Mani Shankar Aiyar, Congress leader, says Pakistanis do not view us as enemies

The politician-turned-diplomat Mani Shankar Aiyar is advocating for the restart of talks with Pakistan and claims that India cannot assume its proper position in the world as long as its western neighbour remains a ‘albatross around our necks.’

The Congressman, who held the position of India’s consul general in Karachi from December 1978 to January 1982, has devoted an entire chapter to his time in Pakistan in his recently released autobiography, ‘Memoirs of a Maverick — The First Fifty Years (1941-1991).’

According to Aiyar, serving as consul general in Pakistan was unquestionably the pinnacle of his bureaucratic career. His three years in Karachi are covered in great detail in the first volume of his new book, which is currently available.

The fact that residents of Pakistan did not view India as an enemy nation, he claimed, was India’s ‘biggest asset’ there.

‘We were coming back from a dinner one day, within the first two-three weeks of the posting, when my wife Suneet asked me a question that reverberated in my mind in my stay in Karachi — ‘This is an enemy country, right’?’

For the past 40 years since he returned from Pakistan, according to Aiyar, he has been asking himself the same question. He spent three years there.

‘I have come to the conclusion that whatever may be the view of the sections of the army, or sections of polity, as far as the people of Pakistan are concerned, they are neither an enemy country nor do they regard India as an enemy country,’ he told PTI.

‘Every time we want to display our disapproval of the (Pakistani) government, visas are stopped, films are stopped, TV exchanges are stopped, books are stopped, travel is stopped, so I don’t see why we do not know how to leverage the goodwill of the people of Pakistan as an integral part of our diplomatic approach,’ Aiyar added.

He pointed out that all communication between India and Pakistan has been halted for the past nine years.

‘Until Mr (Narendra) Modi became prime minister of India, almost every prime minister, if he had the time, was attempting some kind of a dialogue with the Pakistanis but now we are in a freeze and the victims of this freeze are not the army of Pakistan which is still swigging its scotch, it is the people of Pakistan whose relatives in large numbers live in India and many of whom have a desire to visit our country,’ he said.