One of the "spoils of partition" - I borrow the term from Cambridge historian Joya Chatterji - of 1947 is the deep-rooted animosity and suspicion between the neighbours. The two republics carved out of an undivided country may have fought at least four proclaimed wars, but every time India takes on Pakistan on the cricket turf it is a battle of sorts. On both sides of the Line of Actual Control, and extending till the furthest point of their geographical territories, citizens are taught, "play the game in the spirit of the game but when it is up against Pakistan (and India) bring out the choicest of ammunition to fight a war."
"Serious sport has nothing to do with fair play," once observed George Orwell and both the Indians and the Pakistanis resort to this Orwellian belief when it comes to playing cricket against each other. I wonder if the same madness is prevalent when the two sides taken on each other in hockey. The media often describes them as arch-rivals, probably mindful of the fact that it is not only a cliché but also too simplistic a term to encapsulate the complexities that engulf the neighbourly relationship.
Social historian Ramchandra Guha in a lecture delivered at the London School of Economics a couple of years ago had blamed India's lack of unimpeachable leadership in South Asia as the biggest detriment to making her way to the high table of global diplomacy. Over six decades after emerging as a nation in its present form, India may quite rightfully aspire to be a global leader, but when it comes to Pakistan she can hardly keep herself away from the provocation and the cacophony of the slanging match. Fighting and trouncing Pakistan in every game is still alike the brawl between two warring children.
During the regime of Atal Behari Vajpayee, when India was publicly cosying-up with the US, the dominant discourse of Indian diplomacy was one of moving beyond Pakistan. There were visible signs of India not getting entrapped in each and every action of its unfriendly neighbour, but when it came to crunch time the Indian leadership either succumbed to the Pakistani pressure or crumbled because of internal compulsions or used Pakistan as a tool to sensationalise domestic politics for short term gains.
The Pakistani leadership on its part has failed its people and lived to the tradition of a rogue state born out of a "flawed ideology". Export of terror, the inability to look beyond India and trying to jeopardise each and every of her moves have tied the very existence of Pakistan to the specifications of India.
More than a decade and half ago, thanks to my former colleague Manab Majumder - a cricket aficionado himself all his life till he passed away a couple of years ago, I had a chance to share my thoughts on the India-Pakistan animosity with former Pakistani cricket captain Asif Iqbal at Lord's - the altar of cricket. He couldn't see any reason apart from stating history as the basis behind the relationship based on suspicion. I remember Asif Iqbal ending his conversation, in the glass-walled life members' enclosure of the MCC, by stating that "at the individual level we are still friends. The Indian and Pakistani cricketers are good friends."
I heard similar reaffirmation of friendship from people on both sides of the border, ranging from diplomats, journalists, politicians, writers, the civil society and above all the ordinary citizens. If nation is a collective of its people, how come individual friendships do not add up to national friendliness!
Tirthankar Bandyopadhyay is a journalist and media consultant.
He can be contacted at tirthankarb@hotmail.com
All comments are personal.
Sunday
Delhi Tales: Romanticising politics & story-telling commentators
Delhi has always been an enigma to me - an intense interest that is extremely difficult to overlook. The first time I landed in Delhi in 1995 after putting in my papers at the Financial Express and not to return to journalism again, I could hardly resist the temptation of visiting The Hindustan Times office at the Kasturba Gandhi Marg to handover a resume to Dr Chandan Mitra, then its Executive Editor. Dr Mitra, then a firebrand journalist delving between political reporting and speaking out his mind on any issue be it a personal tribute to Salil Chowdhury.
He suggested that I see A K Bhattacharya of The Pioneer at the Bahadur Shah Zafar Marg, Delhi's equivalent to the Fleet Street. As I popped in at the swanky office of The Pioneer, I first came across Paranjay Guha Thakurta, with his ponytail brand. Visit to The Express Building around the same road near ITO the next day to collect an unpaid cheque was equally exciting.
About six months later, when I was employed by the Press Trust of India - PTI in Delhi, walking in its Parliament Street office was like living a childhood dream of coexisting with the reverberations of unfolding politics in the national capital. Every day, a Greenline DTC bus dropped me either around the Parliament Building or some government office along the Raisina Road or the Rafi Marg, which housed the INS Building, as I walked to work.
Inside the PTI office, I would gaze in reverential silence as senior journalists covering Parliament, important departments and ministries dictated copies to make sure that we were ahead of time, and the aspiring journalist in me waited for an opportunity to cover a political event, be it ceremonial or of lesser importance.
First, I was assigned to cover a tea-party hosted by the then Vice President K R Narayanan at his residence in New Delhi's Maulana Azad Road to welcome some young bravehearts ahead of the Republic Day. A few months later, PTI's then chief reporter Amitabha Roy Chowdhury deputed me to cover a presser of the Communist patriarch Jyoti Basu at Banga Bhavan in New Delhi's upmarket Hailey Road. Being from Kolkata, no political assignment could be more self-gratifying than covering a press conference hosted by the then Bengali chief minister, but Amitabha Da would soon diffuse the tension, and with it the excitement, by stating that Basu might be one of the tallest leaders in Bengal but in the national capital he was one of the many chief ministers.
The South Indian canteen at the INS Building on Rafi Marg was portrayal of a mini-India, as journalists from all over the country trooped in after a day of hard work to share a moment or two before filing stories, demonstrating fiesty journalism. It was there that I came across many journalists who would later become my interviewees during the BBC days in London.
