Kulkarni for India-Pak-Bangladesh confederation before 2047

Sudheendra Kulkarni, who served as a close aide to former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, has in his new book mooted the idea of establishing an India-Pakistan-Bangladesh confederation before 2047.

Kulkarni's book "August Voices - What they said on 14-15 August 1947 and its relevance for India-Pakistan- Bangladesh Confederation', will be released by Vice President Hamid Ansari here on December 28.

"As India and Pakistan celebrate the 70th anniversary of their independence in 2017, both countries should boost efforts to normalise their relations in the new year," Kulkarni told PTI.

"They have a responsibility to future generations to prove that their ties are not destined to be permanently marred by mistrust, hostility and conflict," Kulkarni, who heads the Mumbai-based think tank Observer Research Foundation, said.
 

Kulkarni, a columnist and independent socio-political activist, said, "India's bloody partition in 1947, and the creation of Pakistan on the basis of the baseless and toxic 'Two-Nation' theory, was highly unnatural. Because it was unnatural, it predictably led to Pakistan's own bloody partition in 1971 with the liberation of Bangladesh."

"These two partitions have created multiple problems for all three countries," he said.

Kulkarni, who resigned from the BJP in 2013 after a close association with the party for 16 years, said, "The existence of India, Pakistan and Bangladesh as three separate, independent and sovereign countries is a reality that cannot be altered."

"Partition cannot be undone. But its negative outcomes can and must be undone jointly by the peoples and governments of India and Pakistan and Bangladesh. The beginning should be made by India and Pakistan arriving at a just, amicable, peaceful and compromise-based solution to the long-pending Kashmir dispute," he said.

"For this to happen, Pakistan must completely eliminate the scourge of terrorism, fuelled by religious extremism, from its soil," he said.