Conference on Indo-Iranian Relations, Tehran (7-8
November, 2007)
Yoginder Sikand
Iran and India have enjoyed close civilisational
links for literally thousands of years. The ancestors
of many of today's north Indian Hindus are said to
have migrated from Iran in successive waves, starting
several thousand years ago. Indeed, the words 'Hindu'
and 'Hindustan' are themselves of Persian origin.
Civilisational bonds between the two countries were
further strengthened in the period of Mughal rule in
India, with the migration of large numbers of Iranians
to India, the use of Persian as the language of the
imperial court and the impact of Persian culture on
north Indian literary and artistic traditions. In
modern times, India and Iran have enjoyed cordial
relations, although today efforts are being made from
forces outside, working directly and through local
agents, to distance the two countries. It was in such
a troubled context that a joint conference on
Indo-Iranian relations was recently organized in
Tehran, aimed at helping promote bilateral ties, at
the level of governments and the peoples of both
countries. The conference was jointly organised by the
UNESCO Peace Chairs at the Shahid Behehsti University,
Tehran, and Manipal University, India, Professor
Ardeshir Amir-Arjomand and Professor Madhav Nalapat,
on 7th and 8th of November 2007.
The first session of the conference was held on
7th November at the Faculty of Law of the Shahid
Beheshti University. In his opening address, Prof.
Madhav Nalapat of Manipal University recalled the long
historical ties between Iran and India, because of
which, he said, 'Indians feel very much at home in
Iran' and vice versa. Today, there are some fourteen
thousand Iranians studying in various Indian colleges
and universities. The present Iranian Finance and
Foreign Ministers also studied in India, he noted.
Prof. Nalapat called for closer collaboration between
universities in India and Iran. He lamented the fact
that while there are departments of Persian in several
Indian universities, there is no department of Indian
Studies in any Iranian University. The only professor
of Sanskrit in Iran has left the country and his
department is now, for all practical purposes,
defunct. Prof. Napalat pointed out 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 but was then subjected to
unprovoked abuse.
Prof. Nalapat, who was candid about his support
for the close ties between India and the US [which
some other Indian participants did not, however,
approve of], nevertheless added that India's
relationship with Iran 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,a country that is a civilisational
cousin of the Indian and European peoples". He called
for close cultural and economic ties between Iran and
India. 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,
and India should consistently work for closer
relations with it'. This process could be
strengthened, he suggested, if civil society groups
and social activists from both countries could
frequently meet and work together, and there was a
"free flow of Indian and Iranian culture within each
other's boundaries"
Prof. Nalapat's speech was followed by a lively
discussion. The themes that came up for discussion
included the status of minorities in both countries
(which was, it was agreed, needed to be improved ),
inter-community dialogue, women's rights, democracy,
economic development, and the need for a policy of
peace and the avoidance of violence. Several
discussants said that India must not yield to the
mounting pressure on it by America to curtail or cut
off relations with Iran, nor must it support any
possible American attack on it.
The second session of the conference was held at
the Institute of Religious and Economic Studies, a
non-governmental think-tank established by a former
economic advisor to the Iranian Government in the wake
of the Islamic Revolution in 1979. The discussion took
much the same turn as in the first session. In
pleading for closer people-to-people (in addition to
inter-governmental) relations between Iran and India,
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 Iranian
citizens last year, Iran issued only 4000 visas to
Indian citizens, most of them being pilgrims to Shia
shrines in that country. He pleaded for greater
reciprocity, suggesting that Iran could become an
important tourist destination for Indians, provided
visa granting procedures were simplified and made less
stringent.
Several speakers in this session 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.
While welcoming closer economic and cultural relations
with India, they expressed their anxiety over talk of
India perhaps succumbing to American pressure to not
go ahead with a proposed pipeline connecting the two
countries. They also spoke of how religious
fundamentalism and the targeting of religious
minorities was a major block to further improvement of
Indo-Iranian relations. They stressed the need for
'developing' countries like India and Iran to have a
greater say in global decision-making, condemning what
one of them aptly termed as a 'one-voice world"
It was stressed that closer cultural ties and
cultural exchanges could play a crucial role in
further cementing relations between the two countries.
It was noted that India and Iran hardly featured in
each other's media. The Indian media, it was pointed
out, continues to rely heavily on Western sources for
news abut Iran, which is heavily biased, one-sided and
sensational. It presents only the negative (real or
imagined) side of Iran, providing a very distorted
image of the country. India was once a great bastion
of Persian literature and culture, but this tradition
is now almost dead in the country, it was lamented.
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 third and 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 although the Khatami regime had sought to
move Iran closer to the West, it had been rudely
rebuffed. Hence, he said, there was an urgent need for
Iran to 'look East' instead. 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, he argued, 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 condemned all forms of religious
fundamentalism, and 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 spoke about the grave
threat of America using militant Wahhabis, as in Iraq,
for its own purposes, at the same time as he condemned
the US occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan. The Indian
participants concurred that sovereinity in both
countries needed to be restored,and a few expressed
anguish at the "League of Nations" style mandates that
have been given by the UN Security Council to some
countries now occupying Iraq and Afghanistan,besides
other locations,and said that such a transfer of
sovereign power to an occupying force was unwelcome .
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.
Sukhia Sab Sansar Khaye Aur Soye
Dukhia Das Kabir Jagey Aur Roye
The world is 'happy', eating and sleeping
The forlorn Kabir Das is awake and weeping
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