The Indo-Pak cricket wars... are non-existent

If I have a dispute with you, I can solve it in one of three ways.

One is by talking (‘negotiation’). We engage, on the assumption that both sides are rational, and even if both are looking out for their own self-interest, a compromise is possible.

The second way is having a third party mediate between us (‘arbitration’). We find someone that both trust and then accept their solution. The third way is through force (‘war’) and one of us compels the other to accept the imposed solution.

There is no fourth way.

India does not want to tour Pakistan to play in a tournament next year. A report said that ‘the Pakistan Cricket Board has received an email from the ICC, stating that the BCCI has informed them that their team will not travel to Pakistan for the ICC Champions Trophy 2025’.

This is consistent with the position that we have had for several years. In fact, if one is getting it right, even under the previous government, India had stopped touring Pakistan or inviting it over to play. The reasoning, sometimes stated and sometimes not, was that until cross-border terror stops, we will not ‘talk' to Pakistan diplomatically and, by extension, will not engage with it culturally.

I have little interest in cricket these days, don’t know who our captain is and cannot identify half the test team. I do not particularly care if our team goes and plays or sits it out and loses points.

The reason I am writing this is to rationally examine the government’s position that we will not engage with the enemy.

As my Twitter friend Dr Ajay Kamath pointed out, this position did not apply to India’s tennis players going to Islamabad earlier this year to play (and win) against Pakistan in the Davis Cup.

It also did not apply to our foreign minister going to Islamabad last month to participate in the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation. Jaishankar’s opening words, according to our ministry of external affair’s website, were: ‘At the outset, let me congratulate Pakistan for its presidency of the SCO Council of Heads of Government this year. India has extended its full support for a successful presidency.’

The Davis Cup and the SCO are multilateral events (with more than two nations involved). So is the ICC Champions Trophy. Why will we not go over to play cricket when we are willing to go over and play tennis? If we are extending ‘full support’ to Pakistan in one realm, one as serious as the SCO, why are we not doing so in another, more frivolous, one?

The answer is not to be found in the realm of logic or reason.

The fact is that India’s government has elevated cricket — which, when examined without emotion, is about adult men hitting a ball with a stick and then chasing after it — into something it is not.

Cricket is not the repository of national honour, and playing (or not playing) and winning (or losing) on its fields does not affect the rest of our worlds.

Not playing cricket with the enemy definitely does not address our problems, which can only be solved by one of the three ways explained above. There is no fourth way, and doing katti with the rival, as children do in our schools, is not an effective or meaningful response. It is not a mature one either and, as many of you already know, it is aimed at Indians (‘we took a tough stand by not playing’) rather than at the other side.

Boycotting the Champions Trophy will not tackle the issue we have with Pakistan.

India’s relations with Pakistan have reached a strange impasse over the years where we are unwilling to use the first two options — talking and arbitration — and cannot use the third option since both sides weaponised their nuclear programmes a quarter century ago.

Has the nature of the problem changed during this time? Let’s look at the data.

In 2001, the most violent year in Kashmir’s history, total fatalities were over 4,000, including over 600 personnel in the security forces and over 2,000 militants. After that year, violence fell each year, going under 3,000 fatalities in 2002, then 2,000 in 2003, then under 1,000 in 2007. For the last four years before the Modi government took office, fatalities were under 200 each year. They have risen since, particularly after the events of 2019 and the gutting of Article 370; but not to the levels of two decades ago. The Line of Control has been fenced, and it has become difficult for locals to exfiltrate and receive training, according to security officials that I have spoken to in the past. Those who fight and die are usually locals.

Outside of Kashmir, violence linked to Pakistan is absent. Is there still a problem? Perhaps there is. Our government is definitely saying it is.

If so, this requires us to use one of the three tools available to us to resolve it. This is especially so if — as this government is signalling to us — the issue is serious. Then it is incumbent on the government to deal with it in a serious fashion.

This it is not doing, though it is pretending to — as the Champions Trophy matter shows. 

Views are personal. More of Aakar Patel’s column may be read here.