April, said TS Eliot many years ago, is the cruellest month. Had he been looking at contemporary South Asia he might well have named any other month, for cruelty - death, destruction, war and mayhem - have been there in plenty this year. If it's not the Maoist upsurge resulting in hundreds of deaths in hitherto peaceful Nepal, it's the monarchy coming down on the democratic process and stepping in to 'postpone' elections. If it's not political hoodlums in Gujarat going on a killing spree, it's the Pakistani and Indian armies lining up, eyeball to eyeball, at the border. If it's not the ongoing battle between the state and militants in Kashmir, it's continuing election-related violence against minorities in Bangladesh. And if it is not all or any of these, it's the random train accident, or a stray 'terrorist' attack, or a cross-border skirmish - whichever way you look at it, we've had more than our fair share of disasters and misfortunes.

And yet, even as I say this, I realize that for every violent event or history in our region, there have been others, sometimes played out by small groups and individuals, which give us reason for hope. In February of this year, state-supported Hindu fundamentalists unleashed terrible violence on the minority population of Muslims in Gujarat, western India. More than a thousand people died. As armed killers roamed the streets in search of prey, neighbours and friends who would normally have been supportive, suddenly disappeared. Courage was in short supply, self-interest was there aplenty: if you were seen to be helping the enemy, you could face reprisals. In the midst of all this a lone woman, Geetaben, a Hindu, stood up to protect her Muslim friend - some say her husband. She blocked the entrance to her house, where the man was hidden, and refused to let the killers through. For this Geetaben died a violent, terrible death. But her defiance and her courage put to shame her cowardly killers and all those who chose to remain silent.

Early in the year, an email landed in my mailbox. Women in Pakistan, it told me, were working together with their Afghan sisters through the auspices of the Pakistani organization Shirkat Gah, trying to provide whatever relief and help they could in the face of the US witch-hunt for Osama bin Laden. No matter that their government had sworn its allegiance to the megalomaniac designs of George Bush, Pakistani women were not willing to go along with this. Instead their priority was to provide whatever help they could to the poor and vulnerable in Afghanistan, and for this they turned to their neighbours and friends: Sri Lankans, Nepalis, Indians, Bangladeshis, Bhutanese, Maldivians. And while governments fought, at a people-to-people level, assistance, material and spiritual, flowed in.

There were also hopeful signs on a somewhat larger scale. After more than two decades of violence and bloodshed, and the loss of thousands of lives, Sri Lanka started, slowly, carefully, to move towards peace. The accord, signed between the Sri Lankan Government and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Elam (LTTE) led, for the first time in a long and painful history, to a cessation of hostilities and, importantly, to an opening up of communications. Suddenly, people could go back home. No matter that there was nothing left to see, that the land was devastated, the trees had gone, houses had been razed to the ground - the earth remained, the possibility of friendship reasserted itself, the guns fell silent and there was hope.

Under that hope, though, lay other, difficult questions. A peace accord, yes, but what would that mean for ordinary people? What would they have to go back to? With decimated families and an absence of resources, how would they start to stitch together the fabric of normal life? These were the questions that civil-society actors and women's groups raised. Between the demands and needs of the two opposing parties, they said,  there lay a whole host of realities that any peace accord needed to concern itself with. What would peace mean for minorities who did not form the main factions in this conflict but who were nonetheless affected by it - for example, Muslim women in the north and the east? How could such realities be brought to the attention of the principal parties that had signed the accord?

These questions in some ways presaged others that were to be asked in the north-western state of Kashmir (in India) later in the year when, after a long gap, elections were held in the month of October. No matter how much scepticism there was about the elections being held 'under the shadow of the gun', the turn-out and results took everyone by surprise. They showed clearly that the people of Kashmir had had enough of violence and that they were ready for peace. They were no longer willing to be pawns in the game of power being played out between the Indian and Pakistani governments, or indeed the militants. Instead, they wanted control of their lives. They wanted what all citizens anywhere want: rights, privileges, jobs, food, a chance at happiness.

Once again, it was the women who raised the questions that are all too often not asked. How can the State address the needs of a population of men, women, children traumatized by years of violence? Will peace mean only a cessation of hostilities outside the home? Or will the State and the new elected leaders be able to address the question of escalating levels of violence within the home as well? For as the violence 'outside' spreads, it makes its way into the heart of the home, and more often than not it stays there.

These and similar questions raised by ordinary citizens were addressed not only to the State but to the many actors in the expanding theatre of war and conflict in the subcontinent. It wasn't only the Sri Lankan state but also the LTTE who were responsible for the devastation and destruction of the island nation. It wasn't only the Nepali Maoists but also the monarchy and corrupt politicians who were responsible for the poverty and the violence. It wasn't only the Bangladeshi Government but also religious fundamentalists who were responsible for the rape of minority Hindu women in the country. And everywhere, citizens reminded governments that they had a responsibility towards all their citizens, no matter which religious group or community they belonged to. 

War and conflict may have helped to disguise the 'hard' issues but, as activists and ordinary citizens constantly reiterate, poverty, hunger, ill-health have not gone away. But, as globalized politics enters national and regional equations, many such issues have been tempered by a range of others, brought into focus by other players. Not only have the battlefields become different and more complex in recent years, but so has the nature of casualties, and the nature of wars, which are no longer only fought with 'conventional' weapons and with militaries. And it is this that has led to the raising of the individual and collective voices of civil society, the voices that remind us that we need to call for a reassertion of humanity, to work for a return of peace. The voices of hope.