TEHRAN A prominent Indian journalist suggested that a new impetus should be given to the relations between Iran and India in order to make these relations up to the mark.

The journalist Mohammed Abdul Mateen, who is the editor of the Hyderabad-based Urdu daily ****The Munsif****, underlined the fact that "Iran and India have enjoyed very friendly relations for the past several thousand years."

Speaking in an interview with the TEHRAN TIMES, Mateen recalled that India's first prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru referred to Indo-Iranian relations in his prestigious book titled "Discovery of India".

"The Founder of the Islamic Republic, Imam Khomeini, brought Iran and India closer to each other, as Indian Muslims as well as deprived strata of that country had great respect for his noble personality," he noted.

He said that the Delhi-based Urdu daily Da'awat had great support and admiration for the Islamic Revolution and represented the voice of the revolution in India.

Da'awat was at that time edited by Mohammed Muslim, a journalist from Bhopal, where he started his journalistic career by editing the Urdu daily Nadim. Muslim passed away some four years ago.

"Not only the people of India, but the nations in many other countries like Indonesia and Malaysia were also greatly influenced by Imam Khomeini's Islamic movement," he recalled.

Mateen expressed great happiness over his current visit to Iran, which is his second visit to the Islamic Republic. "I can see that Islam is practiced in this country in a democratic manner. In fact, the democratic system of Iran can serve as a model for other Islamic countries," he noted.

Referring to cultural relations between the two countries, this Indian journalist suggested that the Iranian officials should work out some plans to promote the Persian language in India. He said that Persian was the official language of India for several centuries.

"Even in ancient times, Iran's Avesta and India's Sanskrit had a lot of common words," he added.

Mateen also exchanged views with the TEHRAN TIMES Managing Editor Abbas Salimi Namin. The two sides emphasized the influence of the Islamic ideology on the thinkers and scholars of the two countries.

Salimi said that the famous Iranian thinker and political activist, Dr. Ali Shariati, greatly contributed to the Islamic renaissance in Iran by trying to revive the Islamic ideology in the Iranian academic circles under the pro-West despotic imperial regime.

Mateen referred to the Indian Subcontinent's Allama Iqbal, who once composed a poem in praise of the Soviet Communist revolution in 1917.

"However, Iqbal later became a standard-bearer for the Islamic renaissance and return to the indigenous culture in the subcontinent. He also had great admiration for Iranians and often said that Tehran deserved to become Geneva of the East," he explained.