Introduction

The Ravadar project, an Urdu word which means a person who respects, recognizes and accepts others with openness, was envisioned as a platform to advocate and address issues of freedom of religion or belief (FoRB) through community interventions and development projects in the selected economically marginalized minority populated areas of Lahore, Islamabad and Karachi.¹ The project, supported by CREID under the ‘coalition-building’ theme, and implemented by HIVE Pakistan,² aims to study how these communities’ experiences of marginalization and exclusion on a daily basis affect them, and to explore how engaging them in community development projects may promote inclusion and freedom of religion or belief (FoRB). The project has three components: community-led blogging, local minority coalition/formation of local (Ravadar) committees and community development projects. For this chapter we have identified three projects that were implemented in three different areas – that is, Joseph Colony (Lahore), Rimsha Colony (Islamabad) and Balti Basti (Karachi). The project activities were conducted between June 2020 and March 2021.

We used participatory research methodology (PRM) to collect the stories and to document the daily experiences of the people living in the neighbourhoods being focused on, with the aim of understanding how persecution due to religious beliefs, when intersecting with poverty, gender and other identities, forms a complex connection and how it further pushes these communities to the end of the road.³ Based on our learning, the current chapter discusses the participatory methods and steps used in these selected projects, highlights the effectiveness of the open/community-driven participatory methodologies particularly for engaging with marginalized communities and suggests that adding or incorporating action-based plans into research or consultations may strengthen the participatory methods.

Joseph Colony is a low-income Christian neighbourhood in Lahore, Pakistan, comprising more than 130 Christian households. It has a history of violence as over 150 homes were burned down by a mob of right-wing Sunnis in 2013 over a false blasphemy accusation (DAWN, 2013). The community continues to live in a state of fear of violence, and the members face discrimination. Amid this fearful living environment, traumatic history and poverty, access to clean water has been a huge issue for the community for around 20 years, according to the residents. Women face extra difficulty as they rely on the male members to fetch water for them due to lack of mobility as they don’t have access to basic transport (the water plant was installed in a neighbouring Muslim majority area and it was risky even for men to access, due to the threat of violence).

Rimsha Colony is an informal Christian settlement located in sector H-9, Islamabad. In 2013 a Christian girl named Rimsha Masih, who was just 14, was falsely accused of committing ‘blasphemy’, and the situation became hostile for Christians (Associated Press of Ottawa, 2013). As a result, many had to flee the colony and some of them shifted to a nearby Christian settlement. The unofficial estimate suggests that there are more than 1,147 families, where 99 per cent of households are Christian.

Ameer Mauvia Sector, operates from this area. It is a prohibited anti-Shia militant outfit in Pakistan that has a long history of committing violence against the Shia community of Pakistan (Stanford University, 2012). Sipah-e-Sahaba Pakistan (SSP) and its militant offshoot Lashkar e Jhangvi have attacked several Shia public gatherings across Pakistan and in Karachi over the last two decades. One hundred and eighty Shia families, mostly settlers from Gilgit-Baltistan, are residing in Balti Basti. Previously, over 300 Shia families lived in the area, but due to security concerns and incidents of anti-Shia discrimination/violence half of the Shia population moved to other areas of Karachi.

The selected neighbourhoods were unique in the sense that the communities in these neighbourhoods have been facing marginalization as well as experiencing a history of violence due to their religious identity and beliefs.

Research methodology

Our participatory action research (PAR) approach included the following: initial consultations/community mapping exercise, storytelling, community consultations and matrix ranking. This process began with the community mapping exercise (see Figure 12.1), which helped us identify the resources within and outside the communities and gave us an initial picture of the living condition of these communities. The first step was to train the researchers, community interlocutors, researchers and activists.⁴ These interlocutors from Shi’a and Christian communities mobilized community members, held consultations, developed working groups with the two communities and helped us to ensure sensitivities around the communities. For this purpose, the researchers were carefully selected from the same communities using the broad networks of our local partner, HIVE Pakistan, within these two religious communities. We have learned how crucial it is to have a researcher from the same religious background and community activists who are trusted by these communities. It is also essential to have female researchers and interlocutors to collect stories from the female members so the participants are at ease with each other and to collect insights and nuances in detail. Therefore, the idea of collaborating with the community interlocutors emerged. These interlocutors from Shi’a and Christian communities mobilized community members, held consultations, developed working groups with the two communities and helped us to ensure sensitivities around the communities.