Soumya Bandyopadhyay, Suman Chattopadhyay, Jayanta Ghosal, Chandan Mitra, Ajay Bose, Diptosh Majumdar, Swapan Dasgupta, Nitya Chakraborty, M J Akbar - all narrating stories of an India that was transforming with every passing day and in remarkable speed. Coalition of multiple shades was then teasing India's polity and the political experimentation that went beyond the conventional mould of anti-Congressism gaining ground. The rise of the Hindu nationalists and the reinforcement of identity politics alongside the success story of the national economy, coupled with the exponential growth of the service sector rendered the Indian narrative to a description that probably could be best encapsulated by the term dualism - the co-existance of traditionalism and the modernity.
Then there were the likes of the late Nikhil Chakraborty and later his son Sumit Chakraborty, Bhabani Sengupta, Dipankar Gupta, Amitabh Kundu, Asish Nandy - who religiously held the time tested frameworks and parametres of political and economic analyses rather than allowing them to go haywire.
Stains of post-ideology and nihilism were gradually entrenching themselves in Indian polity but it was a defining moment in India's political and economic history. The excitement and euphoria of a romanticised polity, in line with the global ascent of Neoliberalism and an aspirational society, was not without its share of pain, hesitancy, scepticism and doubt. Nontheless the narrative of a new India unfolded with its many shades of grey. The story of the euphoric excitement lives with the memory of the story-tellers.
The news of the passing away of Diptosh Da (Majumdar) reignited the memory but not without its share of sadness.
Tirthankar Bandyopadhyay is a journalist and media consultant.
He can be contacted at tirthankarb@hotmail.com
All comments are personal.
He suggested that I see A K Bhattacharya of The Pioneer at the Bahadur Shah Zafar Marg, Delhi's equivalent to the Fleet Street. As I popped in at the swanky office of The Pioneer, I first came across Paranjay Guha Thakurta, with his ponytail brand. Visit to The Express Building around the same road near ITO the next day to collect an unpaid cheque was equally exciting.
About six months later, when I was employed by the Press Trust of India - PTI in Delhi, walking in its Parliament Street office was like living a childhood dream of coexisting with the reverberations of unfolding politics in the national capital. Every day, a Greenline DTC bus dropped me either around the Parliament Building or some government office along the Raisina Road or the Rafi Marg, which housed the INS Building, as I walked to work.
Inside the PTI office, I would gaze in reverential silence as senior journalists covering Parliament, important departments and ministries dictated copies to make sure that we were ahead of time, and the aspiring journalist in me waited for an opportunity to cover a political event, be it ceremonial or of lesser importance.
First, I was assigned to cover a tea-party hosted by the then Vice President K R Narayanan at his residence in New Delhi's Maulana Azad Road to welcome some young bravehearts ahead of the Republic Day. A few months later, PTI's then chief reporter Amitabha Roy Chowdhury deputed me to cover a presser of the Communist patriarch Jyoti Basu at Banga Bhavan in New Delhi's upmarket Hailey Road. Being from Kolkata, no political assignment could be more self-gratifying than covering a press conference hosted by the then Bengali chief minister, but Amitabha Da would soon diffuse the tension, and with it the excitement, by stating that Basu might be one of the tallest leaders in Bengal but in the national capital he was one of the many chief ministers.
The South Indian canteen at the INS Building on Rafi Marg was portrayal of a mini-India, as journalists from all over the country trooped in after a day of hard work to share a moment or two before filing stories, demonstrating fiesty journalism. It was there that I came across many journalists who would later become my interviewees during the BBC days in London.
Soumya Bandyopadhyay, Suman Chattopadhyay, Jayanta Ghosal, Chandan Mitra, Ajay Bose, Diptosh Majumdar, Swapan Dasgupta, Nitya Chakraborty, M J Akbar - all narrating stories of an India that was transforming with every passing day and in remarkable speed. Coalition of multiple shades was then teasing India's polity and the political experimentation that went beyond the conventional mould of anti-Congressism gaining ground. The rise of the Hindu nationalists and the reinforcement of identity politics alongside the success story of the national economy, coupled with the exponential growth of the service sector rendered the Indian narrative to a description that probably could be best encapsulated by the term dualism - the co-existance of traditionalism and the modernity.
Then there were the likes of the late Nikhil Chakraborty and later his son Sumit Chakraborty, Bhabani Sengupta, Dipankar Gupta, Amitabh Kundu, Asish Nandy - who religiously held the time tested frameworks and parametres of political and economic analyses rather than allowing them to go haywire.
Stains of post-ideology and nihilism were gradually entrenching themselves in Indian polity but it was a defining moment in India's political and economic history. The excitement and euphoria of a romanticised polity, in line with the global ascent of Neoliberalism and an aspirational society, was not without its share of pain, hesitancy, scepticism and doubt. Nontheless the narrative of a new India unfolded with its many shades of grey. The story of the euphoric excitement lives with the memory of the story-tellers.
The news of the passing away of Diptosh Da (Majumdar) reignited the memory but not without its share of sadness.
Tirthankar Bandyopadhyay is a journalist and media consultant.
He can be contacted at tirthankarb@hotmail.com
All comments are personal.
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