Indian MP: Manmohan Singh wants to do something concrete before his term ends

Mani Shankar Aiyar hopes that his PM signs an agreement on a visit to Pakistan soon.

KARACHI: Indian parliamentarian Mani Shankar Aiyar said that it was a very important development that the army had expressed support for a statement made by the Indian prime minister, in which he called Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani ‘a man of peace’ and expressed his desire to resolve issues between the two countries.

Aiyar, a member of the Indian National Congress, believed that it was Singh’s heartfelt desire to improve relations between the two countries and he wanted to do something concrete before his term expires in 2014. “I hope a day comes soon when agreements between the two countries are signed by Singh during a visit to Islamabad in the near future,” he said at an event organised by the Irtiqa Institute of Social Sciences of the National Council of Academics at the auditorium of Jinnah university on Shaheed-i-Millat Road on Sunday evening.

According to him, Singh’s statement provided a ‘window of opportunity’ to both the countries to improve bilateral relations. He appreciated President Zardari’s statement which came in the aftermath of the Mumbai attack and also the telephone call made by Gilani to Singh in which he said that the director-general of Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) would be sent over to India. “Singh’s mistake was that he announced that the ISI DG would come to India,” Aiyar said, adding that the officer subsequently refused to go.

In his hour-long talk, peacenik Shankar not only called for better people-to-people contacts between the two countries but also a visa-free regime as they had in the European Union.

He dispelled the impression that Muslims in India were the most downtrodden people and said that many Muslim communities, including the Bohras, Memons and Khojas continue to be successful traders there. Sharing a joke about the three communities, Aiyar said that he was once told that when a Bohra man does business and brings some of his ‘black money’ back home, he draws a line and throws the suitcase filled with money open. “The Bohra man says the money that goes above the line would be spent in the name of God, while the rest would be his.” The Khoja man tries to outdo the Bohra and says that this was nothing compared to what he did. When he brings his money home he draws a circle and all the money that falls within it is spent in the name of the Almighty, while he pockets the rest. “The Memon tries to outdo everyone else. When I come home I throw all the money up in the air. Everything that God wants to keep, he takes, while the rest comes back down to me.”

Aiyar, who also served as the consul general of the Indian consulate in Karachi during General Zia’s regime, said that during his four-year tenure, he issued more than a 100,000 visas to Pakistanis. He was not in favour of restrictions that limit people to visit just three cities in India and the process of making them go through detailed forms and police clearance from an SP-level officer. “Ajmal Kasab didn’t come to India with a visa, so why harass common people,” said the MP.

The extremely well-spoken former Indian envoy also dwelt at length on the problems that beset Pakistan. Referring to the rampant extremism in the country, he said “Islam is what unites Pakistan, but Islamisation is what divides it.

Published in The Express Tribune, November 14^th,  2011.