Mani Shankar Aiyar said, "Pakistan is also a sovereign country and it is also respected. While maintaining that respect, talk as harshly as you want, but at least talk. But if you are roaming around with a gun in your hand, it will not provide any solution... it will just increase the tension. What will happen to the country if a mad person comes there? They have atom bombs."
Congress veteran Mani Shankar Aiyar sparked controversy by declaring that India should engage in discussion with Pakistan rather than flexing its military strength, which might upset Islamabad enough to deploy nuclear weapons against New Delhi.
Aiyar, a former diplomat and prominent supporter of normalising India-Pakistan ties, remarked that the government may be harsh with Islamabad if it wants to, but if it does not respect the neighbouring nation, it may face serious consequences. He said, "While maintaining that respect, talk as harshly as you want, but at least talk. But if you are roaming around with a gun in your hand, it will not provide any solution... it will just increase the tension."
Congress leader Mani Shankar Aiyar said in an interview that India should respect Pakistan because it also has the atom bomb. pic.twitter.com/EEDlDfWYLh
— Asianet Newsable (@AsianetNewsEN)"They have atomic bombs. We have them, too, but if a 'madman' decides to explode a bomb on Lahore, the radiation would reach Amritsar in less than 8 seconds," he cautioned.
"If we respect them, they will remain peaceful. But if we snub them, what happens if a ‘madman’ comes up and decides to launch bombs [at India]?" Aiyar asked.
The Congress leader's words came amid heightened tensions between India and Pakistan following Prime Minister Narendra Modi's famous 'ghar me ghus kar' warning, in which he stated that Indian soldiers would invade Pakistan to kill anybody who escaped over the border.
Following the Prime Minister's statement, several prominent BJP officials have intensified their anti-Pakistan rhetoric. Defence Minister Rajnath Singh stated that Pakistan-Occupied Kashmir (PoK) "was, is, and will remain ours," but India won't have to capture it with force because its people, on their own, would want to be part of India.
Meanwhile, Sam Pitroda, who was an advisor to former prime minister Rajiv Gandhi and has been closely associated with Congress leader Rahul Gandhi, stoked a major controversy with his remarks during a podcast where he cited ethnic and racial identities like Chinese, Africans, Arabs and Whites to describe the physical appearance of Indians from different parts of the country.