Question One :-

Do you think cricket is playing a major role in strengthening the Indo-Pak relations? If yes,then how and if not,comment?

Answer One:CRICKET
is a game but a game with a difference. It is the hyper-game that can change the destiny of South Asia and, with it, the geopolitics of the whole world. Because of the social significance it has acquired in South Asia, it is tempting to use the mode of cultural analysis to view the game as a metaphor that elaborates the social life and cultures of which it is a part. But it is also necessary to consider the possibility of cricket itself becoming the paradigm for unfolding social and cultural processes and for the resolution of political conflicts. In South Asia, only Bollywood can compare with cricket in providing such a paradigm. Hence, instead of regarding cricket as a waste of national resources, we should attempt to grasp the insights that the game offers for understanding social and political processes in South Asia. In the past, matches between India and Pakistan used to be virtual wars with battle cries emanating from the stands. They generated intense hostility. India beating Pakistan was equated to routing the Pakistani army in the battle field and, for Pakistan, a victory would be like avenging the loss of East Pakistan or what Pakistanis felt was India's "unjust" occupation of Kashmir. The matches evoked the bitterness of the Hindu-Muslim divide in the subcontinent and the horrors of Partition on both sides. In India, the matches used to provoke communal riots triggered by rumours that some Muslim Indians were celebrating Pakistan's victory. No wonder then that the players, especially the home team, felt tense because spectators were unrelentingly severe on players who did not perform according to expectation. But even during those "bad" old days, cricket displayed a capacity to break down the wall of hostility. The performance of players of the calibre of Imran Khan, Wasim Akram and Javed Miandad evoked a grudging admiration from Indian spectators. In Chennai and Bangalore, discriminating spectators, who used to throng the stadiums, would give a standing ovation to great performances by the Pakistani cricketers. Despite the hostility generated by the game, long-term friendships between the team members were strengthened by the matches between the two countries. The Shiv Sena

perversely acknowledged the game's potential for generating friendship when its cadres dug up the cricket pitch in Mumbai's Wankhede stadium to prevent a match between India and Pakistan. In 1999, when the Government imposed a ban on the Indian cricket team playing against Pakistan, it endorsed the sentiment earlier expressed by the Shiv Sena's act of sabotage. The Government's view was that, by playing cricket with Pakistan, India was in some sense endorsing Pakistan's hostility towards India. This step also acknowledged the compound truth of cricket between India and Pakistan being cricket as well as politics. In contrast to the India-Pakistan matches in the past, the current series exuded bonhomie. There is, of course, the tension of the game and passions are no doubt aroused, but a remarkable feature has been the manner in which the bonhomie overwhelmed sharp partisan passions that the game generates. During the one-day matches, cameras zoomed in on spectators carrying both Indian and Pakistani flags and hugging each other after the game, irrespective of a win or a loss. The flood of reports on the hospitality extended to both the Indian team and visiting Indian spectators suggests that, at the people-to-people level, decades of hostility have given way to warm friendship. Indian visitors are discovering that the jingoism that dominated the discourse between India and Pakistan ever since Partition has evaporated, bringing to surface common bonds that tie the cultures of both the countries. Certainly, this new bonhomie reflects Entente in State-level political relations between India and Pakistan in the last few months. The current cricket series has generated a groundswell of opinion favouring a peaceful resolution of disputes between the two countries and dampening hostilities that used to erupt so often in the past. Even Bal Thackeray, the Shiv Sena leader, endorsed the current series. Till recently, it was thought that the Kashmir dispute dominated all the other facets of relations between India and Pakistan. The cricket fever that has gripped the two countries seems to have even pushed the Kashmir dispute to the backburner. Nobody, not even the optimists who favoured the resumption of cricketing ties between India and Pakistan, could have imagined that cricket would open up such a vista of friendship. Several Pakistani cricket commentators have already said as much. The popularity of the cricket series just over can be best summed up in a photograph of sadhus in India absorbed in watching a tense one-day match. This also asserts the cultural influence of cricket over even the spiritual and

