20-08-2004

Pakistani birthplace of India’s leader points way to peace

via www.telegraph.co.uk

The humble Pakistani village where India’s prime minister was born more than 70 years ago is becoming a symbol of rapprochement between the two rival nations.

Gah, 300 mud-brick houses 50 miles south-west of Islamabad, fell on the Pakistani side of the border when British India was partitioned in 1947.

It was here that Manmohan Singh – the son of a shopkeeper who rose to become Indian finance minister in the 1990s and is now the country’s first Sikh prime minister – learnt to do his sums in a one-room school…