A Seminar on the book “ Humanity
Amid Insanity” took place in the Wilson Room of Portcullis House,
House of Commons in London was very successful in which MPs,
authors and prominent members of the Punjabi Community and
University students took part.It was arranged by the Punjabis
In Britain All Party Parliamentary Group. The seminar was
addressed by the Chair of A.P.P.G. John McDonnell MP, authors
Tridivesh Singh Maini who is Senior writer for Express Group of
Newspapers in India, Tahir Malik who is Chief of News at Waqt TV
Lahore in Pakistan and Yasmin Khan , a lecturer in politics at
Royal Holloway University.
Mr. Singh - Maini said he was grateful to the organisers for
arranging the launch of this important book at such a prestigious
place. He also stressed that it was very important that the
governments of both countries let the Punjabis meet from India and
Pakistan more easily. People had to travel very far to get the
necessary visas. Mr. Tahir Malik gave many good examples how he
was treated on his visit to the Indian Punjab in Jallandar and
Ludhiana and stated that Punjabi are very hard at working, fun
loving people. Yasmin Khan, lecturer in politics at Royal
Holloway University pointed out in her very intersting speech that
we cannot blame everything on religion.
Apart from the Chair of the Punjabi s In Britain APPG Some of
the MPs present at this event were, John Speller MP who is now a
Government whip, Marsh Singh MP, and another MP from the West
London area of the Capital.
Some of the students expressed the lack of material available
about the positive aspects of the partition.
In summing up John McDonnell said that there is no doubt that
acts of violence, rape and cruelty etc took place on both sides
some of which were due to the speedy drawing up of the borders by
the British rulers when people did not know which country they
would end up in but it is also very important to learn the
positive aspects of this Indo – Pak partition such as the
neighbour helping the neighbour, some to the extent that they
adopted other’s young children so that they would not be harmed at
all.
We must learn the good points of the partition and pass that on
to the generation of today and future generations so that they can
strengthen community relations in this country.
This book is a very good starting point. He thanked everyone
for taking part and informed the audience in the full Wilson room
of the future programmes of the organisation.
