life forces that drove me but also were fundamentally part of the phenomena I was working on—ending conflict and building peace and justice by appealing to humanity not just rationality. It is a coming full circle.

The global issues we are facing are culturally defined, very individual, yet they go beyond the person. That is why poets can be the expression of a nation, and why poets are so much the focus in a time of war, or targets in times of troubles.

I was compelled in 2003 to begin to write my novel about Afghanistan. It was a wakeup call, drawing me to the power of story. I had been sent there (to Afghanistan) to conduct research around the country in order to write a policy analysis with recommendations on rule of law and post-conflict justice. But I found myself with people pouring out their hearts to me. The policy paper I had to write would present the facts. But I knew well that it could not possibly convey even the nature of the issues, much less the actual condition of people and their diverse needs. It certainly would not convey their nobility and grace despite their decades of suffering. A novel could begin to convey it. But I knew that a novel is harder to ‘sell’ than a policy paper in the realist world of politics.

The real wake-up call came during a remarkable conference a few months ago, led by a group of exceptional women. We were a wonderful group of women there: Jean Houston, Scilla Elworthy, and others. They were insistent that each day I give a poetic rendition of what had happened, what we had discussed. Quite miraculously a poem would ‘fall’ into me in a pure stroke of inspiration as I woke up each busy morning capturing the essence of our achievements and challenges as women seeking to ‘co-create a world that works.’

That was the starting point. My colleagues, especially Jean Houston, strongly urged me to give voice to the poems burgeoning in me. Since then, I haven’t stopped writing each day, drawing from stories that fill the soul. Some are ordinary/extraordinary women I just met in the past months in war torn regions like Palestine, Lebanon, as well as Iraqi and Syrian refugees in Turkey. Some are based on deeply moving encounters going back into the past, like my time from 1999 to 2002 working across Africa as an advisor on conflict for Oxfam, or researching genocide and culture in 2009 to 2011 for the Carnegie Corporation funded project I directed at Oxford. In enacting these testimonies in public, I become the person, and live their lives. It is an embodiment actually rather than acting. This lets others experience the person, and feel how they felt. The feedback that I have gotten in every performance on every continent with diverse audiences affirms each time that this was my calling. After 25 years of working on conflict issues, it was a way to express what was involved and what transforming violence to peace and injustice to justice really means.

Why art and theater?

I have always been interested in theater, poetry, and storytelling as a vehicle for political transformation. From a very young age, even as a young teenager, I felt that I was born to be a writer. But growing up in India, my strongest desire was to end injustice and bring about political change to empower the most vulnerable. So I suppressed my artistic urges as not serious enough. Ever since my insight 15 years ago in Somalia that that I could use art to bring about change, I have been meeting with artists in all war torn countries, and investigating deeply through my research, writing, and seminars how exactly art can be a vehicle of change. But it took some time before I discovered almost by accident the right medium. It was a question of finding the window to convey that understanding through art, art as the expression of the human soul.

The problem is that policy work and writing are so theoretical. Yet the essence of the problems of violence and oppression comes from what people experience and feel. They are hurt, outraged. They become victims or they become perpetrators.

But there are brave and courageous souls who go through the utmost suffering and don’t become bitter or apathetic. Instead they become lights in their societies. We all know of Mandela and Aung Sang Su Kyi. There are thousands of less known Mandelas in the world whose suffering has made them wiser and kinder leaders. They point to new approaches to justice that are grounded in culture, ecology, and metaphysics. The spiritual side is foremost and it is what gives meaning to life. How can that be conveyed? And conveyed in a way that leads to a breakthrough in real understanding and, above all, a willingness to act informed by this deep insight?

So I see my commitment to performance as part of my journey. Part of what I do is to show what is broken and unfurled. But I also show how people, especially women, overcome divisions within themselves, transform their suffering into strength, and find true power.

What is your formula for performances?

Each one is different as I compose and design each performance for that topic and audience. In general, I combine a few poems with several testimonies on the theme. For the testimonies, I take on the roles of the men and women I have encountered personally and wish to portray to address that particular theme, using very simple props and changes of dress. There is always a ‘journey’ built into each performance. Through the narrative, the audience travels, for example from the destruction and anguish of war to the possibility of dialogue to building peace with the enemy and undertaking the process of healing and reconciliation.

As the performance unfolds, the audience realizes that although the people they encounter in the performance have undergone different experiences, they share a common essence. The performance actually takes you from experience to essence. As the audience feels profound empathy—oneness—with these unknown individuals in remote places, their own humanity is rekindled. This becomes a fuel for their future thoughts and actions.

