New Delhi, April 27: When Dhoni took on Afridi’s men in the World Cup semi final at Mohali there were two full captains and two half captains who were at play. The two full captains were obviously Dhoni and Afridi with Manmohan Singh and Geelani being the two half captains. ( CLICK HERE FOR VIDEOS)
I say half because none of these two are in control of their respective govts with each having various strings pulling them in different directions. In fact, many of you may even disagree with my assumption of these guys being half PMs. But for the sake of our discussion lets keep it at least at half, if it keeps these two happy, so to speak.
“Manmohan bowls a googly”, read the headlines when it became known that he had invited both Geelani and Zardari to watch the match. Out of these two who came here to watch the match goes to show who has more clout in Pakistan or rather who is more trusted in that country, by their army chief Gen Kayani, I might add. In India there were the usual voices who said that since Pak is doing precious little to reign in terrorism despite the American pressure it’d be futile to engage them in any dialogue.
And their stance was not without reason. We’d tried to speak to Pak on numerous occasions with little progress, if any. On top of that the trial of accused for 26/11 in Pak was going nowhere. Not to forget that the Indian army’s Corps Commander responsible for security in valley, Lt Gen SA Hasnain has categorically stated quite recently that training camps in POK are still flourishing. In fact, he has said that terrorists are ready on their side of the border to try and infiltrate into the valley in the summer season. So therefore it was rather natural for certain section of Indian polity to have serious reservations about this informal yet formal meeting.
While we indeed saw some bonhomie between the two leaders the meeting itself, as expected, did not really result in any ground breaking announcements. Skeptics laughed as if to say- We told you so. While they may be dead right in saying so the actual indicators of the result of these talks emerged not here in Mohali or New Delhi but in Pakistan, out of which some were positive and some negative.
The first indicator was the arrest of an Indian driver employed with our embassy in Pakistan on some stupid charges who was subsequently released. It showed that certain sections within the Pak establishment will not stop from trying to derail any attempt to normalize relations between the two countries. The second indicator was the release of many Indian nationals who did not have any serious charges pending against them which was indeed a very welcome move towards improving relations. The third and a very important indicator came from Pak interior minister Rehman Malik who has said that they indeed now have some credible evidence against the perpetrators of 26/11 attack in Mumbai. While that is surely a welcome move the actual impetus in our relationship, however, will occur when these terrorists are put behind bars. And that may be a bit too far off as of now, if at all.
The fourth and the most important indicator came from the most unlikely candidate, one of the two full captains in the match, Shahid Afridi. Yes, I’m referring to his statement where he has said that Indians cannot be as large hearted as Pakistanis, a statement which was played over and over again in the media, quite expectedly, so to speak. What was not expected is the biased view of our media in reporting this episode. They never told you what Afridi had said immediately on arrival in Pakistan. In his first interaction with Pak jornos he’d said that we need not take animosity with India to ridiculous levels when the fact is that in Pakistan we love everything about India, be it our (Indian) songs or our music or even our stars. Why then this hatred towards India, he’d questioned. What our media also did not tell you that his comments where he’s deploring Indians were made after the first interview. You can check out the first interview below, which our media is not showing you.
Well, if that be the case why the hell did he say all those ridiculous things about Gambhir and Indians in general later on? Obviously, he got calls from hardliners in Pak to ‘behave’ or otherwise….. . And Afridi may be a very effective captain on the field but off the field he’s just another pawn in the hands of powers that be. Moreover, he has to live in Pakistan itself, at least till such time he’s playing cricket for his country.
If you check out the statistics of this video on YouTube and the other versions from various news channels you’ll see for yourself that it has been viewed more than half a million times on internet alone. The number of Pakis who have watched it on TV will be many times more. And there was no way that hardliners in Pak could allow their mainstream media to broadcast something positive about India. Therefore, it’d be quite safe to assume that the second interview of Afridi was a staged affair where he was told to say what he did. Even PCB’s response to Indian media’s queries on Afridi’s second statement was a farce wherein they’d said these comments were Afridi’s own. Incidentally, had PCB been asked about Afridi’s initial comments I’m quite sure that their response would still be the same, that these comments were Afridi’s own views and they do not subscribe to them. Ironic, to say the least.
Suffice to say that as things stand today, hardliners in Pakistan will not allow anyone to speak anything positive about India, let alone doing something positive. They ‘allowed’ Geelani to attend the match because in their heart of hearts they know very well that such things have some nuisance value, nothing more. And they may well be right.
So should we talk to Pakis or not? Well, the answer to that question is that it all depends on what Shahid Afridi speaks. The day Afridi is allowed to speak straight from his heart about how he feels about Indians in general and possibly Gambhir in particular will be the day when the real power will rest with the elected representatives in Pakistan who’ll probably see the futility of raging a proxy war against India. And then our talks with them may have some real meaning. Till that time I’ll go with, quite ironically, what LeT chief Hafeez Saeed has said that this ‘cricket diplomacy’ has no meaning. Or may be just about some nuisance value at best.