ISLAMABAD, Aug 15: Arundhati Roy, writer of international fame and winner of Booker Prize, and two other eminent journalists from India on Wednesday called for initiation of dialogue with Pakistan for the resolution of all out-standing issues, including Kashmir.

“In this talk of war and pointing of nukes, what are we being distracted from?” said Roy, who does not believe in the concept of nation-state and feels happy on being introduced as “a citizen of the world”.

“For the governments of India and Pakistan, Kashmir is a not a problem, it’s their perennial and spectacularly successful solution,” she said and added that every time the two governments needed to divert attention of the masses from the domestic problems, they pulled the rabbit out of their hats.

Speaking at the first of a series of three seminar, being organized to mark the launching of English-language newspaper Daily Times, Ms Roy said she had no position on Kashmir and called for blowing holes in the dams that separated the two neighbours.

“With each battle cry against Pakistan, we inflict a wound on ourselves, on our way of life, on our spectacularly diverse and ancient civilization, on everything that makes India different from Pakistan,” she read from one of her essays.

Ms Roy, while reading excerpts from her essay “End of Imagination”, written by her on the threats of nuclear war exchanges between India and Pakistan, said: “People do not say they hate each others rather these are the two governments which spread all these notions of hatred and war.

She was of the opinion that “the politicians are not genetically corrupt people. It is the power that corrupts the politicians.”

Ms Roy termed the mutual hatred between India and Pakistan a manufactured hatred by the elite. “It is a kind of myth they want us to believe. War between India and Pakistan is like a war between poorest communities while the Zamindars remain busy in laying their pipelines and pointing out that please don’t go to India and Pakistan. We are like idiots going to each others’ throats and not realizing that a completely different agenda goes on there,” she said.

The recent travel advisory issued by the United States and European countries had jolted India, creating for the first time a realization that vast India existed beyond Kashmir, it was observed by the editor of Indian Express, Shaker Gupta, in his speech at the seminar titled “Peace and Freedom in South Asia.”

Another lesson that India had learnt was that war could be no-bilateral matter between the two countries, he added. Commenting on the recent escalation of tension for which he blamed India, he said, “We began to look like stupid in the world.”

Everybody in the world was trying to teach and lecture Indians and Pakistan as what could be the consequences of a nuclear exchange.

Mr Gupta made an interesting suggestion that the old set of retired generals and foreign secretaries involved for the last one decade in track-two diplomacy should be replaced by young people.

“There is a need of paradigm shift where people at various level start talking to each other. There are misconceptions about each other, which can only be eroded by increased contacts,” he said.

Mr Gupta emphasized that there was no need to see the BJP as a monster getting out of control. At the peak of tension in January, the Indian ruling party had been defeated in Punjab and Uttar Pardesh, which had shown that the Indians could handle the BJP.

The editor of Frontline magazine, Narishm Ram, appreciated the efforts made by journalists to remove misconceptions between the two nations, and called for training and educating young journalists, as they could sensitize the people.

Former foreign minister Sartaj Aziz spoke on Pakistan-India relations and threw light on the Lahore process initiated by the Muslim League government.