By IndiaTomorrow.net,
New Delhi, 2 November 2015: Eminent author, columnist and former BJP think tank Sudheendra Kulkarni – the man whose face was blackened by members of Shiv Sena recently for hosting an ex-Pakistani minister’s book launch – has said that improving mutual relations is “historically the most important task” before India and Pakistan.
“Bettering relations between India and Pakistan, I think, is historically the most important task before the two countries. This is the responsibility of all — the government as well as the people,” said Kulkarni on the sidelines of an event here on Saturday.
Urging both nations to act like “good” neighbors, Kulkarni said,” We will have to start moving toward a goal where we live as good neighbors with cooperation and brotherhood.”
“Our relations need to be improved at the earliest. The fire exchanges at the borders between the two countries resulting in death of soldiers and innocent people on both sides should stop,” said Kulkarni just before leaving for Pakistan to attend the book launch event of former Pakistan foreign minister Khurshid Mahmood Kasuri. Kasuri’s book Neither a Hawk Nor a Dove: An Insider’s Account of Pakistan’s Foreign Relations was launched in Mumbai last month in collaboration with Kulkarni’s Observer Research Foundation (ORF).
Former BJP think tank and advisor of ex-Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, Kulkarni had to leave the Hindu nationalist party after the furor over senior party leader L.K. Advani’s speech in Pakistan in 2005 where he had called Pakistan’s founder Mohammad Ali Jinnah “secular.” Kulkarni was reportedly behind writing that speech.
