T N Ninan: The biter bit

The outrage in Pakistan after the IPL auction makes one wonder which planet Pakistanis occupy

So the Pakistani cricketers are insulted, and Pakistanis in general are outraged. In protest, the Pak kabaddi team has pulled out of an India tour, and parliamentarians have pulled out of a delegation coming to take part in the jubilee celebrations of the Election Commission. The Pakistan interior minister says India is not serious about the “peace process”, the leader of the opposition complains about India’s attitude, and there is talk of Pakistan’s hockey team not coming to India for the World Cup.

All of which makes one wonder which planet Pakistanis occupy. If an insult to Pakistani cricketers (and, let’s face it, it was an insult — whether deliberate or otherwise) can provoke such responses, why is India not justified in its own measured responses to infinitely more serious provocations? And why should it not hold back on the composite dialogue until credible action is taken against the perpetrators of the attacks on Mumbai — the absence of which is another serious provocation? Given the scale of the many provocations that can be listed, where does an insult to cricketers rank?

It is worth wondering what the Pak response would be if the Sri Ram Sene or some such outfit bombed the Minar-e-Pakistan in Lahore, or the Faisal Mosque in Islamabad? The very thoughts are outrageous, but they could, after all, be considered the equivalent of the attacks on India’s Parliament and on Mumbai’s iconic buildings. Remember, then, the angry responses from Pakistani commentators when the Indian media started pointing fingers at Pakistan, in the wake of the Mumbai attacks, accusing Indian TV channels of jumping to conclusions without any evidence. Well, the evidence is now available; has anyone retracted in Pakistan? Far from it; indeed, Imran Khan seems to have asserted in the wake of the cricket non-selection that Pakistanis were not involved in the Mumbai attacks!

And they complain about India’s attitude? So the external affairs minister and ministry are right in asking Pakistanis to introspect on the reasons why bilateral relations are what they are. And while they are about it, they might also introspect on why it is Pakistan, and not India, that is suffering “death by a thousand cuts”.

None of which absolves the Indian establishment of the charge of stupidity, in the way in which it dealt with Pakistan’s cricketers — for reasons that are still not clear. Whatever Pakistan is or isn’t, it happens to be India’s neighbour and that fact is not going to change. The only way to deal with a difficult neighbour is to encourage its saner elements, while dealing appropriately with forces that stand in the way of better bilateral relations. From that perspective, India has scored a self-goal. It has strengthened the hands of those who do not want better ties with India, and it has denied the country the use of an important arena of people-to-people contact. India’s strategy should be to facilitate sporting contacts, allow more people to travel across the border, encourage Pakistani authors to take part in the Jaipur literary festival, build stronger trade links and forge business ties, allow mutual access to media, books and films — in short, to create as many non-governmental channels of contact as possible. None of this may make much of a difference in a country that is ruled by the army, whose very raison d’etre is hostility to India, or to the jihadist elements in Pakistan. But fostering favourable attitudes in Pak civil society remains India’s only bet, and everything that India does should be with that in mind.