A fragile peace

One more LoC incident, one terrorist attack in India away from regressing back to 2002, when war seemed a gunshot away

No matter how much progress Pakistan and India make on the path towards peace, there will always be a segment of the population in each of the two countries that is intractably opposed to normalcy and will always try to scuttle relations. In Pakistan, the most likely culprit is the establishment and its proxies, which over the years have been involved in portraying India as a rapacious neighbour. In India, the main opposition comes from the religious and political right along with sections of its media as well as civil-military establishment. There was hope that the fascistic Shiv Shena, which represents the worst tendencies of Hindutva, would reform slightly after the death of its founder Bal Thackerey. But as nine Pakistani hockey players — in Mumbai to play in the Hockey India League — found out, that is far from the case.

A protest by the Shiv Sena at the hockey stadium where the Pakistanis were practicing, ostensibly to protest the recent Line of Control (LoC) skirmishes between the armies of the two countries, led to the players being escorted out of the stadium for their own safety. This is obviously an outrage and one that we should not take lying down. But we also need to ensure that we do not bring a halt to the promising peace process over this. The Congress government in India, as with the PPP in Pakistan, is committed to giving peace a chance and the thuggery of a regional party should not come in the way. Ideally, the Indian government will condemn this intolerance and not let it be an unforeseen roadblock in the normalisation of relations.

This is not to say that without the Shiv Sena around both countries would be living in complete peace. Even within the world of sports, India has declared that it won’t play Pakistan at cricket in a third country and there is absolutely no way they are about to visit us. We are also just one more LoC incident or one terrorist attack in India away from regressing all the way back to 2002, when war seemed just a gunshot away. This is why, with so many potential problems ahead, the last thing either country should do is get too worked up about Shiv Sena’s antics.

Published in The Express Tribune, January 15^th, 2013.