Cricket is considered by liberals who peddle soft diplomacy as a solution to India-Pakistan disputes, as a good medium to help normalise relations. But there cannot be sport in the shadow of terror
Cricket in times of mistrust and conflict has never really worked for India and Pakistan, much as the self-appointed liberal social classes on either side of the border may have us believe. Neither cricket nor even the over-hyped people-to-people contacts between Indians and Pakistanis have in the past been able to substitute cold and hard diplomacy. While the Pakistan cricket team may yet visit India this December for a bilateral series (the last time the two countries played a Test series was in 2007), few can possibly ignore the fact that the reasons for India not playing cricket with Pakistan in the first place remain strikingly unchanged. If Pakistan’s patronage of anti-India terror has been the sole reason for no cricket, no talks, precious little has altered for New Delhi to signal a goodwill thaw Islamabad’s way.
Time was when symbolic gestures were gainfully employed by the respective political establishments to smoothen the rough diplomatic road the two countries have travelled on since Independence. Soft diplomacy was indeed the operative term whenever the two neighbours hit a political roadblock, ‘shared cultural beliefs’ or even cricket often invoked to soothe a vicious conflict bequeathed to the two by a harsh history. Unfortunately, India must now deal with the subcontinent’s contemporary conflict in addition to the conventional one. This contemporary reality is Pak-sponsored terror in India. And, in this day and age of social media activism, neither side can ignore the simmering tensions between the two people which the slightest hint of a social or cultural exchange dangerously brings to the fore.
Agreed, after a Pakistani singer was unceremoniously sent home, a former Pakistani Foreign Minister was heckled at the India launch of his book and the same elements aborted a meeting of Pakistan and India cricket board chiefs. Admittedly, such ‘intolerant’ behaviour cannot be brushed aside as the destructive output of India’s lunatic fringe. Even Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s unilateral goodwill gestures towards his Pakistani counterpart since he assumed office held little significance when the hard political decision to reserve diplomatic dialogue till Pakistan conceded India’s ground on terror had to be taken. Therefore, fringe or mainstream, India rightly reacts to Pakistan’s intransigence, be it on Kashmir or on terror, and the truth is, neither side can pretend any longer.
To that extent, Pakistan’s civil society as also its political and military establishments have long ceased to pretend, opinion very seldom divided on how India must be dealt with. Those among us who were till recently hyperventilating about India’s “growing intolerance” when Pakistani ghazal singer Ghulam Ali was prevented from performing in Mumbai by the Shiv Sena, need only look at the ongoing venomous anti-India messages emanating from the Pakistani social media space. The time and place of origin may be different but the reactions are not.
Ever since a Pakistani media network announced its decision to invite singers Shankar Mahadevan and Shweta Pandit as judges for its Asia Singing Superstar show, Pakistan’s social media world has been abuzz with hate-India messages, the TV network accused of “betrayal” and of working to India’s “agenda”. Try selling soft diplomacy to these peddlers of hate. These are not voices from Pakistan’s radicalised fringes but from the country’s liberal educated middle class which is also celebrating the BJP’s defeat in Bihar. Incidentally, Pakistan’s official media, PTV, went to the extent of tweeting that Bihar’s election shows how “the Indian Prime Minister’s appeal to voters has begun to wane”. Never in the subcontinent’s history has there been such universal jubilation in Pakistan over a State Assembly election in India.
For those familiar with India-Pakistan relations, such gloating by Pakistani fundamentalists and liberals alike must hardly come as a surprise. Bihar is only one more occasion to spew venom at the ostensibly fundamentalist designs of the Narendra Modi regime, a posturing which comes quite naturally to the average Pakistani. It is another matter that the BJP may have lost Bihar but Mr Modi is yet to complete his full term in office as a Prime Minister with whom Pakistan will have to conduct business in the foreseeable future.
What is infinitely disturbing, indeed, is the silence of the otherwise vociferous Indian liberal army. Strangely, a deafening calm has descended upon our intellectual protest brigade post the Bihar election. Those screaming and screeching about the air of “growing intolerance” in the country till yesterday have overnight found a magical cure to India’s communal tangles in the BJP’s defeat in Bihar. However, their protest earlier and their silence now appear suspicious.
One indeed wonders why there has not been a single voice of protest against Pakistan’s ‘growing intolerance’, of India. If awards could be returned with dramatic fanfare by our intellectual chatterati over the air of intolerance in India, a few words on Pakistan’s pathological intolerance of the idea of India were surely merited. The truth is, India is a multicultural, multi-religious, pluralistic democracy that allows ample space to those in argument with the establishment. If the liberal Indian was shamed when a Pakistani singer was sent packing home, one must expect him or her to be equally pained by a dangerously radicalised Pakistani society that is currently out in full display with its agenda of intolerance against India. The inability to see and counter this, is intolerance of another kind, but that is the subject of another debate altogether.
To return to the idea of cricket as a credible vehicle of communication between India and Pakistan, apart from the palpable political rivalry between the two creating drama and fireworks on the field, the sport has done to little to achieve anything substantial. Admittedly, Pakistan is hurting severely from the current impasse in cricketing ties. Dependent as it is on the huge revenues that an India-Pakistan series generates in the media, the Pakistan Cricket Board recently placed its losses at a whopping $90 million. Playing cricket with India therefore makes absolute commercial sense for Pakistan. While Mr Modi too may have underlined the utility of playing cricket for better relations between the two countries, renewed diplomatic hostility is only a terror strike away. And given the fact that Pakistan is yet to concede ground on this issue, cricket, even if resumed, will remain a permanent hostage to any future terror incursion.
There can be no liberal or radical approach to the ideology of terror. Pakistan as a sponsor of terror is not a worthy dialogue partner. Indian Governments in the past two decades have understood and internalised this. It is time our liberal proponents of soft diplomacy did too.