Various community meetings were held with all the relevant stakeholders, interlocutors, social, political and religious leaders from these communities to identify potential respondents and the research focus areas. While all this helps build mutual trust between the respondents and the local partners, it also brings a sense of ownership and clarity of ideas among the community members.

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Community mapping exercise among Christians of Rimsha Colony and Joseph Colony and Shi’as of Balti Basti

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Reflections on the methodology

One of the interesting strands of PAR is its exploratory nature. None of the projects we implemented in Joseph Colony, Rimsha Colony and Balti Basti was either planned or anticipated; they emerged from consultations/community input. The distinctiveness of this approach is that it helps understand what is really required in the community and what serves the interest of the community rather than a donor. Also, as there is little or no existing literature focusing on the development of these communities, the participatory methods helped us to build our understanding of what would constitute ‘development’ from their perspective.

We had previously worked in different communities and conducted interviews and FGDs. The major difference we see in the participatory methodology is its community-driven approach, where a community or its members guide and explain issues faced by the community and propose solutions based on their urgent needs and suitability. This is where we understand – for example, through storytelling sessions – how the absence of necessities may aggravate the everyday life of an already marginalized community. These stories also establish an emotional/human connection between the community and researcher/practitioner which one may not witness in the quantitative and qualitative approaches which have disciplined structure and assumed/preconceived identification of (research) problems.

The participatory methods enabled us to see beyond the idea of ‘a religious minority’, a monolithic/singular concept of a group who share identical issues across the country. Based on the consultations and storytelling sessions, the lived experience of the Christian community in Lahore seems to be different from that of the Christian community in Islamabad as they face different levels of challenges and discrimination in these cities. For example, the testimonies of the participants from Joseph Colony and Youhanabad, who had witnessed violence and often come across the issue of blasphemy accusation, present a story of fear, discrimination and a lack of basic necessities such as clean drinking water, hospitals and schools. For example, Asma, a resident of Joseph Colony, shared that ‘there is a problem of water over here and it gets worse in summer’. Almost all the respondents from Joseph Colony mentioned the non-availability of clean drinking water whenever they were asked about the discrimination they face.

Christians in 66 Quarters or Rimsha Colony in Islamabad, in contrast, complained more about discrimination in jobs and limited economic opportunities. Blasphemy violence, for example, is a country-wide issue for all Christians, but through the PAR we became aware of the everyday experiences and issues in majority Christian areas in different cities. Concepts such as discrimination or inequality need to be understood in context. For example, the absence of clean drinking water in Joseph Colony or waste in Youhanabad are two symbols of inequality because they are Christian neighbourhoods and they don’t have great electoral appeal to Muslim lawmakers. Similarly, the consultative sessions with the community also helped us to understand conflicts within the communities and neighbourhoods, hierarchy and power and gender dynamics.

We observed that the storytelling sessions turned out to be cathartic for the members of the Shia and Christian communities. Some people became emotional while sharing the horrific cases of discrimination and violence. However, despite the intense nature of the conversation, the participants had developed this sense of possessing knowledge. As observed in testimonies and our discussion with the community interlocutors, the participants had the feeling of owning a space where, despite the presence of a facilitator (local researcher), they, the participants, could direct the conversation and define things as they are. One of the recurrent sentences we came across was ‘Let me tell you’ or ‘Let me explain it to you’. We understand that self-confidence gives the participants a feeling that their lived experience is a form of knowledge and that, by sharing it, it could be even used to develop projects or action plans.

Limits and challenges for working with groups experiencing poverty and religious inequalities in unfolding their experiences of religious and socio-economic exclusion

There were some challenges we encountered using participatory methods in these settings where there is a history of systematic economic and religious marginalization, such as at Joseph Colony. A consultative approach may misguide or misdirect the needs of the community. For example, our interlocutors and HIVE Pakistan had noted various instances where people expected individual benefits over the community. For example, a person in one of the focus areas tried to have the roof of their house renovated by exaggerating the significance of the house in the community.⁸ During community consultations in Joseph Colony a young person, who was very active in the community mobilization, tried to find or expected an employment opportunity. When he was told there were no vacancies, he stopped coming to the meetings.