religious world. From the media coverage, there is also a synergy between cricket and religion. Just as cricket may exert its influence over religion, religion is the staple of cricketers. For instance, the Pakistan captain began his interviews on television by invoking Allah. Irfan Pathan, in a televised interview, said that he was confident because he knew that Allah would come to his aid. Yet, even as the players displayed their religious fervour, this series sent out secular signals. The spectacular performances of devout Muslim players in the Indian team and the Christian and Hindu players in the Pakistan team compelled viewers to exclude simplistic equations of India as being Hindu and Pakistan as Islamic. This game shows that even as religion enters the cricket ground it can generate universal and secular processes to which the spectators can easily relate. The India-Pakistan cricket series has promoted and reinforced the regional identity of South Asia. Movements in Pakistan have questioned the country's Indic heritage while promoting close links, if not integration, with the Islamic heritage of West Asia. Cricket matches between India and Pakistan show that it is difficult, if not impossible, for Pakistan to disengage with South Asia. The popular involvement in the game and the emotional intensity that they generate in both countries give a unique flavour to India-Pakistan matches. Players from both teams have acknowledged the special feeling that India-Pakistan matches produce, which is missing in matches with other teams. To be sure, such intensity used to be exhibited and can often be seen on the hockey fields but, over the years, cricket has displaced hockey in capturing the national imaginations in India and Pakistan. This is what fundamentalists in both countries cannot fully comprehend. Cricket has constructed national imaginations that undermine religious fundamentalisms. Let us also recognise that cricket has become the fine art of contemporary politics in South Asia. Cricket won over the civil societies in Pakistan and India and has prepared the ground for Entente, if the good work of the cricketers is carried forward by the politicians and diplomats of both countries. This series is/has been a reminder that international relations cannot be decided by mere military strategies and diplomacy. The example of Iraq shows that it is possible to gain power using sophisticated weaponry and dubious diplomacy but that will not legitimise military occupation. To secure power, it is essential to win over the hearts of the people and that is an entirely different ball game. So South Asia can teach the United States a lesson; the U.S. had better send a football team to Iraq instead of military personnel if it wants its long-term interests to be protected.

India has stated that it was willing to discuss any issue the Pakistan President, Pervez Musharraf, may want to during his visit to New Delhi next month and asserted that there has been a distinct improvement in relations between the two neighbours in the recent past. "Mr. Musharraf is arriving here on April 16 to witness the cricket match on April 17. Besides cricket, we would talk on any issue if he wished to. We would talk to his military, to him ... and I think the whole House wishes that relations between the two countries become strong,'' the External Affairs Minister, Natwar Singh, told the Lok Sabha.

Trade ties Responding to a discussion on the statement by the External Affairs Minister on his visits to neighbouring nations in the House, Mr. Natwar Singh said: "I do not want to get carried away. Just image that if there were an Indo-Pak cricket team, we could defeat all other countries together''. He further said that if trade between the two nations went up, so would the standard of living and then entire SAARC would look different. He said if Pakistan allowed trade to go through its territory, India could go up to Central Asia. The Minister also pointed out that the India-Iran-Pakistan gas pipeline project was a case in point. The Minister also assured that there was no room for apprehensions on the travel formalities on the Srinagar-Muzaffarbad bus route. He said travel to Jammu and Kashmir and within the State by persons across the Line of Control would be on the basis of a document stamped by the Government of India and would not involve accepting or recognising any document issued by the other side. Train link He said the work on the Munabo-Khokrapar railway line was progressing and it could become operational by October 2. As regards, Nankana Sahib- Amritsar bus service, he said if things proceed without a hitch, it could start running by Baisakhi. But Mr. Natwar Singh emphasised that he was aware that Indo-Pak relations were accident-prone and so there was a need to be careful and cautious.

"At no stage, have we stopped telling them that the real success of composite dialogue will be when terrorism is stopped because the structure for terrorism still continues there''. Hopefully, the prevailing bonhomie and the spirit of sportsmanship on the field and beyond it will soon exorcise the ghost. It was indeed a minor miracle when India and Pakistan jointly hosted the 1987 World Cup series as a grand gesture not only to the world of cricket but also to each other. Subsequent events however soured the bilateral relations again, as has often been their fate for no fault of the cricketers themselves. The rest is recent history.

Question Two: -Can

the youth be used to strengthen IndoPak ties? Is there any other method by which Indo-Pak relations are made stronger?

