Search the Internet           Tips

Ceasefire, cricket and Kashmir

I pretty well know what I would do. First I would try and sort out this trouble-maker through legal intervention, but knowing the kind of time and effort, not to mention outcome, such a course would claim, I would at the same time explore other avenues to eliminate this spot of trouble by other means.

Creating a favourable public opinion could be an option, but since fights are best won when fought on equal turf, and also since the violators of civil norms seldom follow principles, this is not a course of action I would waste my energies on.

Luckily, since I live in Mumbai, a city that has a parallel mechanism to dispense quick and effective justice, if my troubles continue I would try and sort out my woes on my own through such a system.

Why would I do that? 'Cos I love what is mine, and will defend it to the best of my ability. As, I believe, will anyone who is pushed into a corner.

As individuals, all of us have a vision about how we will react in such pressure situations; and also a vision of how we would like our nation to react when confronted by a similar situation.

What I would like India to do, when its being is threatened, internally or at the borders, is to use the instruments of state at its disposal to neutralise the challenge. By all means take the soft way, but by no means suspend its right and resolve to combat the evil in the manner it sees fit.

If an assailant is worrying me, the last thing I would do is to cease taking any action against him during, say, Lent in order to show my respect for his religious sentiments. Nor, I am sure, will you. And surely, when religious extremists are bleeding my country to death, I would not want my country to display a grandiose gesture that is worthy of none else than the Mahatma, may his soul rest in peace.

I would not allow my son to have sporting encounters with the blackguard who is destroying my family's peace and then justify it by saying that sports shouldn't interfere with other aspects of life -- and I am sure you will not act differently either.

And that is also the precise way I would expect my country to behave in a similar situation -- again, as I am sure do you.

Since what we want for ourselves, and what we all want for our country, are the same, frankly I am puzzled as to how the government of the day has had the gumption to assume the public's mandate for behaving differently from what they want.

When the terrorists are running amok in Kashmir, when they have displayed no compassion whatsoever, when they massacre pilgrims, when they have rejected the notion of India, I am quite clear in my mind how I want my India to react to the challenge.

Not by offering a unilateral ceasefire to mark the 'holy month of Ramzan' (for heaven's sake!). The men who are waging war against India are beyond humanity, religion, and are a bunch of nihilists; to associate the country's second largest faith with them is giving a bad name to those Muslims of India who have nothing to do with the war being waged in their name and for who, I am sure, associating the ceasefire with their holy month would be nothing short of anathema.

When agents provocateur are playing ducks and drakes with India's future, then any Indian would expect his country -- ie, those who take decisions affecting his country's destiny -- to behave in the exact manner that an Indian would react if it was his house that was being plundered.

A ceasefire, in my sense, would make sense if the Indian security forces had been able to break the back of militancy and the terrorists were on the run. For peace can be won only from a position of strength, as K P S Gill will testify readily. Right now what the ceasefire will amount to is giving time for the terrorists to recoup and launch a more energetic assault against India at the end of the one-month break in hostilities that we have conceded them out of our love for their wellbeing. If Salahuddin and his cronies laugh all the way to jannat, I am sure they will pass on some benediction down to the mortals responsible for such a bold decision. Perhaps wish the Nobel Peace Prize on them...

Cricket in the time of war?! That surely should provide our film-makers with ample scope for ideas; after all, the border areas of the country have never received so much attention from the entertainment industry as it is doing now, so maybe the time is ripe for another potboiler, this one dealing with the trauma of a cricket star separated from his fan across the border thanks to the subcontinent's politics. Throw in a couple of fight sequences, at least one 'item' number, and a climax set in the Gaddafi stadium...

If you think that that paragraph trivialised what is going on in Kashmir today, what do you make of the chorus gaining ground that the aborted India-Pak series should go on? On one hand India is making out a case with the United States and other arbiters in such cases for declaring Pakistan a terrorist country, for what it is doing to us in Kashmir and elsewhere. On the other, a section of the establishment actually believes there is a lot to be gained from playing cricket and other sports with our malevolent neighbour. If Russia and America, who did not have the kind of overtly violent history that plagues this region, stayed off sporting encounters at the height of the Cold War, should India even waste its time deliberating on such non-issues?

Actually, a lot of what I have to say on the topic has been said before. Consistency, it is said, is the virtue of fools, but where it comes to Pakistan and Kashmir I would prefer being a fool than being sorry.

Saisuresh Sivaswamy