Former Indian union minister and Rajya Sabha member Mani Shankar Aiyer said on Thursday, “History may have divided us, but geography binds us and a shared inheritance holds as much potential to keep India and Pakistan together as it has in keeping them apart.”
Aiyer was speaking at a policy discussion seminar titled ‘India and Pakistan: Retrospect and Prospect?’ organised by the Jinnah Institute (JI). Aiyer asserted that it was not communal animosity but national hostility that kept India and Pakistan apart. He saluted the present government of Pakistan for making decisive moves towards normalising Indo-Pakistan trade and hoped that both countries could realistically become each other’s most favoured nation (MFN).
Aiyer has served in the Indian Foreign Service for 26 years and also served as Consul General of India in Karachi (1978-1982). Aiyer is also credited with coining the now officially used term – ‘uninterrupted and uninterruptible dialogue process’.
“Pakistan is a modern nation-state, now under serious threat from armed religious fanatics but it is not about to succumb as a society or as a state to elements who, even in a moderate garb, have rarely managed to win more than a tiny handful of seats in any election,” Aiyer posited. He said that any strategy built on the presumption that Pakistan cannot survive was misconceived, misplaced, and dangerously misleading. Aiyer also regretted the widely accepted view in Indian circles that Pakistan was a ‘failed’ or ‘failing’ state and said that such views needed to be countered.
Aiyer called for engagement with a Pakistan that will last, not a Pakistan on its last legs, because engagement leads to solutions. “No state has suffered as much from terrorism as Pakistan itself,” he said. “I do believe that a joint strategy to counter terrorism will enable both India and Pakistan to overcome what is, in effect, a joint threat to our people,” he said. He concluded by saying, “Let us give peace a chance; we have nothing to lose but our chains, and we have a world to gain.”
Aiyer’s lecture was preceded by opening remarks from JI Honourary Vice President and former ambassador Aziz Ahmed Khan, who said that Indo-Pakistan relations have experienced many highs and lows but a leap of faith was needed to find a solution.
JI Executive Director Ejaz Haider said that modern experiences were crucial in forming individual identities and urged India to recognise Pakistan as a reality that will not go away.
