Surgical Strike Increased Infiltration: Mani Shankar Aiyar

Cuttack: The number of people being infiltrated into India has reached proportions that it never had before. So, the result of the surgical strike has been to increase Pakistanis’ anti-Indian activities, said former Union Minister Mani Shankar Aiyar while addressing a seminar on Indo-Pak Relations at National Law University Odisha in Cuttack on Friday.

It has not stopped Hafiz Saeed or Masood Azhar, he said and went on to narrate the hijacking of Indian Airlines Flight 814 and the Kandahar hostage crisis, leading to the release of the latter.

Though Mani Shankar praised some initiatives of former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, he criticized the BJP-led governments for their inept handling of Kashmir problem and compared it with no-terrorist attack and cross-border firing even after break down of talks with Pakistan during the Congress regime with Dr Manmohan Singh at the helm.

He said it is not wise to play politics and win elections over the bodies of Indian soldiers.

Speaking about the Muslim rule in India from 12^th Century to 16^th Century, Aiyar said, “Even after 666 years of Muslim rule in India, only 24 percent of the population is Muslim. Most of them ruled very cruelly in those days. What is that prevented us from becoming a virtually Muslim nation is the Bhakti movement.”

The glorious religious movement in the history of the country is completely based on devotion to God and nothing else. The movement created a good influence on the Indian rulers during that period.

The seminar was attended by students, teachers and employees of the university along with other dignitaries.