Understanding Hindus' and Muslims' solutions for peace in Gujarat, India

This research explored Indians' definitions of peace and their solutions for peace between Hindus and Muslims in Gujarat, India. The study also focused on peacebuilding efforts after the Hindu-Muslim violence in Gujarat in 2002.Members of a local NGO collaborated on the project by acting as gatekeepers in the field. Semi-structured interviews were conducted in Hindi with twenty-nine adult men and women (20 to 64 years old) from both the Hindu and Muslim communities. To develop an understanding of the social context of each community, the researcher initiated conversations and walks around the communities with three key informants and she also conducted participatory mapping of the communities.Data analyses of the transcribed interviews was performed by two coders using the Grounded Theory approach in the target language, i.e., Hindi. Four main themes emerged: (1) descriptions of the community, (2) perceptions of relationships Hindus and Muslims, (3) peace and solutions for peace, and (4) hopes for the future. Smaller specific categories were captured under these broader themes.Based on the data analyses, analytic matrices representing the relationships between these categories and the two main research questions were generated. These matrices were developed drawing from data obtained during participants' interviews, conversations with key informants, the researcher's field observations, participatory mapping, and the available literature.Relying on the conceptual frameworks generated from the data, participants' definitions of peace and their solutions for peace in their community were elaborated. Participants' defined peace as the absence of both direct (e.g., physical violence) and structural (e.g., unemployment, crime rates) violence. Further, their solutions for peace incorporated direct (e.g., absence of physical violence) and structural (e.g., opportunities for employment) peacebuilding as ways- to promote non-violence in their communities. The analytic matrices derived from this study provided strong evidence to suggest participants' definitions of peace and their solutions for peace could contribute to peacebuilding between Hindus and Muslims in the communities in Gujarat targeted for this project. Implications for employing peacebuilding strategies to resolve conflict between other individuals are offered, as are recommendations for investigating solutions designed to facilitate peace and limitations of this study.Department of Counseling Psychology and Guidance ServicesThesis (Ph. D.