Those who get close to Pakistan become irrelevant in politics, Shiv Sena warns Modi

Outfit says LK Advani's political career went down the drain after he visited the tomb of Mohammed Ali Jinnah

India’s extremist Hindu right-wing political party Shiv Sena has censured Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s recent unannounced visit to Lahore, saying those who get close to Pakistan become irrelevant in politics.

“What needs to be remembered is that there is an orthodox belief that in the past, no politician who has tried to get too close to Pakistan has been able to remain in politics for long. LK Advani had once been to the tomb of [Mohammed Ali] Jinnah and had praised him. After that, his political graph started declining and today he has been sidelined,” the Sena said in a statement published in the party’s mouthpiece publication, Saamana.



In a recent statement, the extremist outfit claimed that Pakistan’s soil is “cursed” because it is soaked in the blood of hundreds of thousands of innocent Indians.

The Shiv Sena, which rules Maharashtra in alliance with the ruling Bharatia Janata Party (BJP), also questioned the latter’s response in case a prime minister belonging to India’s main opposition party, the Congress, had made an unannounced stopover in Pakistan.

“The whole country is asking if BJP would have similarly welcomed a Congress PM’s unannounced stopover in Lahore like they did for Modi. Pakistan’s soil is cursed and kissing it would prove to be costly because it is soaked in the blood of lakhs of innocent Indians,” the statement said.



The statement went on to claim that former Indian prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee could not steer the BJP to the premiership twice because Vajpayee had tried to mend the strained relations between Pakistan and India during his regime.

“(AB) Vajpayee, in a bid to mend the strained relations between both countries, started the ‘Lahore bus’ service and also went out of his way to meet General (Pervez) Musharraf in Agra. After that, never did a BJP government come to power under the leadership of Vajpayee?” it said.

On December 25, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi had made a surprise visit to Lahore on his way back from Afghanistan, where he attended the inauguration of a newly-built Afghan parliament building in Kabul.



Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif had received his Indian counterpart at the Allama Iqbal International Airport in Lahore as Modi announced the unscheduled visit, the first by an Indian prime minister in 11 years, on Twitter.

While both the leaders “expressed their desire to carry forward the dialogue process for larger good for peoples of the two countries” they also agreed to “continue and enhance contacts and work together to establish good neighbourly relations,” the Foreign Office said.

This article originally appeared on the Hindustan Times.