Despite the naysayers who wanted the Indo-Pak cricket series to be postponed or cancelled because of fears of terrorism or unsporting rowdiness in the stands, so far so good. The only injury has been to the Indian captain Sourav Ganguly who tumbled after a ball and sprained his back. Indeed the only hammering that anyone has got so far has been metaphorical, with the Indian batsmen slamming the Pakistani bowlers all over the place and setting new records.
To be sure, there is the usual crop of conspiracy theories about match-fixing and team selection without which no Indo-Pak series can ever be complete. The most bizarre theory has been peddled by a reactionary anti-Musharraf Urdu columnist. Apparently he had predicted that India would win both the One Day Internationals and Test matches because the Pakistani establishment had ordered the Pakistani players to lose to India so that the “sell-out” on Kashmir and “roll-back” on jihad could be cemented!
The reactions of lay Indian visitors to Karachi and Lahore during the series have been no less intriguing. All have gone back gushing about Pakistani hospitality, warmth and friendship. This is a far cry from the hostile Hindu-hating fundamentalist Muslims they had been warned to expect by their Muslim-baiting Hindu fundamentalist compatriots back home. This is what happens when people meet, stereotypes snap and prejudices perish. The balance of misinformation has been partially redressed.
Pakistanis know a bit about India’s Anglicised middle class composite culture from Bollywood. But if the video revolution wasn’t sufficient to give us a glimpse of India, the satellite channels have transported India to millions of Pakistani homes. But there has been no comparable traffic the other way because Lollywood is down market and Pakistani satellite channels have only now reached across India. So Indians were fed by their ideologues with all sorts of propaganda about Pakistan – about bombs and jihadis and Pakistani women shrouded in purdah. When one TV camera focused on a group of trendily clad Pakistani women clamouring for a “sixer” from Inzamam, the Indian commentator was thrilled by such “normal” behaviour. Cricket has served to uproot some of the big lies about Pakistan.
West Punjab in general and Lahore in particular are poised to be the greatest beneficiaries of this peace process. At the time of partition, the Sikhs who migrated from West to East Punjab were predominantly landowning zamindars. So, as the famed Indian author Khushwant Singh has described in his autobiography, they will seek opportunities to return to their homeland in search of their ancient roots rather than their lost properties. In the event, Lahore could become a bit of a boomtown. It was the capital of the first and last Sikh state of Ranjit Singh in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, and as such a Sikh “holy land” of sorts. Open the borders and the Sikhs from East Punjab will flood the city. But that would be for starters. Much of the urban property of the city was owned by Hindu shopkeepers and businessmen who migrated to New Delhi at the time of partition. Surely, they will all want to return to the sights and sounds of their city and drink its water and smell its soil. The cry of “Lahore Lahore ay” will echo everywhere and the city may yet regain its composite secular culture of yore.
The credit for all this goes to General Pervez Musharraf and Mr Atal Behari Vajpayee. A handful of die-hard reactionaries have accused General Musharraf of misplaced concreteness vis-à-vis India. No matter. A vast majority support him for focusing on peace rather than war with the neighbours. But Mr Vajpayee has taken a greater risk on the eve of the Indian elections, especially since he seems to have stood the BJP’s anti-Pakistan, anti-Muslim ideology on its head. Indeed, the real test of the peace process will come in the months ahead when both sides are obliged to demonstrate progress towards finding a mutually acceptable “solution” to the core issue of Kashmir.
But it would be a mistake to hinge peace on any acceptable quick fix “solution” to Kashmir. India and the rest of the world will concede nothing more than the status quo. Third party mediation, especially by the United States, will reinforce the status quo after allowing for marginal adjustments between the Muslim Kashmiris and New Delhi. Indeed, the US may exercise its greater leverage with Pakistan towards exactly such an end in the region, and insist on making the peace process an end in itself rather than the means to an end. So what’s wrong with this approach?
Absolutely nothing. In fact, it’s time we concentrated on bread and butter issues rather than on guns and steel. The single most suffocating drag on the Pakistani economy is the “rumour-of-war” syndrome in a nuclearised neighbourhood. India is already growing at 9 per cent a year. But if we languish at 5 per cent we shall be overwhelmed by poverty and unemployment and alienation and civil unrest, all of which have the potential to overwhelm us more comprehensively than the military might of India.