New Delhi, Sep 19 Pakistani leaders have characterised India’s present approach, led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, as markedly less accommodating than Congress-era diplomacy.
Indian Overseas Congress chief Sam Pitroda’s widely quoted “felt at home in Pakistan" from an interview to IANS reflects how the Grand Old Party of India tried to make Islamabad comfortable even when it posed grave threats to security.
Speaking exclusively to IANS, he agrees, “Of course there is violence; of course there is terrorism; all that is there,” yet, he goes on to assert, “there’s no need to fight.”
This comes at a time when India has stepped up vigil at the borders following violent uprisings in the neighbourhood.
The former technocrat’s suggestions to IANS appear as a sympathetic reaction to the earlier statements made by former Prime Minister of Pakistan Nawaz Sharif and Asif Ali Zardari, or ex-ministers of foreign affairs Shah Mehmood Qureshi and Khurshid Kasuri.
Among others, between 2014 and the present, they have all lamented the absence of a Congress government in New Delhi.
While talking to IANS, Pitroda refers to the “common gene pool” in India’s neighbourhood, insisting, “I’ve been to Pakistan, and I must tell you, I felt at home…”
In the interview, Pitroda ignores the basic tenets of diplomacy and maintenance of safety and security in the country, stressing a “gene pool” of similar looks, habits, and taste for music.
In 1971, it was Prime Minister Indira Gandhi -- the Congress leader -- who decided to help the then East Pakistan in its struggle to escape from the atrocities being committed by their political masters in Islamabad. There was no common gene pool then.
Neither in 2008, when Pakistan-bred terrorists brutally massacred innocents in Mumbai, nor in recent times, at Pahalgam.
In between, there have been several attacks by terror groups with bases in Pakistan.
During his conversation with IANS, Pitroda fails to mention these. He overlooks the incidents of atrocities on minorities across India’s borders -- both in the East and West -- where the “common gene pool” theory does not come into focus.
What mattered to him was that India had finally answered Islamabad in a manner it understands -- that of firepower.
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