'We are still paying price', Rashid Alvi backs Mani Shankar Aiyar's partition remarks

Alvi, strongly backing Mani Shankar Aiyar’s Partition remarks after the terror attack in Jammu and Kashmir's Pahalgam, said, “It is absolutely true, the Partition of India was a mistake, and we are still paying the price. If the Partition had not happened, perhaps incidents like Pahalgam and other terrorist attacks might not have occurred. Millions of lives could have been saved.”

The Congress leader added that it was not appropriate to keep digging up the mistakes of the past, but noted how Maulana Azad had warned that a nation built on religion alone could not survive. “A country survives on culture, tradition, language, and brotherhood. That’s why Pakistan, created on the basis of religion, eventually broke into two pieces,” he said.

Veteran Congress leader Mani Shankar Aiyar on Saturday questioned whether the Pahalgam attack was a reflection of “unresolved questions of Partition”, adding that several leaders at the time had tried to prevent it, but deep divisions made the separation unavoidable. “Partition happened, and we are still paying the price,” Aiyar said.

Responding to former Pakistan Foreign Minister Bilawal Bhutto Zardari’s threat over the Indus Waters Treaty, Alvi had a word of caution for that country's leaders. “The future won’t speak, history will. I would advise Pakistan’s leaders to remember what happened in 1965. We were close to occupying Lahore. Blood was spilt, they saw it with their own eyes. After such chaos, Pakistani leaders should refrain from making such statements.”

Alvi also recounted a revealing conversation with two Pakistani MPs during a conference in Nepal a few years ago. “One from Balochistan and one from the northwest told me that if India ended the Indus Treaty, Pakistan would be destroyed. They said there would be celebrations in Balochistan and the northwest, and the entire system would collapse,” he recalled.