Islamabad, Aug 15 (IANS) A speech by former prime minister Nawaz Sharif advocating normal relations with India "shows a shocking disregard of the rationale for the very creation of Pakistan", a daily said Monday.


The Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) chief spoke at a Lahore programme on the theme "Let us write a new story".

"He (Sharif) surprisingly went out of his way virtually accepting the Hindu logic against the need for an independent state for the Muslims of India so vigorously and convincingly argued by the Quaid-i-Azam (Muhammad Ali Jinnah)," The Nation said in an editorial.

"If Muslims and Hindus had the same god to worship, the same culture and the same language, as he maintained, what was all that fuss for a separate homeland for the Muslims of the subcontinent?" it asked.

Muslims, who lived side by side with Hindus before partition, "would vouch for the huge cultural variations" between the two communities, in their style of living, habits, dress and eating preferences, it said.

"Mian Nawaz had it all wrong when he talked of the same food Muslims and Hindus eat."

It stated that Muslims got an inkling of the difficulties they would face in making common cause with Hindus when, in the 19th century, Hindus began demanding that Hindi should replace Urdu.

"In the light of this, it is hard to deny that a mindset of separate ways existed among the Hindus as far as back then," the editorial said.