Balance of influence shifting in favour of India in the Muslim

The balance of influence is shifting in favour of India in the Muslim world, said former Indian Ambassador to the UAE, Talmiz Ahmad, who sees India's address to OIC for the first time as correction of a "historic wrong".

"I think that this is a very significant development", Ahmad said of External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj's address to the grouping of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) in Abu Dhabi Friday.

"I see it as a shift in the balance of influence in favour of India, and away from Pakistan in the Muslim world," he told PTI.

Fifty years ago, a Pakistani general (Yahya Khan) who had come to power as a result of coup d'etat had insisted that India should be evicted from the Rabat platform, he said.

"50 years later, this historic wrong is being corrected. And it is significant that it is Pakistan that is missing from this Islamic forum.

So, the entire scenario has shifted in favour of India and this is a result of the shift in regional and global affairs and very new perceptions relating to India and Pakistan...most important...relating to Pakistan", Ahmad, also the former Indian Ambassador to Saudi Arabia and Oman said.

Pakistan, he said, is recognised as the fountainhead of extremism and violence that is state-sponsored, while India is seen as the bastion of technological achievement, of economic future and of the great skills of its human resource and its total commitment to moderation and modernisation.

In a major diplomatic achievement, India for the first time addressed the OIC meeting on Friday, and asserted that the war against terrorism, which was destabilising regions and putting the world at great peril, was not against any religion.

India's participation came despite strong demand by Pakistan to rescind the invitation to Swaraj to address the grouping of the OIC which was turned down by the host UAE, resulting in Pakistan's Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi boycotting the plenary.

Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed, a senior minister in Indira Gandhi's cabinet who later became President, was invited to attend the Rabat conference in 1969 and then disinvited at Pakistan's instance after he arrived in the Moroccan capital.

Since then, India has been excluded from all OIC deliberations.