A second distinguishing feature is that I always follow the performance with an interactive and inclusive dialogue with the audience. I do this, first, because my purpose is not to entertain or evoke deep emotions for their own sake, but to use the performance as a vehicle to stimulate more open, fresh, deep, and soul-searching dialogue on the critical global issues we face so that we can unearth together new and potentially transformative solutions. It is important for me to offer the audience a safe, inspiring, open, and dynamic space for creative and heartfelt dialogue where they can articulate whatever new emotions, insights, and ideas have come to them. In this way, the performance with dialogue becomes a ‘theatre of transformation,’ a crucible where our common humanity is awakened, and new solutions to human problems are explored collaboratively. My hope is that this could become a vehicle to reach collective breakthroughs on many of our pressing crises.

The events are often to large audiences, but I have also performed in medium sized and intimate settings. My performances have been to varied audiences in many parts of the world, and I am deeply touched at how powerful the response has always been. For example, in November 2014, I performed at the British Parliament for the launch of our Rising Women Rising World initiative, and at the Ashmolean Museum in collaboration with the University of Oxford on Armistice Day. In October, I performed four times—in the UN in Geneva for the World Investment Forum, at the Inter-Parliamentary Union for the Future Policy Award, and twice in universities in the U.S.

My basic message is that we, as a human race, are capable of so much more. Mandela is an example. He grew to his potential. We can all do that. It is something that exists in every single one of us, but it desperately need awakening. What is needed is for hearts and spirits to align with the body and the mind.

These performances are a mission. Their intensity is new for me. And we will see where it leads!

Your life path is unique and uniquely fascinating. Can you trace how you came to be where you are today? How would you describe the role that religion has played and plays in your journey?

I was born in Bombay (Mumbai). I grew up without strong religious convictions. My parents were at least outwardly religious, but I rejected what I saw as a quality of self-indulgence that seemed to come with their religion as I saw it. My grandparents were more deeply shaped by their religious convictions, and they were also very Brahman. I could not reconcile myself, then, to the love and kindness I found in them and the harshness that I found in the ingrained Brahman notions of caste that I was increasingly aware of. So for many years neither religion nor spiritual matters were at the forefront of my mind.

I went to Bryn Mawr for college, as it was the college that offered me the most generous scholarship of the few colleges in the U.S. I applied to. I came there wide-eyed and naïve, with little idea where I was headed. But the period I was there (the 1980s) was one of heady times, of student questioning, and I was shaped by what was happening, becoming far more politically aware. I majored in French and political science.

After college, I was a Watson Foundation Fellow from 1989 to 1990, and investigated immigration and political movements in Algeria and France. I worked in collaboration with non-profit and government agencies, and scholars. I was getting the bug for both France and the Middle East.

I then enrolled at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) in Bologna from 1990 to1992. As my thesis dealt with Professor Amartya Sen’s capability theory, I was fortunate to meet just before graduating with Amartya Sen, as well as with his wife Emma Rothschild, and, to my surprise, they recommended me when an opening came up with a new Global Commission on Global Governance, based in Geneva. So from 1992 to 1995, I became enmeshed in the Commission’s work as external relations advisor. The most eye-opening part was managing the global launch of their report, "Our Global Neighbourhood" It was an exciting time, when there was an awakening of civil society to many issues around globalization, and I found myself in the midst of it. During that time, I met many people in the international relations world. One of them was Professor Thomas Weiss, a founder of the Academic Council on the UN System, and that was the origin of our co-authored Responsibility to Protect book.

During the Commission’s work, we had to deal with the humanitarian crises in Somalia, Northern Iraq, Bosnia, the genocide in Rwanda, and democracy in South Africa. That is what made me realize that it was imperative for me to understand conflict and the complex process of building peace and restoring justice thereafter, especially in our resource strapped developing countries. After spending a year in India between 1995 and 1996, and giving birth to my only son, Arjuna, in Delhi in December 1995, I began work on a Ph.D. at Cambridge University in 1996, and completed it in 1999. My thesis was published as “Beyond Restribution: Seeking Justice in the Shadows of War” by Polity Press and is still extensively used by scholars in the field.

As I finished my degrees, I wanted to move beyond research, and took the first opening I found. I began working for Oxfam, in the hot conflict zones, based first in Ethiopia, then Uganda. I led a continent-wide campaign on humanitarian crises and on war and illicit economies in the African continent.

You told me once of a life turning point for you, where the importance of spiritual matters came into focus. How would you describe that?

