‘Advani’s Pak visit path-breaking’

The party is happy to note that Shri Advani raised the issue of cross-border terrorism with the President of Pakistan and impressed upon him the need to immediately dismantle the infrastructure of terrorism and bring cross-border terrorism to an end. Shri Advani emphasized that lasting peace in South Asia would be possible only when such issues were satisfactorily resolved between India and Pakistan.

The BJP appreciates the Pakistan government’s invitation to Shri Advani to inaugurate the restored portion of the Katasraj temple, revered by all Hindus of the Indian sub-continent as a resting place of the Pandavas. The overwhelming response to his Katasraj visit could well go down as a turning point in removing long-held misgivings between the people of the two countries. The BJP hopes that Pakistan will progress further along this path and ensure that the rights of Hindus and other religious minorities are fully protected and that official initiatives to restore and develop other mandirs and gurudwaras continue in the future.

Shri Advani welcomed the event in Karasraj as a good beginning and in that context without describing Mr Jinnah as secular reminded the people of Pakistan of its founder’s address to the country’s Constituent Assembly in which he had urged full freedom of faith for all its citizens and no discrimination between its citizens on grounds of religion.

The BJP reiterates that whatever may have been Jinnah’s vision of Pakistan, the state he founded is theocratic and non-secular, the very idea of Hindus and Muslims being two separate nations is repugnant to it. The BJP has always condemned the division of India on communal lines and continues to steadfastly reject the two-nation theory championed by Jinnah and endorsed by British colonists. There can be no revisiting the reality that Jinnah led a communal agitation to achieve his goal of Pakistan, which devoured thousands of innocent people in its wake and dispossessed millions of their homes and livelihoods.