India has invited Pakistan’s National Heritage and Culture Minister Aurangzeb Khan Khichi for the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO)’s Civilisational Dialogue Forum in New Delhi on November 20-21, sources told The Indian Express Tuesday.
This is the first such invitation by India to a senior minister of Pakistan ever since the military hostilities between the two countries in the wake of Operation Sindoor in May 2025 following the Pahalgam terror attack.
The last time India hosted a senior minister of Pakistan was in May 2023 when Bilawal Bhutto, who was then the Foreign Minister of his country, travelled to Goa for a meeting of the SCO Foreign Ministers.
The invitation to Pakistan’s minister is part of Delhi’s obligation to invite representatives from all SCO member countries since it had proposed to host the SCO civilisational dialogue forum. Pakistan is scheduled to host the summit of SCO leaders next year.
For Delhi, the diplomatic task is cut out. While it has kept bilateral ties frozen for a decade now after the Pathankot and Uri attacks in 2016, it has to engage with Pakistan at the multilateral level.
The civilisational dialogue, expected to be held in one of Delhi’s iconic monuments in November, was first proposed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi during the SCO Council of Heads of State summit in Tianjin in September 2025. Defence Minister Rajnath Singh formally announced that India would host the event while addressing the 25th SCO Council of Heads of Government meeting in Dushanbe, Tajikistan, on October 20, 2026.
The key goals are to strengthen people-to-people ties and cultural engagement across Eurasian member states, and showcase the shared heritage, art, literature and traditions of ancient civilisations.
The engagement between India and Pakistan under the rubric of SCO began last month when a senior Indian official visited Islamabad and flagged the issues of “connectivity, regional connectivity, transit and trade”.
Alok Dimri, India’s national coordinator for the grouping, told Pakistan’s public broadcaster PTV that the SCO had come to the neighbourhood after traversing East Asia and Central Asia – the last two summits took place in Bishkek (Kyrgyzstan) and Tianjin (China).
A senior official with the rank of Additional Secretary in the Ministry of External Affairs, Dimri led the Indian delegation at the SCO national coordinators’ meeting in Islamabad. Recalling that Prime Minister Modi had proposed a civilisational dialogue among SCO member countries, he said it had been decided that it will be held in New Delhi on November 20.
“This is a journey where Eurasian and Asian landmass member states have come together on the SCO platform,” he had said. The SCO member states include Russia, India, Iran, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Pakistan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Belarus and China.
The Indian delegation’s presence at a SCO meeting in Pakistan was the first in almost two years. In October 2024, External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar went to Islamabad for the SCO Council of Heads of Government meeting. During that visit, Jaishankar had met senior Pakistani leaders under the SCO format.
