India invites Pakistani culture minister to SCO forum in Delhi
Pakistan has not said whether Aurangzeb Khan Khichi will attend the November 20-22 gathering, which India's culture minister says he hopes will be confirmed.
India has invited Pakistan's national heritage and culture minister, Aurangzeb Khan Khichi, to a Shanghai Cooperation Organisation cultural forum in New Delhi this month, and India's culture minister said on Friday he hoped Pakistan would take part. Islamabad has not announced whether it will send him.
Gajendra Singh Shekhawat told a press conference in New Delhi that invitations for the SCO Civilisational Dialogue Forum went to 25 countries and that 15 had confirmed. Among those he named were China, Kazakhstan, Iran, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Belarus, Azerbaijan, Armenia, Bahrain, Nepal, Saudi Arabia, Turkiye and Sri Lanka.
The forum runs from November 20 to 22 at Purana Qila. Prime Minister Narendra Modi will attend the opening ceremony on November 20, and sessions on November 21 and 22 will take up four themes, among them civilisational and cultural expression, art and architecture, and language, literature and manuscripts.
Asked about Pakistan, Shekhawat said its civilisation and cultural development were no different from India's and that the two had evolved side by side. Pakistan separated from India less than 80 years ago, he said, and on culture "there should not be any differences between us". He added: "I am hopeful they will attend, their participation will be confirmed."
The New Indian Express reported that Khichi is the minister invited and that this is possibly the first time New Delhi has extended such an invitation to a senior Pakistani minister since the May 7-10 hostilities between the two countries last year, which India called Operation Sindoor. The paper noted that Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, then foreign minister, travelled to Goa for the SCO foreign ministers' meeting in May 2023.
The SCO was founded at a summit in Shanghai in 2001 by Russia, China, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. India and Pakistan became permanent members in 2017 and Iran joined in 2023. The bloc also has 15 dialogue partners, among them Azerbaijan, Armenia, Bahrain, Egypt, Qatar, Kuwait, the Maldives, Myanmar, Nepal, the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Turkiye and Sri Lanka.
The culture ministry and the external affairs ministry are jointly organising the forum. Shekhawat said India wants the SCO to be more than a geopolitical and economic platform, and to serve as a forum for shared civilisational heritage and human values. Culture, he said, can open dialogue and build trust between countries.
Neither report carried any comment from Pakistan's foreign ministry or from Khichi's office on the invitation.
How the reports differ
The Times of India led on Gajendra Singh Shekhawat's remark that India is "hopeful they will come"; its headline and standfirst carried no further detail. The New Indian Express named Pakistan's invited minister, Aurangzeb Khan Khichi, gave the November 20-22 dates and the Purana Qila venue, listed the countries that have confirmed, and noted that the last senior Pakistani visit of this kind was Bilawal Bhutto Zardari's trip to Goa in May 2023.
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