Saturday, May 10, 2003
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By Anita Joshua
The Parliamentary delegation from Pakistan with the CPI (M) leader, Somnath Chatterjee (second from left), and the Samajwadi Party leader, Mulayam Singh Yadav (centre), at the former's residence in New Delhi on Friday. — Photo: Rajeev Bhatt
Though the visiting Parliamentary delegation from Pakistan could not meet anyone from the Government, they had a long interaction with Opposition leaders; first with a predominantly Left group and then the Congress. At both these meetings, issues of concern were avoided. Instead, the focus was primarily on people-to-people contact. If there was a general understanding among the Parliamentarians on the merits of steering clear of contentious issues, there was also a common feeling that a small group of fundamentalists on both sides of the border were holding the peace process to ransom. Besides, the Pakistanis like their Indian counterparts did not favour any third-party intervention. "Arms should not be allowed to be twisted by others," Shakeela Rashid of the Pakistan People's Party said. With this initiative of the Pakistan-India Peoples' Forum for Peace and Democracy materialising after a long gap, the mood, according to the Congress MP, S. Jaipal Reddy, was "effusive" with all present eager to celebrate the age-old shared heritage of the sub-continent and bury the differences that have rewritten the region's recent history. Beginning early to make best use of their time in India, the delegation met 13 MPs — including the former Prime Minister, H. D. Deve Gowda, the Samajwadi Party leader, Mulayam Singh Yadav, and the Congress leader, Shivraj Patil — at the residence of the CPI(M) leader, Somnath Chatterjee, in the morning. Later, they were closeted with over a dozen Congress MPs. And, in both instances, the meeting went into "extra time". Giving details of the meeting, Mr. Chatterjee said all spoke with great feeling of friendship and stressed the need for dialogue and exchange in the area of sports, literature and culture. Also, he lamented the fact that no one in the Government and the NDA had met the visiting delegation despite the Prime Minister, Atal Behari Vajpayee, speaking at length on Thursday in Parliament about the need for friendship and good neighbourly relations. While the forum had not slotted any engagements for the delegation in the afternoon in the hope of getting an appointment with someone in the Government, the absence of any response from the office of the Prime Minister, External Affairs Minister and the Speaker has made the organisers abandon this course and keep the visit purely on "Track-II". Apparently, the forum had written to the three — seeking appointments — through the eminent Gandhian, Nirmala Deshpande, over a week ago. Till date, there has been no response though the Speaker, Manohar Joshi, today maintained that he had received no such request. The Government's cold shoulder notwithstanding, the delegation has got a warm reception from various quarters with the Editors' Guild of India hosting a lunch for them; the Lok Janshakti leader, Ram Vilas Paswan, inviting them home for dinner; the CPI (M-L) welcoming their mission; and the South Asian Fraternity planning a public meeting on Saturday in their honour.
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