I was in Uganda as part of my work for Oxfam, which took me traveling constantly through conflict regions of East Africa. One night, in June 2000, I lived a powerful and transformative experience that was truly a vision. It transformed the fundamental paradigms that had earlier and have since ruled my life. The love that I had always felt for poetry and art suddenly came together with a sense of much broader meaning. It was truly a vision, in the form of a dream that was utterly clear and real.

The experience led me to change my path. Instead of the nomadic existence I had been living, I came to see myself living a more peaceful, rural life. To my considerable surprise, I saw that life anchored in France. The new paradigm involved a far closer contact with and awareness of nature. And it involved a new approach to people. The art that was such a pull for me was not about monuments or celebrity artists, but about people of vision and integrity. Part of what I felt was a strong desire to master humanitarian ideals, living in the midst of nature. I wanted my son, who was young at the time, to be able to breathe fresh air.

I woke up more realistic, but the vision changed my life. I found myself living in rural France. My son, who is now 19, grew up there. And my interest in the arts and spiritual matters grew deeper all the time. I was fascinated by Buddhism, Sufism, indigenous spirituality, and all the mystical traditions. Slowly I found myself deeply drawn to the philosophy of the Upanishads and other ancient Indian texts which repudiate the casteism and rituals of fundamentalist Hinduism. I found beauty and inspiration in many places, often unexpected. All this deeply expanded my compassion and insight. Meanwhile I continued with my more classic professional career, in the areas of policy and teaching, but they were increasingly colored by this awareness of the importance of the spiritual. For example, while directing the course on new security issues at the Geneva Centre for Security Policy, I reshaped the entire course to focus on human security and cross-cultural cooperation, and I rearticulated the course objective: to become not only more effective, but also more compassionate decision makers. The course remains a huge success. You see, even military officers who’ve been in the worst warzones, or policy makers dealing with daily crises deeply want to see meaning in their work and feel they can contribute to humanity.

What I realized then, and have come to see ever more deeply over the years, is that unless you touch peoples’ souls and hearts, change cannot happen. I had in some sense lived my life up to then as almost an alpha male type! I was always active, wanting to whip order into things, to get things done. A change that I date to that moment was a conviction that I needed to overcome my ego and actually become much more humble. To realize that I was only a conduit for things to happen through me. It brought out a compassionate human side, and a deep desire to transmit those values by embodying them myself.

You have been much involved in issues of global governance. How did that come about?

My own introduction to global governance came in those early days when the concept was beginning to emerge and clarify itself from the chaotic clouds of confusion after the Berlin Wall fell in 1989. The International Commission on Global Governance was formed in 1992 at the initiative of the visionary statesman Willy Brandt, under the chairmanship of Ingvar Carlsson, Prime Minister of Sweden, and Shridath Ramphal, former foreign minister of Guyana. Its 28 eminent members tasked themselves with addressing how to govern the complexity of the post-Cold War world and maximize the untapped potential of human and interstate cooperation. Their major preoccupation was how at long last we might protect and assure the well-being of both people and our planet. From its inception in 1992 until the global launch of the report in 1995, I was senior external relations officer and worked particularly on the areas of global ethics, rights, and development. In the early days, as I solicited input from reputed academic institutions, civil society organizations, and intergovernmental bodies around the world, much of my time was spent simply trying to explain just what this inscrutable new concept was about.

From then on, my work on global governance has taken many forms. The common themes were peacebuilding, human rights, and justice. From 2003 to mid-2004, I worked with a non-profit initiative, Justice Unlimited, particularly in Afghanistan, Guatemala, and Nepal. I developed an endogenous African university curriculum on justice, peace and human rights for the United Nations University for Peace’s Africa Programme, working closely with African scholars. I was director of the New Issues in Security Course (NISC), Global Peace and Security: Challenges and Responses, at the Geneva Centre for Security Policy (GCSP), from 2004 to 2006 and was co-convener with the Institute of Development Studies (IDS, Sussex) of the Global Consortium for Security Transformation (2007). A remarkable and turbulent period was my service as executive director/CEO of the International Centre for Ethnic Studies (Colombo) from January 2007 to April 2008, working on conflict, human rights, gender and globalization, and fostering art, culture, and dialogue. I served on the foundation council of "Geneva Call", and was on the advisory group of the Global Facilitation Network for Security. I also served more recently on several international boards addressing issues of global governance such as ACUNS (Academic Council on the UN System), Foundation for the Future (Jordan), Global Centre for the Responsibility to Protect, and currently, NATO Defence College and UNESCO-CISH International Centre for Human Sciences (Lebanon).

In this extraordinary range of places and issues, are there any that have pointed you specifically towards the work you are doing now?