Answer Two: -

It is an exhilarating experience that two cricket crazy neighbours who have fought wars in the past are now poised to bid for peace through the same grand gestures. Cricket has indeed provided for the most effective form of people to people contact touted so long through various types of track II diplomacy.But this has been possible because of new wave of thinking i.e. the youth brigade of both the nations.Todays youth are more concerned about forgetting the ages long rivalry and building an ever lasting relationship of love and harmony. While prospects are bright for an enduring thaw, it is ironical that far too long Indo-Pak cricket has been equated with Indo-Pak war as two sides of the same coin. How horrific it once used to be can be gauged from the remarks of an Australian cricket commentator some time ago. He amused, indeed shocked, TV viewers when he began his commentary with a stark observation before the start of the Indo-Pak cricket encounter in the World Cup series in Australia. "There is always great interest in India and Pakistan for they have fought three wars. There has been no war since 1971. So there is so much more excitement in this match", he averred. A critic may dismiss it as a diabolic sense of humour and pardon the imaginative commentator. But nevertheless it is not far from the truth -- at any rate until recently. So the Indo-Pak cricket series is finally on, and the world is filled once again with images of joint flags, people hugging on the streets, airwaves bursting with talks of bonhomie, and what-if musings about the cricket superpower a united India-Pakistan team will be. Meanwhile, in the back-room, the bureaucrats conduct another round of timorous baby-stepping aimed at normalizing Indo-Pak relations, but unfortunately, if past experience is any indication, the patter of these steps will soon prove as futile as their wellintentioned predecessors did. Very little in terms of long-term vision actually accompanies daily announcements about cricket visas, new trains, planes, and buses except vague, undefined notions of peace and it is not unreasonable to suspect that the baby-steps will soon be smothered by immovable paradigms borne out of memories of partition that have hitherto governed the politics of the sub-continent. The current burst of goodwill is just history playing itself out all over again, and the portents are farcical as ever. It is our contention that the key to breaking this impasse can only be found by changing the rules of engagement, and the time may well have come to step out of the thrall of partition and, heretical as it sounds, seriously reconsider

the reunification of India and Pakistan (and by extension, Bangladesh). The three countries have outlived their historical value, it may be time to revivify a plural nation (without going the Akhand Bharat or the fundamentalist nationalist way at all). It is not going to happen in a hurry but the time to start thinking about it is now. The division has been sustained long enough to expose all its holes externally, it has reduced the international stature of the sub-continent, created misplaced notions of friend and foe, and festered wounds over territories that should rightfully belong to both but do so adequately to neither; and internally, it has encouraged a polity based on deflecting attention from real issues, dragged ordinary people to the bottom of almost all social indicators, and brought out the worst in (at least) two great religions. Reunification is no guarantee against these malaise, but it can set the agenda for governance based on a potent mixture of morality, principles, and pragmatism, rather than the hurtful pettiness that passes for realpolitik right now. More critically, it can also serve as a blow for the forces of consolidation against the votaries of fragmentation that rule the roost today. The greatest opportunities for reunification lie precisely in the challenges that confront the idea. The countries are sworn enemies (but their enmity lies in estrangement rather than self-interest which may have made the hostility worthwhile), the political systems are intrinsically different (and both close to collapsing under their own weight unless there is radical and structural intervention), mutual hatred has seeped into the pores of the people (yet we see only warmth in interactions at the personal level, the anger seems to be directed solely towards each others symbols), our legal and civil norms are vastly different (yes, but they are unimaginatively derived from an imperial model which must be cast off), our economies are on different trajectories (but there is great interest from business on both sides), and our religious and social mores have been irreparably bifurcated (the greatest challenge but our faith in diversity as a glue must overcome this aberration). The India-Pakistan reunification must therefore be achieved under a framework that recognizes and facilitates the principles of democracy, diversity, pluralism, and federalism, and uses them as pillars of consolidation rather than succumb to the temptations of fragmentation. This means enabling multiple government systems, different legal codes, varying bureaucratic procedures, localized economic terms, and distinct cultural

practices to co-exist; this however also assumes that the unified country will not give in to the dubious logic of relativism but hold certain basic principles, especially governing equality and freedom, and the integrity of the state, to be fundamental and unquestionable. The unified state must consider the political, social, religious, and economic differences that may have cropped up or been accentuated by and after partition the differences must be allowed to persist, flourish, or decline organically unless they challenge the fundamental rubric of the state. Unlikely as it sounds, the India-Pakistan impasse may yet provide the ideal template to create and demonstrate an ideological counterpoint to the dominant fragmentary proclivities of our time. Status quo ante (with a few differences) may be an unappealing and quaint idea in our new-fangled obsessed culture and polity, but there probably is more change inherent in it than in many putative radical ideas. It is time for us to reclaim our tradition of assimilation rather than subjugation one world may be far away, but one sub-continent will be a good start.

