New Delhi: On 29 September 2013, the then-prime Ministers of India and Pakistan met for just over one hour at a New York hotel on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly. During the high-profile meeting, both PMs agreed to stop the spate of attacks in the Kashmir region in order for peace talks to advance. They also both accepted invitations to visit each other's countries. It was their first face-to-face meeting since Sharif was elected in May. As Manmohan Singh breathed his last on Thursday, December 26 at a hospital in New Delhi, let's recall the moment and the foreign policies.
Manmohan Singh's stance on Pakistan
During his tenure as prime minister, Manmohan Singh "tried very hard" to establish "some kind of peace" with Pakistan, but it didn't work, former deputy NSA and his then close aide Pankaj Saran said on Thursday. Singh, the architect of India's economic reforms, died here on Thursday night at the age of 92.
Saran termed Singh's demise as "very unfortunate", and described him as an intellectual, an economist of world standing, but also a "man who symbolised humility". He was a consensus builder, a very simple man, "never expected to be a prime minister, but he served for 10 years," the former deputy NSA recalled.
Saran, a 1982-batch IFS officer, had earlier served as India's envoy to Russia. He also held various positions in India and abroad including the country's High Commissioner to Bangladesh. He was appointed as deputy National Security Advisor (NSA) in 2018. "He (Manmohan Singh) was always a great listener, intellectual, an economist of world standing, widely respected. He was the first (Indian) prime minister at the start of the G20 Summit in 2008, and he developed a very high reputation among the global leaders, whose understanding of economics... All in all, I would say, a very fine person, a great human being, both in his personal life and officially," Saran told PTI Videos.
Singh greatly believed that India's future "lay in good relations with the West", the former diplomat said. "Among the neighbours, he tried very hard to establish some kind of peace with Pakistan, but it didn't work. But, he tried, and he was very disappointed that his efforts did not succeed. In fact, they were rebuffed with the 26/11 Mumbai attacks in 2008 when he was the prime minister, and that really shook him up very badly," he recalled.
Singh also made a greater outreach to the Gulf, and he visited Saudi Arabia, one of the first prime ministers to do so, Saran added. The veteran diplomat said he felt that Singh "gave India a very good image overseas of someone who was deeply committed to the country... building the country".
"After all, he was also the shaper of the economic reforms that began in 1991. He was the architect of those reforms, he was deeply committed to the growth of the Indian economy. In the foreign policy field, I think he will go down in history as the leader who changed the paradigm of India-US relations with his success of the nuclear deal with the United States," he said. "So, both on economic policy and foreign policy, he made a mark, as someone who was respected, but as an individual very understated, very simple man, willing to learn, willing to read, willing to understand," Saran said.
"He never tried to assert himself or shut down contrary opinions. I think he was one of the greats of the non-family Congress, and serving as prime minister for 10 years, outside of the family, was a huge achievement," he said.
India and Pakistan have fought three wars, and relations between the nuclear rivals have been strained since the 2008 Mumbai attacks blamed on Pakistan-based militants that killed 164 people in India's commercial hub. This year, a renewed spate of violence has threatened a decade-long cease-fire on the Kashmir frontier.
(With inputs from agency)
