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Pakistan, enemy or friend?

After some period of dithering, the establishment has finally decided to go ahead with Pakistan's cricket tour of India, but it is certain that Bombay will not rank on the itinerary, for reasons that are obvious.

However, the reasons need to be stated once again, if only to drive home the prevalent ambiguity about Pakistan's attitude towards India, and how Pakistan has successfully exploited that ambivalence to its own sinister end.

All that the rest of the country knows is that Bal Thackeray, mercurial chief of the Shiv Sena, has opposed the Pakistani cricket team playing in the country, and since Bombay is his backyard, scheduling a game in the city could lead to a serious law and order problem. But I think the rest of the country has forgotten, if they knew it in the first place, why Thackeray is so viscerally opposed to Pakistan playing in India, or vice versa.

Five and a half years ago, Muslim extremists abetted by Pakistan's Inter Services Intelligence carried out a series of bomb blasts across Bombay's landscape, killing hundreds and damaging property worth billions of rupees. And apart from Kashmir, where it is well documented and accepted that the ISI, eagerly encouraged by the Pakistani establishment, is waging a crippling war against the Indian State, it is Bombay that has borne the brunt of Pakistan's rancour towards a prosperous neighbour. I am tempted to say that it is the only city in the country to take such a hard knock, and I was probably right till February 14, 1998, when Coimbatore went through the same ghastly experience as Bombay.

It is all very easy for those sitting thousands of kilometres away to talk about the therapeutic effects of sports, but it would be unfair to expect victims of terrorism to appreciate the finer points of the game as demonstrated by flannelled representatives of a country, whose other significant imports include advanced arms and ammunition and highly motivated and trained mercenaries.

Before I turn to Thackeray, let me try and recapture what Union Home Minister L K Advani said only the other day about Pakistan's role in fomenting trouble in the country. Addressing the media in Ahmedabad, the home minister declared that his government would table a white paper on continuing ISI activities in the country, in the winter session of Parliament.

Not only that, and here I quote the United News of India, Advani said 'after its defeat in the 1971 Indo-Pakistan war, the neighbouring country had realised that it could not win any direct war against India. Hence, Pakistan conceptualised its plan that began to be implemented after 1980s in the form of a proxy war to create instability in India and, if possible, make an attempt to grab Kashmir'.

This news report was carried by every newspaper worth its name the next day, and when I last checked the home ministry had not issued a denial to this. So we can take it that in the intervening two weeks since then, Pakistan, through its cat's paw the ISI, has not abated its activities in the country.

On the contrary, there has been a stepping up of hostilities against our country, and this time not covertly, not through native agents of destabilisation, but overtly, through its men in uniform, at Siachen. What is happening on what is referred to as the world's highest battlefield is nothing short of war.

Since October 18 this year, Pakistan has made at least seven attempts to capture the glacier, which will offer it an uninterrupted view of the country below, and also unlimited access to send its agents of death into Kashmir. It is this that India has been preventing, by holding on to a sliver of land at a high cost, both in terms of men and materials.

Farooq Abdullah, chief minister of Jammu and Kashmir, may not be very effective in combating terrorists, especially given his constant complaint that the Centre is not doing enough to back his administration's efforts in this regard. But even he minces no words when it comes to talking about Pakistan's role in keeping his state on the boil. Of course, the views of the population of the state who have been driven away to eke out a living in misery, as refugees in their own country, about playing cricket with just such a nation that is responsible for their plight should come as no surprise to anyone. Barring, perhaps, those who believe that sports transcends politics and that the two countries should continue playing each other.

That such attempts to paint a picture of normalcy have no basis in reality is evident from the ongoing secretary-level talks between India and Pakistan in New Delhi. The talks, so far, have floundered, as will the critical round between Home Secretary B P Singh and his Pakistani counterpart Hafizullah Ishad on November 12, which will cover terrorism and drug-trafficking.

Barely hours before the talks began, India had announced it will provide to Pakistan concrete evidence of Islamabad's involvement in acts of terrorism on Indian soil.

I have enumerated all of the above to buttress my case that things are not normal between the two countries, in fact that Pakistan is not a friend of India. We have proof of Pakistan's involvement in terrorist acts in the country, we *know* that Pakistan is fighting an open war against India in the freezing heights of the Himalayas, and yet we are willing to play cricket with Pakistan.

Let us now look at how another country -- which most Indians are in tune with, which most Indians believe to be worthy of emulation by their own country, and which shares so many common points with India that it would be a cliché-ridden exercise to enumerate them here -- behaves in a similar situation.

For years, the US and the USSR were engaged in a Cold War, at the height of which the two sides boycotted each other completely, even calling off delegations to Olympics being hosted by each other. Yet, even at the height of the Cold War, the two countries did not fire a single bullet, although they may have come closer to Armageddon than the rest of us know about.

The US, since those days, has made other enemies too, like Iran and Libya, who have been accused of various terrorist acts on American soil and elsewhere, some overt, most covert. The US does not go around playing soccer, baseball, basketball and what-have-you with these countries. It does not get taken in by misguided arguments on not mixing sports and politics.

Sadly, that is an argument that one does not get to hear the last of in India. Here is a country that is raping us black and blue, and yet every time the desirability of calling off sporting contact with it comes up, a chorus goes up about separating sports from politics. Of course, it is a great ideal, and one that has enormous merit. But here, the question is not of mixing politics and sports, but whether national interest is to be sacrificed at the altar of sport.

That is a question on which a homespun politician like Bal Thackeray has clear-cut views. He has no grandiose ambitions like ruling India for which he has to cultivate a vote bank, Maharashtra is his oyster, Bombay his heart-beat. He has seen his city reduced to its knees briefly in March 1993 by ISI-engineered terrorism, and can never accept putting on a veil of normalcy with Pakistan, at least so long as that country does not call off its agents of death and destruction.

This veil of normalcy is Pakistan's main gambit in its war against India. The games it plays with us, literally, on the sports-fields, the official exchange of artistes etc between the two countries, are all meant to build a smokescreen behind which it can blithely continue its satanic acts. The smokescreen is meant to blind not only us but also the world, to whom India has often taken its case, and which has shown scant concern for our plight. And the longer we continue to play ball with it, the greater will be the world's credibility problem with us.

I mean, why would anyone believe us when things are so obviously normal between us?

Saisuresh Sivaswamy