Films and Art :- The other bridge to bridge the gap

In 1924, David Wark Griffith, the father of American cinema, said, "Hundred years from now, the single thing which cinema will have helped in a large way to accomplish will be that of eliminating from the face of the civilised world all armed conflict. Pictures will be the most powerful factor in bringing about this condition. With the use of the language of moving pictures, true meaning of the brotherhood of man will have been established throughout the earth".

Unfortunately, due to its inherent financial, organisational and legal nature, this medium has been institutionalized into an industry where such a noble premise takes a back seat. I believe it is only the art of cinema that can unite the world, if ever anything can. It is only cinema that can resolve the Kashmir issue, and extend a healing touch. Cinema alone can forge bonds of friendship between India and Pakistan. And yet it is film that threatens this unity. Film is a double-edged sword, the Zulfiqar of the modern age; it has to be used with the greatest of earnestness and circumspection. The forging of friendship between India and Pakis-tan, after decades of mistrust, comes from a deep collective motivation - a desire to share cultures

and

identify

commonalities

rather

than

differences.

India and Pakistan, in the living memory of millions, was one land, one civilisation, with one history and heritage. The Partition left a scar which has taken decades to heal. Now and again, the wounds open up in all their rawness, as if it all happened just yesterday. And yet it is the collective emotional will to heal, which has been welling up in people on both sides, most of whom are personally indifferent to the Kashmir issue. In such a dynamically evolving human scenario what can dialogue achieve? What role can the arts play? I write this with a passion to see the two countries come together, with a burning desire to see the people of Kashmir come out of their depressed phase. Shooting for my bilingual feature film Zooni, on the life of Habba Khatoon, the 16th century poetess queen of the Valley, brought me very close to culture of the Valley. I believe this film would have endeared the people of Kashmir to not only people of their country, but to the world. It would have re-endorsed their identity in their own eyes and lent a healing touch to the strife-torn populace. Just as Kashmir needs an identity, the people of India and Pakistan wish to unite and experience the full expanse of their lost past. Sadly, Bollywood has left us cold in this mission. The business community on both sides of the border has been insecure and wary of opening up markets for films. This has perforce kept Pakistan out of its friendship realm, not allowing sensitive artistic efforts to unite the people of both countries. The people of Pakistan appreciate our cinematic efforts, both in popular and intellectual terms. They responded overwhelmingly to my film, Umrao Jaan. Hearts would open to receive me during the few visits I made to Pakistan after making the film. And through me, they were opening their hearts to many more Indians, to parts of India where great cultures were born and have been preserved. I am committed to cinema as a medium to sensitise society and unite people. My work has been inspired by the form and content of poetry. Therefore, it was a memorable moment when the great poet Faiz Ahmad Faiz appreciated my film, Gaman.

Conceding the fact that films are a market-driven product, we are in a sanguine position today. Let us consider a scenario where Pakistan opens its gates to Indian films and India to Pakistani films. There would be a quantum jump in the quality and quantity of Pakistani films. Each film would have a strong unifying element. The content of Indian films would improve as well, with a huge market opening up for them. Distribution trade will boom for Pakistan. It will turn out to be a win-win situation on both sides.As a spin-off, Pakistan-bashing will gently be grounded. There will be a talent boom on both sides of the border. Five years of glasnost can do wonders in not only healing wounds but ensuring a permanent peace. Kashmir will then perforce resolve itself. For once, we find ourselves in a fortunate position today when this artistic vision converges with a political vision. Prime minister Manmohan Singh succinctly observed, "Let us, our people and our common destiny, make an earnest attempt to find a lasting solution to all issues. In a globalising and increasingly integrated world, borders have lost meaning... The journey of peace must be based on a step-by-step approach, but the road must be travelled. As an ancient saying goes, a road is made by walking. Mr President, let us travel together on this path, to realise our shared vision of what the future holds for all of us". I hope practical steps are taken to build such bridges and films accorded the importance they deserve.