Sporting summit

The Indian victory over Australia and a semi-final encounter with Pakistan has suddenly made sleepy Mohali the centre of attention. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s invite to his counterpart added to the frenzy. That it surprised the Pakistanis is obvious as the invitation reached their Prime Minister, Mr Yousaf Raza Gilani, in Samarkand, Uzbekistan, a city where lies interred the marauder Timur.

The inauspicious symbolism aside, the move stoked debate on its advisability. Perhaps the Prime Minister played the ball off his own bat, leaving the Cabinet Committee on Security adrift and assuming that the other three would concur as they face elections in their respective states — Kerala, Tamil Nadu and West Bengal. The Muslim vote is crucial in at least two.
Frequent summitry is a post-Second World War phenomena; impromptu summitry an Indian innovation. The perils of unprepared contact at the highest level are obvious. Dean Acheson, US President Harry S. Truman’s secretary of state, cautioned that “when a chief of state or head of government makes a fumble, the goal is open behind him”.
America’s John F. Kennedy hit off badly with Russia’s Nikita Khrushchev in Geneva, as did an encounter between President Charles de Gaulle of France and British Prime Minister Anthony Eden. In cricketing terms, when Dr Singh was caught outside his crease at Sharm el-Sheikh, allowing in the joint statement references to Balochistan and dialogue de-linkage from Pakistani action on terror, his current national security adviser, Shiv Shankar Menon, the then foreign secretary, threw his own wicket with a drafting mea culpa.
The government’s supporters can find solace in statesman Lloyd George’s view that “if you want to settle a thing, go see your opponent and talk it over with him”. Arguably personal chemistry can push talks stalled at the diplomatic/official level by top down injunctions, with the caveat that the two leaders have popular support and the ability to shape public opinion. Prime Ministers Gilani and Singh are loyalists keeping the seat warm for heirs under training or at university. Pakistani Prime Ministers also play the Shimla gambit, effectively used by Z.A. Bhutto against Indira Gandhi in 1972, that it is India that must make concessions as otherwise the Pakistani Army, now additionally the militant right, will devour them. Appeasement is sought as the framework for bilateral engagement rather than a give and take. Which is fine, as Douglas Hurd explains, “if it is applied to trustworthy people with moderate intentions”. Austen Chamberlain, whose less intellectually endowed brother Neville as Prime Minister appeased Hitler, contrariwise professed that pride, self-interest and national prestige were more powerful than reason in governing human affairs.
J.N. Dixit, the United Progressive Alliance’s first and finest NSA, in his magnum opus India-Pakistan in War & Peace, recounts Rajiv Gandhi’s July 1989 bilateral visit to Pakistan, a first by an Indian Prime Minister in 30 years, which aroused hope that the scions of two star-crossed dynasties could grasp peace. When Benazir sought unreasonable and one-sided Indian concessions on Kashmir, Rajiv spurned her. Though she lingered beyond Rajiv’s electoral loss in 1989 the bilateral relations regressed, the Pakistani Army turning the mujahideen, victorious after the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan, towards the Kashmir Valley.
Another superpower is now planning its exit from Afghanistan. The second coming of the mujahids is anticipated, though they now seek Pakistan’s soul. The supine Pakistani ruling elite, fearful of mourning their assassinated Punjab governor and Federal minorities minister, and, if true, an Army Chief cowering before sympathisers of the assassins in his Army, hardly qualify as interlocutors for a serious engagement.
The Prime Minister’s cricket diplomacy runs two risks. One, that Pakistan often misreads such signals as Indian weakness. President Zia-ul-Haq’s visit in February 1987, for the Jaipur cricket match, may have tempered the war hysteria over the 1986 Brasstacks military exercise, but A.Q. Khan’s simultaneous interview that Pakistan possessed nuclear devices implied that Indian conventional military advantage stood negated.
Although Zia died in 1988, aid and abatement to terror was expanded from Punjab to Kashmir.
The second is the cricketing dimension as this match is a clincher. Will public ire over the loss in either country spill over to those causing an unnecessary distraction to players and spectators. Much as we may decry cricket jingoism, it is a reality. Cricket can enhance unfolding thaws or exacerbate lurking tension, which has not dissipated due to Pakistan’s reluctance to act against the perpetrators of the 26/11 Mumbai carnage, the very city where the final will be played. The home secretaries are scurrying to provide a timely face-saver. Constantine I, Emperor of Rome in the 4th century AD, when banning gladiatorial combat, said, “In times in which peace and peace relating to domestic affairs prevails bloody demonstrations displease us”. Dr Singh may have unwittingly flared the very raw passions that he has been attempting to douse with his incessant search for peace. Only by night-fall on March 30 shall it be known that while one winner will leave the pitch, whether two can leave the stadium.

K.C. Singh is a former secretary in the external affairs ministry