Description
Intercultural dialogue is widely promoted as a means of fostering understanding and cooperation in culturally diverse societies. Yet existing scholarship is overwhelmingly derived from Western experiences and assumes conditions of institutional stability, safety, and positive intergroup contact. Consequently, little is known about whether meaningful dialogue is possible in fragile non-Western contexts characterised by intractable conflict, competing nationalisms, and deep historical mistrust.
This paper addresses this gap through an original study of Jammu and Kashmir (J&K), one of the world's longest-running intractable conflicts. Drawing on qualitative research with diverse diaspora communities from both Indian-administered and Pakistan-administered Jammu and Kashmir, it examines whether and under what conditions intercultural dialogue can occur across deeply divided communities. The paper develops and empirically tests a model of Intercultural Dialogue within the Transformative Framework (ICDwTF), which prioritises safety, reciprocity, and trust-building rather than immediate conflict resolution.
The findings demonstrate that dialogue can generate meaningful relational transformation even in highly polarised settings when it is ethically designed and contextually grounded. By positioning diaspora as an alternative dialogic space and centring experiences from the Global South, the paper advances a new theoretical and methodological framework for understanding dialogue in fragile contexts and shows how cooperation can be imagined and cultivated in deeply divided societies.