Don’t make cricket a victim of terror — India should tour Pakistan
Posted by Dileep Premachandran Thursday 4 December
Every disaster needs a scapegoat or two. Shivraj Patil, India’s recently resigned home minister, was the first, and it now appears as though the tour of Pakistan, scheduled for early in the new year, will be the next lamb to the slaughter. It’s a defenceless lamb too. After all, cancelling a tour costs the government nothing. So what if it achieves nothing either? It temporarily slakes the bloodlust of those that want an eye for an eye, and is a handy distraction when faced with probing questions about the abject intelligence failure that led to the siege of south Mumbai.
Sooner or later it will be established that the terrorists and the plan they implemented came from Pakistan. That does not mean, however, that the Pakistani government was involved. Given the shambolic state of the Asif Ali Zardari administration, accusing them of complicity is almost akin to holding a cuckolded husband accountable for his wife’s antics with half the neighbourhood.
Over the past 18 months, Pakistan has witnessed the siege of the Lal Masjid, the assassination of a prominent political leader and innumerable bomb blasts. India’s external enemy is their enemy within, a legacy of the death-and-destruction factories set up by the United States and the Pakistan army three decades ago. As the maulvi in Khuda Kay Liye (In the Name of God, a wonderful Pakistani movie about the conflict between fundamentalism and modernity) says: “You called us mujahideen then. Now you call us terrorists.”
Does the cancellation of a cricket tour make the jihadis go away, or does it merely strengthen the hawks on both sides? What does the average Pakistani have to do with Lashkar-e-Taiba or the Taliban? About as much as the normal Indian has to do with lunatic right-wing groups like the Bajrang Dal. Nothing at all. What people across the border need is support for their war on terror, not tarring with the terrorism brush.
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*Another interesting piece and yet again Dileep Premachandran hit the nail on the head. Those who remember his articles from August '08 would recall his piece](Champions Trophy falls victim to blinkered attitudes | ICC Champions Trophy | The Guardian) on the CT postponement. *
Current situation demands sane and rational people like him in place of those media people/decision makers who are exploiting public anger and anxiety resulting from terrorism to push their own agendas.
Your thoughts?
why at least 3?