MATTERS AROUND US
Bal Thakarey's Shiv Sena at It Again
When Atal Bihari Vajpayee was the external affairs minister of India in the Janata Party government more than two decades ago, his tenure was considered as one of the best as far as relations with the neighbours were concerned. New Delhi's relation with Islamabad was reasonably normal despite their known disputes.
The period saw an increased flurry in exchanges between the two belligerent neighbours in the fields of culture and sports. Later on, when Mr. Vajpayee was in the opposition, he said he had some contribution towards staging cricket matches between the two countries. He did earn plaudits for the part he had played in facilitating greater sports contacts between the two countries - rated among the bests in cricket and hockey.
Now, as the prime minister, Mr. Vajpayee faces stiff opposition from a small fundamentalist group as India readies to host the Pakistan national cricket team for a two-Test series after gap of nearly twelve years. Bal Thakarey's Shiv Sena has threatened to disrupt the tour by all means. The two Test matches are scheduled in capital New Delhi and Chennai but Shiv Sena with its base in the western state of Maharastra is hell-bent upon preventing the Pakistan team from playing anywhere in India.
"My men are ready all over to accomplish their task," said Mr. Thakarey. Ready his "men" are indeed. On Wednesday last, they made their way into the Feroz Shah Kotla stadium in New Delhi under the cover of darkness and dug up holes in the pitch. Authorities were caught napping but still, it is not too late. Mr. Vajpayee has said that his government will provide full security to the Pakistani players and to the matches at any cost. Home secretary B. P. Singh called an emergency meeting to prepare necessary security net and some of the security personnel at the stadium were suspended for dereliction of duty.
Former Indian cricket captains Kapil Dev and Mansur Ali Khan Pataudi came out to criticise the designs to foil the games millions are eagerly looking forward to. In Pakistan, while the chief executive of the Pakistan Cricket Board, Majid Khan, wants the series to go ahead, former chairman of the selection committee Hasib Ahsan feels otherwise. Ahsan believes that the tour should be called off because security of the players is greatly threatened.
The tour, which starts with the Test match in New Delhi on January 28, seems to be on the right track despite the disturbances. Millions of cricket fans across the world will be dismayed if the tour is called off.
Animosity between Iran and the United States is definitely of a greater intensity than that existing between the South Asian neighbours, but strained diplomatic relations have not barred their footballers from playing each other in the last World Cup. While Tehran took sportingly face-off on the green with the 'Great Satan', Washington also reconciled to the idea of playing with the 'Great terrorists'. England and Argentina have featured in some of the closest matches in the annals of the World Cup. At the diplomatic level, dispute between the two over the Falklands lingers on. Same is the case with North and South Korea.
Ironically, India and Pakistan have so many things in common. The people speak almost similar languages. They have estranged families across the border. People in the two countries are bound with a poignant and pervasive sense of nostalgia. Yet at the diplomatic level the ambivalence continues. While the governments miss no opportunity to scoff at each other, there are also initiatives to encourage people-to-people contacts. Just when a handful of Shiv Sena activists were digging up the pitch at the Feroz Shah Kotla, a bus carrying officials flagged off from New Delhi to begin the first trans-border bus service to Lahore. The Delhi-Lahore service is scheduled to begin for the public later this month.
Even enmity is governed by certain norms and decencies. When India and Pakistan, in early eighties, were characteristically accusing each other of "hostile acts" in Kashmir, late Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi sent some of the best qualities of litchis to late Pakistan President General Ziaul Huq, who reciprocated by sending some of choicest "Anwar Ratol" mangoes from Multan. All these did not mean that two countries have buried the hatchets and have become friends overnight but only underlined the niceties that characterise civilised society and international behaviour. We are human being first and everything else is secondary.
I had the occasion to watch the India-Pakistan Test at the Feroz Shah Kotla way back in 1980 when Kapil Dev and Asif Iqbal were captaining their respective teams. The packed crowd applauded whenever a player was good with either the bat or the ball regardless of his team identity although it is commonly understood that cheers will be more for the host side. When Pakistan's lanky speedster Sikandar Bakth ripped through the Indian batting order, there was no dearth of appreciation among the audience.
When India won the coveted World Cup in 1983 in England, I vividly remember, it was past midnight in New Delhi and the entire capital was in a festive mood. Some delirious neighbours in the Pachscheel park area in South Delhi dragged me out from my house to join them in the festivities. I also thought that it was a great feat for a South Asian team although my own country Bangladesh was still then struggling to find some kind of identity in international cricket.
A Pakistan and a Sri Lankan journalist were also posted at that time in New Delhi and they said their neighbours overwhelmed them with sweets and flowers. Some of the Indian sports and cultural figures received warmest treatment in Pakistan and so were the Pakistanis in India. When Pakistan's famous music director Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan died young in London last year, many Indians wept openly and the avalanche of shock there was no less than that witnessed in Pakistan. Sports and culture transcend national boundaries and the SAARC spirit should prevail in these fields no matter what sentiments the fundamentalists in any of these countries attempt to whip up in different pretexts.
Shiv Sena says how two countries can play games when they are fighting in Kashmir. What a humane approach! As if the Indo-Pakistan problems cropped up the other day! It began from the day they were created and God knows whether at all these will be resolved at any time. But must they behave in such an irrational way? The same Shiv Sena sometime ago sought to discover presence of a "large number of Bangladeshis" in Mumbai. The party is ruling Maharastra in alliance with the BJP, which is the dominant force in the coalition government at the centre.
Shiv Sena is losing ground in its stronghold Maharatstra. It was explicit in the Loksabha elections in March, last year when the Congress greatly recovered its lost ground. It is for the Shiv Sena the cricket-loving people of Mumbai are deprived from any Indo-Pakistan match in their city. Indian political parties - the progressive leftists, the centrist and even the BJP, which is regarded as having communal bias in certain quarters - have come out against the Shiv Sena scheme against sports. Will the fundamentalists continue their fulmination or wisdom will prevail upon them?
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