Cricket as a foreign policy tool?

Pervaiz Iqbal Cheema

The Indian pull out of Asian Test Championship at the last moment is indeed disappointing not just for the players and cricket lovers but also for all the peace promoters. While almost all concerned are sad about such an undesired decision by the government of India, it is imperative to understand why such, ostensibly childish, moves are undertaken? This question haunts many in South Asia particularly if viewed within the context of normalization efforts.

'After all, sports is not the only thing the government has to think about. The country and its policies are of greater importance than sports. When we weighed national interest with sports interests we felt the scales tilted towards national interests. It was a very apt decision keeping in minds the current situation and relations between the two countries'. These are some of the recently reported utterances of the Indian Sports Minister. A careful examination of these utterances along with the Indian decision not to participate in the Asian Test Championship reveals four distinct aspects that need to be discussed.

First, it seems that the Indian government are almost regularly employing the friendly cricketing exchanges as a tool of its foreign policy. Cricket matches between the two countries have not taken place since the Indian government cancelled a proposed tour of Pakistani team last year and banned all bilateral cricket between India and Pakistan. To implement its ridiculous but well thought out and considered policy, the Indian government even went to the extent of disallowing Indian team's participation in a one-day triangular tournament at Sharjah. The last test played between Indian and Pakistan was nearly 12 years ago. The Pakistani cricket team last traveled to India was in 1999.

Pakistani reaction to Indian moves has indeed been much more rational. Although the initial Pakistani authorities' reaction to Indian refusal to honour its commitment of scheduled tour of Pakistan earlier this year was that they would severe all cricketing ties with India but later modified its stance and agreed to participate in the Asian Test Championship. Indeed this was the product of rational thinking and the respect accorded to the sanctity of the multilateral tournaments. The Pakistani cricketing authorities need to be congratulated for having taken a rational and appropriate approach towards the game. Boycotting or jeopardizing the tournaments for political reasons merely indicates the level of commitment accorded to the development of the game.

Second, the latest Indian decision like the previous decision relating to non-participation of its team in tournaments where its team may have to play against Pakistan has disappointed the game lovers both inside as well as outside the region. While the Indian government is consistently defending its decision, it has been subjected to biting criticism almost within the entire cricketing world. Describing the Indian pullout as a blow to all involved, the Bangladeshi cricketers expressed disappointment for having been denied an opportunity to play against India. Even the leading Indian cricketers are not very happy with such a decision. 'It is a sad day for Indian cricket. Playing Pakistan could have eased the increasing tension', stated an Indian selector.

The disappointment expressed in various quarters appears genuine. After all Indian team has some of the best players in the world and almost all cricket lovers would love to see players like Tendulkar batting. According to Asian Cricket Council's Secretary, the Indian withdrawal could cause considerable financial losses, as India is one of important team that often attracts crowd as well as electronic media. This action might also damage the Asian cricket. The deprivation of the cricket lovers is indeed enormous. Almost all multilateral tournaments that are arranged by different authorities at different venues are watched by the entire world via electronic media.

Third, such decisions often tend to generate pulses that strengthen negative images. The sporting exchanges are meant to erode the negative images and highlight the positivism. After all the sportsmanship teaches us how to be fair, tolerant and accept the defeat gracefully. It tends to popularize the commonalities and erode the incumbent level of hatred. In fact sporting exchanges can help in alleviating the situation. The existing negative images appeared to be gaining strength unnecessarily. Acts like refusing to participate in friendly tournaments lend more sustenance to the incumbent edifice of hate and distrust.

Four, there exist contradictions in Indian policies. On one hand the Indians disallowed their cricket team to play in the Asian Test Championship while allowing its Volley Ball team to travel to Pakistan on the other. Similarly it was not too long in the past that the Indian and Pakistani hockey teams played against each other. One fails to comprehend the logic of allowing hockey or Volley Ball matches but disallowing the friendly cricketing interaction.

The second type of contradiction that glares us in the face is that the Indian government is pushing the idea of introducing more CBMs (Confidence Building Measures) especially with regard to the ongoing Kashmir dispute but simultaneously refusing to introduce CBMs in relatively softer areas. There could be nothing more easy to implement than CBMs in cultural and sporting areas.

CBMs are not supposed to be the decisive factor in removing major irritants or resolving disputes between two states but they certainly are useful facilitators. One of the primary purposes of the CBMs is to introduce transparency and to arrest the dangerous drift towards the crisis. In essence CBMs tend to inject openness and reduce tensions as well as improve atmosphere conducive to some form of cooperative behaviour. Openness can introduce qualitative improvement in the prevailing climate of distrust and apprehensions. It can enhance better understanding of adversary's perceptions and can help establish working relationship between the hostile states.

As stated above that CBMs in areas like culture and sports could be extremely useful in arresting the fast drift towards unwanted situations. However one has to carefully ascertain whether or not the situation is deliberately contrived and pushed towards the undesired ends or it has acquired a momentum of its own and kept rolling. The inbuilt danger in the politically contrived situation is that after the passage of sometimes, it tends to acquire its own momentum.

It has been reported in the newspapers that decision to ban Indian cricket team's participation in the forthcoming Asian Test Championship was taken in a meeting, which was attended, by the Indian Prime Minister, the Foreign Minister and the Home Minister. Indeed these are the main policy formulators of the Indian cabinet. For obvious reasons it is somewhat safe to assume that the main players of Indian government are employing the cricket diplomacy in a negative sense whereas it is difficult to find a somewhat similar example in Pakistan. On the contrary former Pakistani President Zia ul Haq employed cricket diplomacy in a positive sense during the heydays of Brasstack military exercise in order to reduce tension. It seems rather strange that Vajpayee who enjoys a reputation of being a balanced and rational individual went along with hardliners even though history tells us that even an irrational person like Hitler did not deem fit in his somewhat known twisted wisdom to ban the Olympic games of 1936.

Since the inconclusive end of the Agra Summit, the Indian policies seems to be deliberately pushing the drift towards irreconcilability rather making concerted efforts to retrieve what ever little good has come out of Agra meeting. Is it because the BJP hardliners feel that the Summit did not go the way they visualized or is it because Gen.Musharraf seems to have emerged a clear winner in terms of media's portrait of the Agra meetingor is it because the international community openly credited Pakistan for showing more flexibility or is it because of alliance partners are not happy embarking on path likely to lead towards normalization? Whatever are the reasons lurking underneath the recent policies, the banning of Indian cricket team to participate in Asian Test Championship is likely to attract condemnation and vociferous criticism even from outside the region. While the offer of resignation is reflective of increasingly weakening position of Vajpayee, to dump the rational approach in order to secure short terms limited gains and to employ cricket as a foreign policy tool amounts not just to a total surrender to the hardliners but is also unlikely to retrieve the rapidly deteriorating situation.