Form of words:
“With an apology from India, Pakistan fans deserved it and needed it even more. Crowds marching towards the national capital, indicating a civil-military rift, a ‘petrol bomb’ was dropped recently, electricity rates have gone through the roof, a gas crisis is on the horizon, financial action The Task Force (FATF) did not let us go, and there is a problem in neighboring Afghanistan. Amidst all this, a victory over India can make the whole country forget the troubles of their routine life…”
MThere has been a lot of soul-searching in the last 36 hours since India lost to Pakistan in their first match at the T20 World Cup in Dubai, but this paragraph from Kumail Zaidi ‘5 parts of Pakistan’s historical humility of India’ in Pakistan dawn The morning after Pakistan’s victory, the newspaper raises its finger on how more than 200 million people on India’s western border are feeling.
In Bangladesh, on India’s eastern periphery, meanwhile, a famous exhibition in New Delhi and Kolkata was canceled at the last minute by the Narendra Modi government. Bangladeshi artist Rokaiya Sultana, New Delhi’s inability to detach the party from the government and withstand extreme right-wing pressure has again come into the limelight.
So let me try to draw my five conclusions on ‘Why did it have to come to this?’, ‘Why does the India-Pakistan game inevitably turn into a war?’, and ‘Why does India not step up? ? Tak thali with your best friend in the neighbourhood, Bangladesh?’
why did it come
First, India-Pakistan relations have always been subject to all kinds of pressures and pressures. Sports, music, films – all these communities have given way when the then government imposed its fatwa. After the attack on Parliament in 2001, the Atal Bihari Vajpayee government withdrew its High Commissioner to Pakistan and halted flights between Lahore and Delhi. During the Manmohan Singh era, concerts by Pakistani artists were cancelled.
But relations have shrunk the most during the last seven years of the Narendra Modi government due to New Delhi’s tough talk-till-till-terrorism-end stance. Hence the link between the surgical strikes across the Line of Control and the Balakot air strike has gone into deep storage. There is no High Commissioner for two years. India has prevented the SAARC summit from taking place since 2014.
Cricket – and much more – has been a casualty, as the teams have not played in each other’s countries, but only at international venues. This means that the Indian team, though brilliant, doesn’t really know the strengths and weaknesses of the Pakistani side – and the hunger to win and garner global acclaim.
Read also: Babar, Rizwan, Afridi crush Team Kohli as Pakistan ends World Cup losing streak against India
form of war
Second, when nations stop talking to each other, they lose important sources of information. Your favorite strategist, Machiavelli or Chanakya has pointed to the need to “know your enemy” or “keep your enemy close”. So Vajpayee went to Pakistan in 1999 and, two years later, invited Pervez Musharraf, the author of that struggle, for talks in Agra.
It ended in a fiasco, but Vajpayee never gave up trying; In 2002, he reached out to Kashmiris in an effort to fix the Delhi-Islamabad-Srinagar triangle. While the Modi government has taken a different route, by abrogating Article 370 and integrating Jammu and Kashmir into the Indian Union, it has also attempted to shut down critical reporting; As a result, the distance between New Delhi and the people of Jammu and Kashmir has increased.
Bangladesh’s rift
Third, the time has come for New Delhi to take a tough stand on its refusal to allow party politics to decide foreign policy, especially in the neighbourhood. In the case of Bangladesh, no reason was given for the cancellation of Rokeya’s exhibition (authorities say it has only been “postponed”), which was supposed to showcase four decades of her life’s work; It was also part of the 50th anniversary celebrations of Bangladesh’s independence, in which India played no small role.
Official sources say they were concerned that Hothead would disrupt Rokeya’s exhibition as a reaction to communal incidents in Kamila and elsewhere in Bangladesh, where Hindus were killed and their properties set on fire during the recent Durga Puja celebrations. was put up. Officer Cited Protests against the VHP, Hindu Jagran Manch and other right-wing organizations in Tripura and the BJP in Bengal said they did not want to take any risk. Bangladesh Film Festival to be held in Agartala has also been cancelled.
But the fact is that India-Bangladesh relations are still recovering from the Home Minister Amit Shah’s diplomatic description Number of Bangladeshi refugees in India as termites (“dimaki”). At that time a shadow was cast on India’s external prestige in Bangladesh. The latter drew hard work from many parties in India to bridge that diplomatic rift.
Last week, outside Bangladesh’s consulate in Agartala, as Kamila’s incidents went viral, right-wing organizations put up placards that read, “Hindus take up arms”, “Durga Maa’s hair is torn / Bangladesh blood”. will turn red”, “Weapons of Kurukshetra will roar once again”. The placards were soon removed, but not before Bangladeshis wondered what would happen next.
Read also: Students clash after Punjab college says ‘Kashmiris cheered for Pakistan in T20WC match’
healing division
Fourth, as soon as India 75. enters intoth The year of independence – and the partition of the subcontinent into India and Pakistan and, later, Bangladesh – may have been the time to heal the partitions, not escalate them. If the Modi government can become the card-carrying member of two quad alliances, one in the Indo-Pacific and the other in the Middle East, then it can surely work towards strengthening ties on both sides of its periphery?
a cricket cup
Fifth, can cricket be used as a tool to bring the region closer together? Five of the eight countries in South Asia – India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Afghanistan – are eminent cricketing nations in their own right, all participating in the ongoing T20 World Cup.
Perhaps Prime Minister Narendra Modi can make a variation of his 2014 invitation by hosting a South Asia Cricket Cup in 2022 to the leaders of all South Asia during his first inauguration, where the first match is played at the Narendra Modi Stadium in Ahmedabad? Mashrafe Mortaza, former cricket captain of Bangladesh, Kamila, who spoke passionately against communalism, could be a goodwill ambassador.
We know by now – and if we didn’t, then kushinagar incident To inaugurate an airport last week, to offer prayers at Gautam Buddha’s samadhi and to connect the backwaters of eastern Uttar Pradesh with Buddhist countries in India’s neighborhood – that PM Modi’s vision of building links between different constituencies Ability is inheritance. He is able to marshal strangely different feelings and bring them together.
Can the Prime Minister understand this difficult neighborhood even through the one tool that naturally weaves it together – cricket?
Jyoti Malhotra is the Senior Consulting Editor of ThePrint. She tweets @jomalhotra. Thoughts are personal.
(Edited by Neera Mazumdar)
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