Indo-Pakistan cricket diplomacy and conflict-defusion in Kashmir

BY LYNN Ockersz

'Indian-born Pakistan leader and Pakistan-born Indian leader will pick up the threads from where they left off in New York'. Thus was described Sunday's meeting between Indian Premier Manmohan Singh and Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf in New Delhi, in a Reuters news agency report.

This curious fact pertaining to the origins of the political leadership of India and Pakistan, illustrates afresh the geographical oneness of the Indian subcontinent which today stands divided on the basis of the deeply wrenching nation state ideology.

If the principal religious communities of India were not conceived as separate nations, the Partitioning of India would perhaps have not been precipitated and the subcontinent would have remained - largely - an integral whole.

But this was not to be, because the Muslim minority in India, at the time of granting of Indian political independence, was perceived to be disempowered. This, essentially, led to the campaign for a separate Muslim state, with religion being seen as the basis of separate nationhood.

While the continued adherence to the Two Nation Theory on the part of some sections on the subcontinent has rendered resolving the Kashmir tangle increasingly difficult, the popular approval of what could be described as 'bus diplomacy' and also to some extent of 'cricket diplomacy', between New Delhi and Islamabad, points to the yearning among the Indian and Pakistani publics for increasing interaction and people-to-people contact.

It need hardly be said that family reunions and the possibility of the re-establishment of kinship and friendship ties among the severed publics over the territorial division of the Indian and Pakistani states, play a catalytic role in such people-to-people interaction.

While there is, of course, no question of turning back the hands of time and of altering the already established political divisions on the subcontinent, increasing people-to-people contact across the Indo-Pakistan border could play a crucial role in defrosting Indo-Pakistani relations and in fostering a climate which is conducive to speeding-up Indo-Pakistani negotiations on Kashmir.

Addressing a banquet he hosted in honour of the visiting Pakistani President, Premier Manmohan Singh was quoted saying that: "Our people and our common destiny urge us to make an earnest attempt to find a lasting solution to all issues. In a globalising and increasingly integrated world, borders have lost meaning for much of the world."

Sentiments as elevating and inspiring as these, could go a long way in cementing Indo-Pakistani ties and in softening hearts and minds but the defacto political division in Kashmir, is likely to prove obdurate even in the face of the more salubrious currents unleashed by globalisation.

This is mainly because extraneous factors, such as the political and military turbulence in Iraq, are likely to conspire into keeping the flames of disaffection alive in Kashmir.

In degree to the proportion to which the US-led military incursion into Iraq is seen as Western military aggression against a 'Muslim nation', the political and military forces resisting a change of the status quo in Kashmir, would be considerably strong.

This is principally because a commonality of interests exists between the anti-US resistance in Iraq and the anti-India forces in Kashmir.

In the perception of these resistance forces, the US is closely associated with the current Indian and Pakistani administrations. Such a situation is fertile ground for the flourishing of a 'siege mentality' among these resistance groups, which in turn strengthens divisive concepts, such as the Two-Nation Theory.