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Participants at the second conclave of its kind, have pleaded for strong economic, media and educational exchanges between India and Iran ignoring the hostile West which was out to isolate Iran in the comity of nations.
Participants at the second conclave on India-Iran ties saw no reason for India succumbing to US pressures to cut off ties with Iran, nor must it support any possible American attack on it.
Iran and India have enjoyed close civilisational links for thousands of years. The ancestors of many of today’s north Indian Hindus are said to have migrated from Iran in waves. Indeed, the words ‘Hindu’ and ‘Hindustan’ are themselves of Persian origin. Mughal period further strengthened these bonds, with the migration of Iranians, use of Persian in the imperial court and the Persian impact on literary and artistic traditions. Cordiality has continued in the modern times too. although today efforts are being made to create distance between the two countries. It was in such a troubled context that a joint conference on Indo-Iranian relations was organised in Tehran on November 7 and 8 under the aegis of UNESCO Peace Chairs at the Shahid Behehsti University, Tehran, and Manipal University.
The first session of the conference was held on November 7 at the Shahid Beheshti University. In his opening address, Prof. Madhav Nalapat of Manipal University recalled the historical ties between Iran and India, which provides the firm bulwark for the cordiality between them. Today, around 14,000 Iranians are studying in India. The present Iranian Finance and Foreign Ministers also studied in India. Prof. Nalapat called for closer collaboration between universities on the two sides. He lamented the fact that while Persian is taught in several Indian universities, the only professor of Sanskrit in Iran has left the country rendering the department defunct. Napalat noted that in contrast to many other countries, there was considerable academic freedom in Iran. He remarked how the free debate that ensued in the conference contrasted with the ‘intolerable and barbaric’ treatment meted out recently to the visiting Iranian President, Ahmadinejad, by the President of Columbia University in America, where he had been invited as a guest to deliver an address.
Prof. Nalapat added that India-Iran ties had to be judged in the context of Indian interests, “which were in reality not at all inconsistent with the security interests of the US”, a country “whose people need to engage with civil society in Iran. Taking cognizance of scepticism from some quarters about the future of Iran, he repeated that, ‘No country can stop Iran from becoming a major power’. He pleaded for frequent meeting of civil society groups and social activists from both countries.
Discussants agreed that status of minorities on both sides needed to be improved together with furthering of inter-community dialogue, women’s rights, democracy, economic development, and the need for a policy of peace and the avoidance of violence. Several participants said that India must not yield to the mounting US pressure to cut off ties with Iran, nor must it support any possible American attack on it.
The second session was held at the Institute of Religious and Economic Studies, a non-governmental think-tank. In pleading for closer people-to-people relations, Prof. Nalapat pointed out that the present level of trade between the two countries was still very low. While India provided some 26,000 visas to Iranians last year, Iran issued only 4,000 visas to Indians, most of them being pilgrims. He pleaded for greater reciprocity, suggesting that Iran could become an important tourist destination for Indians, provided visa granting procedures were simplified.
Several speakers pointed out that Iran needed to look East to countries such as India and China, owing particularly to the increasingly hostile attitude of several Western powers to it. They expressed their anxiety over talk of India perhaps succumbing to American pressure to not go ahead with a proposed peace pipeline connecting the two countries. They also spoke of dangers posed by fundamentalist forces to the religious minorities and thereby to Indo-Iranian ties.
Discussion on media exchanges focused on how little direct reporting of events was possible between the two countries. Indian media relied heavily on Western sources for news about Iran, which is heavily biased, one-sided and sensational. It presents only the negative side of Iran. Iranian speakers pointed out that Indian films are widely watched in Iran, because of which most Iranians are familiar with at least some aspects of contemporary India, this being in contrast to the almost total ignorance on the part of most Indians about Iran today. On the other hand, it was pointed out, that while there are presently three official Iranian cultural centres in India in New Delhi, Mumbai and Hyderabad India has yet to be given permission to open an Indian cultural centre in Iran, despite repeated requests.
The final session of the conference was held at the Baran Institute, a think-tank run by the former President of Iran, Khatami. In his speech, Prof. Nalapat mooted the idea of a strategic ‘triangle’ consisting of Iran, India and Indonesia. He argued that Iran’s overtures towards the West during Khatami’s reign were rebuffed. Mr. Yaqubi, a former Iranian Ambassador to India, also concurred with this plea. A former deputy foreign minister of Iran, who was present at the meeting, talked about Iran’s multi-layered civilization, which includes the pre-Islamic, the Islamic and the ‘modern’. ‘Modernity’, however, does not mean that one should blindly follow the Western path and abandon one’s own cultural heritage, which is what strategic planners in the West advocate. True global democracy, he said, must be based on the ‘rich global multi-cultural fabric’. He critiqued what he saw as Western hypocrisy on the question of human rights and democracy and its willingness to support dictatorial regimes in order to promote its own strategic interests. He announced Iran’s opposition to groups like the Taliban, al-Qaeda and militant Wahhabism, which, he pointed out, have been abetted consistently by America. He condemned the US occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan. The Indian participants concurred that sovereignty in both countries needed to be restored.
This was the second conference of its sort, the first having been hosted by the UNESCO Peace Chair of Manipal University last year. Participants stressed the need to continue with this form of parallel diplomacy to strengthen people-to-people contacts between India and Iran, although it was also felt that such meetings must plan for practical outcomes, rather than remaining limited just to discussions. It was agreed that a road map for closer ties between the Iranian and Indian peoples would be drawn up. The next conference would take place in 2008 in India.
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