New Delhi: Former Union Minister and Congress leader Mani Shankar Aiyar has made a big disclosure about the relationship between India and Pakistan. He has written in his book ‘Memoirs of a Maverick – The First Fifty Years (1941-1991) that Pakistan is not India’s enemy. The people there love India and not enmity.
Along with this, he has also written in his book that except Prime Minister Modi, all the Prime Ministers of India tried to talk to the people of Pakistan. He has written in his book that India will not be able to take its rightful place in the world as long as its western neighbor remains ‘hamare ji ka janjal’, referring to its deployment in Pakistan.
The Congress leader has devoted an entire chapter to his Pakistan tenure in his autobiography “Memoirs of a Maverick – The First Fifty Years (1941-1991). Aiyar served as the Consul General of India in Karachi from December 1978 to January 1982. Iyer recalled, “Within the first 2-3 weeks of my diplomatic posting in Pakistan, we were coming back from dinner one day, when my wife Sunita asked me a question, ‘Is this an enemy? Country? This question kept echoing in my mind during my stay in Karachi.
Pakistanis don’t consider India as enemy country
Congress leader Mani Shankar Aiyar said I asked myself this question during my three years there. I kept asking myself this question for the last 40 years after I came back from Pakistan. I have come to the conclusion that whatever may be the point of view of any section of the military or political system there, as far as the people of Pakistan are concerned, they are neither an enemy country nor do they consider India an enemy country.
Except Modi, all the prime ministers spoke to the people there
Aiyar said that for the last nine years all talks between India and Pakistan have stopped. Before Narendra Modi became PM, almost every PM, if they had time, was trying to have some sort of dialogue with Pakistanis, but now we are at a standstill and the only victims of this stalling are the people . Nothing is harming the Pakistan Army because of not talking, rather the people there are becoming victims. A large number of relatives of people from there live in India and many of them wish to visit our country, which they are not able to do now.
The people there are our biggest asset
Iyer, a former diplomat who left the Indian Foreign Service in 1989, said why are we targeting Pakistani people? You can target the Pakistani establishment if you want, but as far as people are concerned, they are our biggest asset.