All of them have been part of the journey!

We met in Fes, at the Festival of Global Sacred Music, in 2003. What brought you there? And how do you see the potential for ventures like it?

I had just returned from East Africa to Europe, and met Faouzi Skali. He invited me to speak at Fes. I found it a mix of wonderful ideas and not quite achieved ideals. The event was fascinating, though, with many characters. Among the memorable ones were Swami Agnivesh who became immediately and still remains one of my closest friends and collaborators, and the gorgeous Tibetan singer, Yungchen Llamo.

I have great hopes for the vision of Fes—the idea of working in a purposeful way to bridge divides through the power of music, arts, and dialogue.

You have a long-standing commitment to working with women and have a strong sense of their spiritual power. Can you talk a little about that dimension?

I have had the fortune to work with some remarkable women, and we share a strong conviction both about the power of spiritual forces in shaping life and world affairs and women’s special roles and responsibilities. Among them are Jean Houston and Scilla Elworthy. We have with a small group launched a women’s initiative. We had a remarkable retreat last October to November 2013 near Oxford, at the Quaker Center. We call our initiative Rising Women, Rising World, and have just launched it officially in the British Parliament and worldwide (www.risingwomenrisingworld.org). Our central goal is ‘to co-create a world that works for all.’ We want to draw on the strengths of women to build a livable future, that is driven by the real issues, a world where the so-called ‘feminine’ values of compassion, solidarity, creativity, sharing, and intuition play a part in global decision making. It is not in opposition to men, but built on collaboration and co-creation.

You know Scilla Ellworthy. Jean Houston is another remarkable person, author of more than 50 books and works across many disciplines, from her foundation as a neuro psychologist. She is the chancellor of Meridian Univesrity. She was a close friend and collaborator of Margaret Mead. Her focus is the concept of human potential and how people and societies can live up to their full potential.

Scilla and Jean (and I!) are looking to the next wave of feminism, to a mature feminism. The members of our initiative are women who have not only achieved a great deal professionally often despite great obstacles and challenges, but most importantly who have ‘dealt with their egos,’ and are humble and spiritually evolved.

You prefer the term spirituality to religion. I know these are complex distinctions but can you give some sense of how you see the distinction?

I recently wrote an article in the Journal on Global Governance where I came out with it and drew the distinction between religion and spirituality. It provides, you could say the ‘seven deadly sins’ of institutionalized religions but all of them can be reversed and transformed as soon as they are recognized, for all religions do have a spiritual core that gave them birth. Sadly, once religions are institutionalized, they forget about their spiritual base and lose touch with the philosophical values and mystical principles and practices underpinning all religions. They become obsessed with proving and maintaining their own superiority. Spirituality can be related to religion but it doesn’t have to be. It is about asking oneself the fundamental questions of life, as prophets, saints, and ordinary seekers have asked since the beginning of time: who am I, what is my purpose, how am I related to everything else in the universe? And starting to live in accord with the insights one receives: with compassion for all life, with a knowing of our fundamental interconnectedness with all creation, and a sense of responsibility to oneself and to everyone. It is a reversal of the material world of ego aggrandizement and financial gain.

The quality of spirituality that I find running through so much of history is much deeper and has more universal qualities. For me, the power of meditation and of silence is powerful. My husband and I spent a remarkable 100 days living in silence. For me spirituality is about learning and calm, but it is also about growing impatient. To me spirituality means to stop watching the clock. It involves integrally a respect for nature. It is part of art and culture in a deep sense, of spirit that is vibrant, living, and different. It is something that I want to express, in my writing and performance, but also in the way I live life and do everything.

The greatest support in my spiritual journey and in my life journey is my husband, Professor Alexander Schieffer. Ours is a beautiful love story that started when we both least expected it, on Christmas night in 2007. We knew in that instant that we were life partners and soul mates. Alexander is German by origin, though he too has lived, travelled, and worked in many cultures. He is the co-founder of Trans4m Centre for Integral Development, with his Zimbabwean colleague, Professor Ronnie Lessem. They have developed together a unique integrative and trans-cultural approach to societal and organizational transformation. They offer Ph.D. programs in Africa, the Middle East, and Europe and co-edit a series with Gower on integral innovation and transformation. Alexander has his Ph.D. in economics and management from the prestigious St. Gallen University in Switzerland where he still teaches a fascinating course on integral development and this year we offered a joint course there on ‘Becoming Agents of Transformation.’ Transformation is our shared passion, as is culture, art, and spirituality. He is an accomplished poet and certainly not your usual ‘academic.’