KARACHI, March 18: “I cried when Gujarat happened. I cried in Delhi for Sikhs,” said veteran journalist Kuldip Nayar in an emotionally charged speech at a reception held in honour of an 11-member Indian delegation led by him at the Karachi Press Club on Friday. The delegation is here to promote peace between India and Pakistan.

He said to promote peace there was no alternative but to talk. In that context he pointed out that there existed mistrust in the people and to remove that history books should be read. He said unless the mistrust went away, even the resolution of the Kashmir dispute wouldn't help and more Kashmirs would emerge.

He said there was a time when Muslims in India were faced with problems and to a certain extent were still facing, but things were improving in contemporary India. He said secularism had begun taking root in his country and there were people in India who cared about Pakistan and were sad about the way things were panning out in their neighbourhood.

He insisted integrity and prosperity of India were dependent on integrity and prosperity in Pakistan. He said there was democracy in India (even if it's dominated by the rich or the religious), and vote-casting could change things there.

He said it was because of the voting process that people were able to remove Indira Gandhi, V.P. Singh and Narasimha Rao. He iterated there was a powerful election commission in India and no one could tell till the end of the elections who would win or lose. He said if democracy was to be sustained in any country, secularism had to be adopted. He referred to Mohammad Ali Jinnah's Aug 11 speech in which the Quaid-i-Azam had said 'mazhab ko state se na milao'.

Mr Nayar said it was on Sept 13, 1947 that he left for India (he was born in Sialkot) and saw terrible bloodletting. One million people got killed while 20 million were displaced. It was then that he thought there should be no more new countries. But when the incident of Gujarat happened, he said, he cried and added, “Dilli mein Sikhon pe roya”. He said they were trying to strengthen secularism in India and quoted a couplet:

Khuda us musafir ki himmat barhaey Jo manzil ko thukra de manzil samajh ker

Mr Nayar said he had a dream that people begin to understand that Hindus and Sikhs were humans just like the adherents of other religions. He said history should be treated like history. Hatred and mistrust must be eliminated.

Another member of the delegation, Prof Balachandra Mungekar, said there were problems in the way of the normalisation of relationship between India and Pakistan. There was no point in hiding those problems. He said both countries shared a 500-year-old civilisation. While Roman and Greek civilisations had disappeared, South Asia's was still vibrant.

He said India and Pakistan were two nations and one people. He told newsmen that when he landed at Karachi, he didn't feel that he had landed on foreign soil – biryani , lassi, tongas , etc were the same. He said the countries also shared problems like poverty and if they kept trying, no power on earth could stop them from achieving peace.

He said there were fanatic forces in India as there were in Pakistan, which didn't want the relations between the two countries to normalise.

He said international forces, too, didn't want that to happen because they wanted to sell their weapons. He said there were 150 million Muslims in India, and when a cricket match was played between Pakistan and India, it's considered a war between Hinduism and Islam. He deemed that unacceptable.

The general secretary of the Bahujan Samaj Party and editor-in-chief of Nai Dunia weekly, Shahid Siddiqui, said efforts had always been made to bring the two nations closer and the electronic media now had an important role to play in that regard.

He said in the 62-year history of both countries whenever a positive development was about to occur, something happened and governments got changed. He said global forces didn't like to see both countries coming closer because of their geopolitical and economic interests.

He said India was the biggest buyer of weapons and Pakistan wasn't far behind, helping the west's industry. He said the constituency of peace should be expanded.

Prof Laxmiprasad echoed what Kuldip Nayar had said that the progress of India depended on Pakistan's progress.

Jatin Desai said on March 28 the home secretary of India and the interior secretary of Pakistan would meet in Delhi after a hiatus in the talks since November 26, 2008. He claimed that prior to the 26/11 incident issues such as Sir Creek were about to be resolved.

He said this time the meeting must be uninterrupted and uninterruptible.

President of the Karachi Press Club Tahir Hasan Khan thanked the participants of the programme, and Karamat Ali of PILER also spoke. The event was conducted by KPC Secretary Moosa Kaleem.

The Indian peace delegation also called on Sindh Chief Minister Syed Qaim Ali Shah at the CM's House and exchanged views with him on Pakistan-India relationship and core issues concerning peace, agencies add.

Provincial ministers Shazia Marri, Murad Ali Shah and Ali Nawaz Shah, HRCP Secretary General Iqbal Haider, Chaudhry Mansoor of the Pakistan Peace Coalition and Sindh government's media coordinator Taj Haider were also present.

The media coordinator hosted a reception for the delegation in his office.

The peace delegation also visited the Shaheed Zulfikar Ali Bhutto Institute of Science and Technology (SZABIST) where its vice-president Dr Amanat Ali Jalbani briefed them about the academic activities and achievements of the institute.

A discussion titled 'Progress needs peace and stability' was also held on the occasion.

The Sindh High Court Bar Association also hosted a reception for the Indian delegation. Bar president Anwar Mansoor and other office-bearers and members attended the reception.

Yet another reception for the Indian peace delegation was hosted by the Pakistan Institute of Labour Education and Research.