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| Pakistan opposition leader Fazlur Rahman in India | | | New Delhi, April 22
Pakistan's hardline politician and chief opposition leader Maulana Fazlur Rahman arrived in India at the Wagah border in Punjab Sunday on a five-day visit to attend a seminar here in honour of noted Muslim cleric Maulana Asad Madani.
Rahman, chief of the opposition Muttaheda Majlis-e-Amal (MMA) alliance, was originally to have flown to India but changed his plans at the last minute and crossed overland from the Wagah border.
From there, he boarded a train for New Delhi.
Rahman is likely to meet Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee, Mehmood Madani, former Rajya Sabha MP and son of Asad Madani, told IANS.
The meetings have, however, not yet been confirmed, he added.
Rahman, who heads an influential network of madrasas in Pakistan and is known for his pro-Taliban views, has been pushing for peace with India, especially since the 9/11 attacks.
Nearly 20 political leaders from Pakistan will attend a two-day seminar on life and teachings of Asad Madani that will start at Vigyan Bhavan here Monday.
Rahman, who heads Jamiat-ul-Ulema-e-Islam, an offshoot of the Indian Jamiat, is also likely to discuss the Jamiat plan to commemorate 150 years of the 1857 revolt against the British rule, considered by some historians as the first war of independence.
Asad Madani, the patriarch of Jamiat Ulema-e-Hind and a key figure in radical hardline Islam that thrived in Deoband in Uttar Pradesh, died last year. Rahman, leader of the opposition in the Pakistan National Assembly, was among those who had attended Madani's funeral here.
Born in 1928 in Deoband, Madani, a post-graduate in Islamic Theology, was a staunch nationalist who fiercely opposed the partition of India.
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