Pakistan-India Peoples' Forum for Peace and Democracy

Allahabad Declaration of the Pakistan India

Peoples’ Forum for Peace and Democracy

(31 December 2011)

We, the delegates of the 8^th Joint Convention of the Pakistan India Peoples’ Forum for Peace and Democracy (PIPFPD) held in Allahabad from 29—31 December 2011, note with concern that the relationship between India and Pakistan has deteriorated since the last convention, which took place in New Delhi from 25—28 February 2005. The past seven years have seen the Mumbai terror attacks and a continuing assault on Pakistani sovereignty by NATO forces headed by the United States.

Against this backdrop, it has become incumbent on the peoples of the two countries to restore India-Pakistan friendship and revive the cooperative relationship that prevailed twelve years ago.

The Convention pledges to reinforce democracy, ensure socio-economic justice and defend the security as well as the right to life and livelihood of the peoples of the two countries. All these are under threat from the policies of the global hegemon and its accomplices in our two states who are currently wielding the levers of power.

The Convention is perturbed by the fact that hostility and suspicion continue to haunt the two peoples. The PIPFPD regrets that although it is a peoples’ forum, whose objective is to promote fraternal relations between the two countries, it has not been able to assert itself adequately.

JOINT INDO-PAK CONVENTION DECRIES GLOBAL HEGEMONY

Allahabad, 31 December 2011

The 8th Joint Convention of the Pakistan India Peoples Forum for Peace and Democracy (PIPFPD) concluded in Allahabad today while calling on the people of India and Pakistan to resist global hegemonism and support peoples’ resistance movements in a spirit of international solidarity.

The three day event comprised cultural programmes, including performances by Seema Anil Sehgal, the Gundecha brothers, Mahmood Farooqi and Nadira Babbar.

In a keynote address to the convention, Dr. Ravi Sinha of the New Socialist Initiative discussed the dangers posed by global hegemony, pliant nation states and totalitarian communities.

In another special lecture, Dr. Jean Dreze rejected the doctrine that mutually assured destruction guarantees peace.