The second issue is the element of fear and mistrust that prevents some of the core/structural issues from being addressed. For example, the issue of blasphemy violence and social exclusion is so sensitive and potentially risky that many respondents wanted to skip and jump to discuss basic issues such as water, unemployment and lack of opportunity, which, arguably, are common issues across all middle- and working-class localities. Due to fear of persecution, some find it difficult or uncomfortable to discuss the intersection of their religious identity and poverty in their marginalization and social exclusion. We addressed this challenge by collaborating with local interlocutors from the same community. They (the interlocutors) used to raise/share (in the local language) their own stories, for example, sharing their own story of being discriminated against because of their religion. This gave participants the impression that there is no need to hide the issues. The person who is facilitating the discussion (their interlocutor) had been through or understood the persecution they were facing and was ‘one of us’.

During the women-focused consultation session in Rimsha Colony, our female interlocutors struggled to process the views shared by some women participants in which patriarchal violence and exploitation were not only internalized but normalized. In this scenario, any idea of discussing a women-focused or women ‘empowerment’ programme becomes challenging as some within the group of women may oppose the idea of women-led activities.

In the last three years we have used various adaptations prioritizing and considering community needs which worked well and produced results such as an increase in participation and people’s interest in our project. For example, at the beginning, it was very challenging to include women in the community consultations due to patriarchal norms. To address this, we engaged influential men in the community and elderly women from their families who, by using their influence, really helped the inclusion of other women from the community to actively participate.⁹

We employed spontaneous strategies such as one of our interlocutors even interviewing the other interlocutor in front of the participants to make them relaxed and familiar with the proceedings. We changed our venue and took participants to a place where they would be comfortable. Our interlocutors and local partners even changed their working hours to accommodate and match the availability of the community members.

The Al-Khoei Foundation is a Shi’a faith-based organization, and it partnered with HIVE Pakistan, a secular and inclusive youth-led organization.¹⁰ Our two focused communities were Shi’as and Christians. We hired specifically Christian interlocutors to mobilize and intervene in the Christian areas and the same for Shi’a areas. Awareness around positionality and reflexivity helped us to form trust and strong bonds with the communities. There is no hierarchy of suffering; every minority in Pakistan has its own experiences of discrimination and persecution. Shi’as face genocidal violence, yet they can identify themselves as Shi’as publicly unlike Ahmadi Muslims, who are constitutionally sanctioned as ‘non-Muslims’.

We also found that existing networks within the community could complement the participatory methods, particularly in those settings where there is a history of violence and persecution which often results in mistrust and suspicion. The members of Balti Basti were sceptical of ‘outsiders’ (as the area is surrounded by anti-Shi’a militant organizations). Our local interlocutor was one of the caretakers of the only local imambargah (Shi’a religious and cultural space). The interlocutor helped us engage and mobilize the community members. It was very difficult to engage women, but later, with the help of the local networks, a local Ravadar committee was formed that also included women and youth. This particular example reflects the fact that a strong contact or network could influence or push certain things that were once perceived as difficult to achieve.

Conclusion

We suggest that adding or incorporating action-based plans into research or consultations would have potential to strengthen the participatory methods. We noticed particularly in areas that have attracted the attention of NGOs, such as Joseph Colony and Youhanabad, due to the history of violence, people in these localities are more critical of the modus operandi of the NGO–donor. There was the impression that NGOs come and fulfil donors’ aspirations and leave. As a result, locals feel exploited and betrayed. A water filtration plant was one such example, which was identified, developed and implemented by the community itself during the process but had not been anticipated in our project proposal. As a result, a sense of ownership by the community, and the relationship the community has built with our interlocutors and the local partner, have outlived the life of the project. This relationship of mutual trust is evident in the invitations that our local partner (non-Christian) now often receives to different events being held in Christian areas. That knowledge is generated by the community itself is one of the key strengths of the participatory methodology; we can add that, when that specific knowledge can benefit the community, the participatory methods are more engaging and receive overwhelming responses. This action-based incentive will also address one of the challenges where some look for individual benefits. For example, those who initially asked for personal favours and benefits eventually became a part of the project as they see the Ravadar project as something that is being done by the community itself.