Pakistan, India Keen on Expanding Iran Cultural Ties

A Pakistani scholar said Iran and Pakistan would soon sign an agreement to enhance cooperation in the fields of culture and language.

In an interview with IRNA, Iftikhar Arif, an Urdu poet, scholar and a visiting professor of Urdu and Hindi at National University of Modern Languages (NUML), said that under the agreement both countries will benefit from ongoing research in culture and language, IRNA reported.

“When I was the president of National Language Authority, I had signed an agreement with the director of the Iranian Academy of Persian Language and Literature Gholamali Haddad Adel to enhance bilateral cooperation in the field of culture.

“That agreement was approved by the governments of both the countries and soon Iran and Pakistan will formally sign the agreement,” he said.

Arif said relations between Iran and Pakistan are strong at the government-to-government and people-to-people level. “The affection between the people of Iran and Pakistan is unprecedented,” he said.

The scholar added that the people of Pakistan love Iran and they are well-wishers of Iran. “The governments and peoples of both countries are following the tradition of cooperation and brotherhood. Iran and Pakistan are supporting each other on all issues,” he said.

Arif further said the literature of Pakistan has been influenced by Persian language. “Persian had been the official language of this region for many years,” he said, regretting that because of the influence of English language, the people of subcontinent are going away from their roots.

Arif noted that the major works of philosopher and poet, Dr. Allama Mohammad Iqbal, is in Persian and “we cannot understand him properly without learning Persian”.

He strongly believed that the main aim of colonialism was to attack the historical traditions of Muslims of India. “But now it is widely believed that by learning Persian language, we will return to our roots,” he said.

Meanwhile, talking to IRNA on the sidelines of a program at the Iranian Embassy in New Delhi, Pandit N K Sharma, former advisor to the then prime minister, Narasimha Rao, said, “By making high-level contacts, both the countries can be good examples for other countries with regard to friendly ties and cooperation.”

Sharma was attending the press conference hosted by the embassy on the eve of the Int’l Conference on Sufi Saint Khwaja Moinuddin Chishti (RA) which was held in May in New Delhi.

Sharma noted that the element of spiritualism in the lives of the people of the two friendly countries make them different from others but bring them closer to each other because of this commonality.

Maintaining that Iran and India have rich traditional and historical relations, Sharma stressed there is a need to increase people-to-people contact between the two countries through cultural exchanges.

“That would strengthen not only the solidarity and the cultural ties between two nations of India and Iran but the outcome will boost the political and economic relationship between the two friendly nations, and that certainly will help in the development of the two countries,” he said.

Sharma emphasized that both India and Iran can play a meaningful role in regional cooperation by working closely on issues that will bring peace and security to the region and the world.