India-Pak Cricket: Sport Can Facilitate Diplomacy, Not Replace It

Shashi Tharoor writes, “If there’s a thaw in India-Pak ties post elections, cricket matches will instantly follow.”

Illustration used for representational purposes.

(Photo: Kamran Akhter/The Quint)

One of the ancillary casualties of the recent tensions between India and Pakistan after the terrorist attack in Pulwama on 14 February has been the prospect of any resumption of cricketing relations between them.

The intemperate calls by a number of Indian television anchors for India to boycott Pakistan in the World Cup – (and the abuse and vilification thrown at those, like me and Sachin Tendulkar, who argued that surrendering two points to a rival you could beat, was a ridiculous way of expressing your rage) – was the first salvo.

Then, when tempers cooled and calmer heads prevailed, talk shifted to “isolating” Pakistan, by asking the International Cricket Council (ICC) to exclude nations that shelter terrorists from playing the World Cup.

That idea went predictably nowhere with the ICC, though the new administrators of Indian cricket seem to be persisting in their efforts. Where will all this lead?

Cricket Can Be An Instrument for Diplomacy, Not an Alternative To It

Cricket has become too soft a target for those enraged with Pakistan, just as it once was the easy option for those trying to woo it. The question of whether – amidst all the strife that besets the two countries’ cricketing relations – a mere sport can drive them apart or bring them together – is at one level easy to answer: no.

Sport can sublimate many emotions, but it cannot be a substitute for geopolitics. Cricket can be an instrument for diplomacy, not an alternative to it.

The template for all we have seen recently was laid after the horrors of 26/11, the Pakistani terrorist attack on Mumbai. The first cricketing casualty (aside from the Champions’ League scheduled to be played in Mumbai itself the week after the attacks) was the scheduled Indian tour of Pakistan in January 2009.

As India’s then Sports Minister, MS Gill, remarked in calling off the government’s permission for the tour, “you can’t have one team coming from Pakistan to kill people in our country and another team going from India to play cricket there.” Since then, the two countries have not played each other (except in World Cups and in a single charity game in England); Pakistani players have not participated in subsequent editions of the IPL.

Politics has clearly again trumped cricket.

Cricket Will Follow Diplomacy, Not Precede It

So where does this leave the prospects for cricket promoting peace between these sibling nations, entwined together by history with bonds of paradox?

These are two countries whose soldiers have frequently shot at each other, where border tensions have erupted into war, and where the result of a cricket match can prompt a soldier to unleash a volley of celebratory or intimidatory fire on the Line of Control.

Above all, this is a region where the fomenting of terrorism in India by Pakistan, and (in Pakistani eyes) the “oppression” of Muslims by India, creates in each side, a moral obligation to teach the perpetrators a lesson on the cricket field.

No other cricketing rivalry in the world has to contend with such a perverse mixture of elements sharpening the keen edge of competition between them.

For many years now the talk has been of war, militancy, terrorism, and even of a nuclear threat. Some predict a likely thaw after the Indian elections, when a new government in New Delhi will want to turn the page on the recent past and explore the possibilities suggested by Pakistan’s cricket-turned-statesman, Prime Minister Imran Khan.

If and when such a thaw occurs, cricket matches will instantly follow.

But there’s the rub: cricket will follow diplomacy, not precede it. Even the warmth of 2003-4 was not a cause of better relations between the countries, but a reflection of it. And when things are unpleasant between the governments, matches that take place at times of tension, as with the World Cup encounter during Kargil, mirror the antagonism; they do not cause it.

Hopes for India-Pakistan Tension to Ebb

Yet, the tendency to see these matches as warfare by proxy is also unfortunate. Cricket is a sport; a cricket team represents a country, it does not symbolise it. To ask cricket to bear a larger burden than any other national endeavour is palpably unfair.

There is too much at stake for both the Governments of India and Pakistan in their political relations, for any serious breakthrough to be prompted by the interests of cricket. But when leaders wish to make a breakthrough, sending a cricket team can be a highly effective way of doing so.

Cricket has been, and can be, an instrument of policy-makers determined to send a broader message to the general public. But if political interests can drive cricket tours, the interests of cricket will never determine national policy.

Just as there is no certitude that periods of peace will ever last, so too it is to be hoped that the period of tension we have experienced for over a decade now will also ebb. Currently, a cold peace prevails between India and Pakistan, one which could tip over into a hot war or turn to a cooler modus vivendi.

If normalcy comes, cricket might gradually achieve a more reasonable place in the national discourse between the two countries.

Let’s Stop These Doomed Efforts to Isolate Pakistan in Cricket

Many liberals on both sides of the border hope that one day India and Pakistan will enjoy relations comparable to those between the United States and Canada – with open borders, shared culture and entertainment, free trade, even frequent migration.

Healthy sporting competition would then be part of a healthy overall relationship; cricket matches between the two countries, followed with good-natured partisanship rather than religiously-inspired passion, could be the centerpiece of such a new era.

I do not expect to see that kind of transformation in the foreseeable future. But it is something to hope for, and to look forward to. In the meantime, let us stop these doomed efforts to isolate Pakistan in cricket, as we have failed to in diplomacy. We should play (and preferably thrash) Pakistan in the World Cup, hoping and praying that nothing else occurs between the two countries in the interim to cast yet another shadow over the playing field.

(Former UN under-secretary-general, Shashi Tharoor is a Congress MP and an author. He can be reached @ShashiTharoor. This is an opinion piece and the views expressed above are the author’s own. The Quint neither endorses nor is responsible for the same.)