MUMBAI - On any
other day, news of Rahul Gandhi, son of the assassinated
former Indian premier Rajiv Gandhi, formally entering
politics would have been shrieked out with banner
headlines. The Nehru dynasty scepter has been was
passed. Speculation was at an end.
But in these
strange times, another Rahul upstaged Indira Gandhi's
grandson contesting the forthcoming general elections:
India's cricket vice-captain Rahul Dravid had helped
even the one-day cricket series in Pakistan 2-2. And
this took precedence. In the sub-continent, presently,
cricket fever has graduated to a frenzy, and even Indian
Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee and his deputy L K
Advani surrendered to this truth.
In the north
Indian state of Haryana, savvy campaign managers of
Advani arranged for two giant television screens in
Chandigarh, during Advani's public meeting, to show
Wednesday's deciding match live from Lahore in Pakistan.
They doubted even the paid busloads of crowds would turn
up for the political meeting during the day-night match.
At Maharajganj, in the key electoral state of
Uttar Pradesh, Vajpayee spiced his campaign speeches
with praise of cricketer Mohammad Kaif, a local state
boy who had starred in an earlier match. "Don't just win
matches, win hearts," Vajpayee had advised the Indian
team before it left for Pakistan for the first time in
15 years. On Sunday night, he phoned the Indian captain,
Sourav Ganguly, and told him: "You have not only won the
match, you have won hearts."
Winning hearts is a
strange ambition in the negatively surcharged atmosphere
of any India versus Pakistan sporting encounter. The
cricket field has always been a quasi battleground, with
even army chiefs of staff of both countries getting
involved in post and pre-match barbs, much as they have
done on the real battlefield many times over the years
since the independence of the two countries in 1947.
For instance, at Centurion Park, South Africa,
during the World Cricket Cup last year, Pakistan's
crushing loss to India was greeted with a fury back home
that included television sets hurled out of windows and
calls for their star batsman, Inzamam-ul-Haq, to be
thrown out of the homecoming aeroplane. He was thrown
out of the team. In contrast, on Sunday night, the
portly Haq, back now as captain, actually smiled at the
prize distribution function after losing to India at
Lahore's packed Gaddafi Stadium.
Over a year
ago, Indian and Pakistan armies were glaring eyeball to
eyeball across the Wagah border in Punjab, as war clouds
loomed and a nervous world watched the nuclear
neighbors. In the past week, Wagah has seen a benign
invasion of thousands of cheering Indian fans crossing
over to Lahore, and being welcomed enthusiastically by
their Pakistani hosts.
For a generation like
this scribe's that generally only experiences negative
emotions when the word "Pakistan" hits the sense doors,
the sights and sound bytes from across the border have
been unprecedented. Pictures and reports of Pakistani
President General Pervez Musharraf shaking hands with
India's superstar cricketer Sachin Tendulkar, and
telling him he is a great fan of Tendulkar's, were front
paged in every leading Indian newspaper.
Similarly, stories of generous Pakistani
hospitality and warmth are being relayed back to India,
with some Pakistani restauranteurs even refusing to
accept money from visiting Indian patrons, saying: "You
are our guests." A picture of the Indian and Pakistani
flags stitched together with the slogan "Friends
Forever" and reports of Indian cricket fans searching
for their ancestral homes in Pakistan opened a
heart-tugging window to a time when the two countries
were one.
The remarkable shift in cross-border
chemistry has astounded many. An amazed Imran Khan, the
former Pakistan cricket captain and presently chairman
of the Tehreek-e-Insaaf political party, told Australian
ABC radio: "People from across the border have come in
and raised Indian flags in Pakistan, and we saw the
other night Pakistan losing ... Indian supporters
holding Indian flags, and Pakistanis standing next to
them and cheering. It's something which I never thought
I would see in my lifetime, but it has happened." The
cricket willow seems to have become, at least for now, a
magic wand making a contentious border and decades of
deep-rooted animosity vanish.
It's an animosity
fed and inflamed by the bloody partition in 1947, the
Kashmir issue, three wars and a bitterness and mistrust
kept alive by successive military dictatorships on one
side and vote-mongering politicians on the other.
Cricket, worshipped more as a religion than a game in
both countries, was the bargaining pressure chip.
Bilateral cricket ties last ruptured during the Kargil
war in 1999. The current cricket series is part of what
Vajpayee calls his final attempt at peace with Pakistan.
This final attempt appears promising, with
release of even election manifestos and Bollywood films
being delayed in deference to the cricket. Chartered
flights have carted Indian political leaders, CEOs,
movie stars and other dignitaries to Pakistan, where
they received treatment reserved for royalty. "If they
can come here to watch a cricket match, then they can
surely be here for business as well," is a common
sentiment. The same idea struck Indian entrepreneurs big
and small. Ritu Beri, one of India's leading fashion
designers, has announced plans to set up shop in
Pakistan.
But amid all the newfound bonhomie
lurk cold realities. Neither country has budged an inch
from its position on Kashmir, though Musharraf admitted
to a guffawing Indian audience, in a satellite
transmission to a conference in New Delhi this month,
that he was tired of talking only about Kashmir. But
many cannot take Musharraf's new dove image at face
value, given his track record as a soldier and architect
of the brief Kargil war in 1999. Besides, demons like
al-Qaeda that he nurtured and nourished are coming home
to roost, and he needs some respite. For his part,
Vajpayee is in an election year and the current peace
climate could translate into more votes.
So
cynics like J N Dixit, former Indian ambassador to
Pakistan and presently vice chairman of the opposition
Congress party's foreign affairs cell, have dismissed
any tangible benefits coming from cricket diplomacy. But
there is no doubt that something fundamental has changed
in the way people of both nations look at each other.
An hour from now, at the time of this writing,
the final match of the one-day series starts in Lahore.
Mumbai is quiet, relaxed and excitedly looking forward
to a good game of cricket, rather than the tense,
electric atmosphere that has greeted such India-Pakistan
encounters in the past, particularly in communally
sensitive areas like Mohammad Ali Road.
On March
12, young Rahul Gandhi and his sister Priyanka were
warmly cheered as they worked the Pakistani crowds in
Karachi's National Stadium before a game there. As when
the Pakistani baby Noor came to India for heart surgery
in Bangalore last year, the crowd's warmth showed that
the undercurrent common bond forged over thousands of
years had scored over five decades of conflict.
Maybe the young Gandhis could see a new era of
peace in the sub-continent, as when their great
grandfather and India's first prime minister, Jawaharlal
Nehru, hoped in his famous "Freedom at Midnight" speech
56 years ago: "A moment comes, which comes but rarely in
history, when we step out from the old to the new, when
an age ends, and when the soul of a nation, long
suppressed, finds utterance."
The next few
months will reveal how accurately a mere game has voiced
the suppressed dreams of two warring brother nations.
And yes, for the first time in my life as I
clear decks to watch a big India versus Pakistan cricket
match, I am not too concerned about who wins.
Raja M is an independent writer based
in Mumbai, India.
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