By IANS
New Delhi : Relations between India and Pakistan are improving and will continue to grow, despite the backlash of history and its attending problems, according to the participants of a seminar here.
“We are adversaries, but we have responsibility towards our teeming millions and we can cooperate to improve their lot,” said Mushahid Husain, chairman of the International Relations Committee of the Senate of Pakistan. The seminar on “Bipartisan Politics for Growth,” was organized by friends of late Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader Pramod Mahajan whose first death anniversary falls Thursday.
Husain, expressed satisfaction that “through the years whoever was prime minister, Inder Kumar Gujral, Atal Bihari Vajpayee or Manmohan Singh, the vision of peace (with Pakistan) and of shared progress for the world’s one-fifth population has remained the same.”
He ridiculed the Western idea of Asians not being able to handle nuclear weapons. “This was a typical Western racist argument, `yeh kale log sambhal nahin sakte hain (these black people cannot handle it).
The speakers including Gujral stressed on the necessity of bipartisanship in politics, nationally as well as in respect of India’s relations with its South Asian neighbours, specially Pakistan.
Gujral recalled his first meeting in Male with Pakistan prime minister Nawaz Sharif who told him, “You can’t give me Kashmir, I cant take it. But what’s the harm in talking about it.”
“That was the beginning of a new chapter in the Indo-Pak relations,” the former prime minister said.
Other speakers delved deep into the contribution of late BJP leader Mahajan and how he strove for consensus on issues concerning the nation, rising above party politics.
Former BJP president M Venkaiah Naidu praised Mahajan’s. “great ability to convince others of his point of view through persuasion.”