New Delhi: Leading Urdu poet, progressive writer and women’s activist from Pakistan Fahmida Riaz has said that all three major political parties in her country seek friendly ties with India.
The Pakistan Peoples Party, the Muttahida Quami Movement and the Pakistan Muslim League (Q) — all want amicable ties, she said in conversation with journalists at the Press Club of India here.
The Karachi-based writer, known to lean Leftward, and active on issues pertaining to women’s empowerment and human rights, said that if India spurned Pakistan’s friendly overtures, it would have unpleasant consequences for people-to-people contacts between the two neighbours.
Riaz said political parties and people in Pakistan wanted friendly ties because her country was grappling with internal terrorism, growing religious fundamentalism and high unemployment, and did not want to jeopardise relations with India. “Rajiv Gandhi went to Pakistan and met Benazir Bhutto and Atal Bihari Vajpeyee went to Pakistan… They wanted friendship. General Parvez Musharraf came to Agra. I have lived in Sindh and I have been in touch with the people of Balochistan. They have always wanted friendship with India,” Riaz said.
Regretting the setback for former Pakistan president Parvez Musharraf in the run-up to the elections in her country, Riaz said: “Pakistan’s returning officers were arbitrary in rejecting his nomination forms.”
“This is ‘anyay’, ‘jurm’ (wrong, a crime),” Riaz said.
India has a special place in Riaz’s heart: She spent seven years in the 1980s in the Indian capital with her two children after she fled the Zia-ul-Haq regime, which charged her and her husband Zafar with treason for their liberal views in “Awaz”, a publication that the writer had founded along with her second husband, a political activist. (IANS)