 "Prime Minister Narendra Modi is greeted by his Pakistani counterpart Nawaz Sharif on his arrival in Lahore")
Foreign Secretaries of India and Pakistan will meet on January 15 in Islamabad, said Pakistan government sources, hours after Prime Minister Narendra Modi "dropped in" to meet his Pakistani counterpart, Nawaz Sharif, in Lahore on Friday.
Although a meeting of the senior foreign office bureaucrats was on the cards, the dates were announced, putting a seal on the process that will structure how the conversation between the two nations would proceed.
These dates, however, have only been announced informally - no formal confirmation has yet been made.
But barely had the dust settled in Lahore and New Delhi that Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) General Secretary Ram Madhav, in an interview to television channel Al Jazeera, said he dreamt of the day that India, Pakistan and Bangladesh would reunite to create an "Akhand Bharat" (Undivided India).
Madhav, former spokesperson and national executive member of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), said this could happen "without war, through popular consent".
"The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh still believes that one day these parts, which have for historical reasons separated only 60 years ago, will again, through popular goodwill, come together and Akhand Bharat will be created," Madhav said.
He also explained that he held that view as a member of the RSS, the ideological mentor of the BJP.
"That does not mean we wage war on any country, [or that] we annex any country. Without war, through popular consent, it can happen," he clarified.
Also responding to a statement made earlier this year, in which he said India was "a Hindu country", Madhav explained, adding "It's a land where a particular way of life, a particular culture or civilisation, is practised."
"We call it Hindu - do you have any objection? India has one culture. We are one culture, one people, one nation," he said.
The Congress criticised the remarks, calling them "just propaganda".
"The RSS or the BJP have been misleading people of the country just to divert the attention from their abject failure.
They are engaging in propaganda like an event management company," Congress spokesperson Ajoy Kumar said.
