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By:

Correspondent

23 August 2024 at 4:29:04 pm

Red Romance

For long, the Naxalite in news was recognisable by the gun. But the more insidious version of Naxalism has never needed a rifle. It has thrived in varsity classrooms and newspaper and magazine columns, fostered by men and women sympathetic to it. These academics and other members of the so-called intelligentsia have long enjoyed their status as ‘respectable dissenters’ even when their politics offered intellectual alibis for Naxals carrying guns. Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s recent...

Red Romance

For long, the Naxalite in news was recognisable by the gun. But the more insidious version of Naxalism has never needed a rifle. It has thrived in varsity classrooms and newspaper and magazine columns, fostered by men and women sympathetic to it. These academics and other members of the so-called intelligentsia have long enjoyed their status as ‘respectable dissenters’ even when their politics offered intellectual alibis for Naxals carrying guns. Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s recent Independence Day warning about “dimaagi Naxals” should therefore not be dismissed as another political label. His larger point was that an insurgency does not survive on ammunition alone. It survives on ideas and people willing to make violence appear morally fashionable. The most revealing feature of India’s Maoist movement was never simply its brutality. It was the strange attraction it exercised over sections of the metropolitan Left elite. The Naxalite with an AK-47 could be transformed into a romantic revolutionary while the policeman he killed became an instrument of an oppressive state. This was not merely naïveté. At its ugliest, it was the intellectual laundering of political violence. The fantasy of the romantic revolutionary has always been seductive. In this narrative, amplified through sympathetic media priding itself on telling ‘truth to power,’ India was not a constitutional democracy struggling with inequality and corruption but an inherently illegitimate state waiting to be overthrown. In the minds of this elite Left, Maoist violence has often been recast as resistance while attacks on infrastructure as blows against capitalism. The armed overthrow of the Indian republic was the liberation they craved for. Some of India’s most celebrated intellectuals have flirted dangerously close to that moral inversion. The issue here is whether intellectual prestige can be used to sanitise an ideology whose practitioners have murdered civilians, policemen and public servants and terrorised some of India’s poorest districts. A university cannot be the place where Maoist romanticism acquires the legitimacy of a fashionable campus cause. Professors who turn armed insurgents into heroic revolutionaries are not merely exercising academic freedom. If they knowingly excuse violence, they are helping to construct the moral vocabulary that makes violence possible. Let’s be clear here. A professor who criticises the Indian state is not a Naxal while a journalist who exposes state excesses is not an enemy of India. But an intellectual who repeatedly excuses, glorifies or rationalises political violence cannot hide behind the word ‘dissent.’ India has paid an enormous price for the Maoist fantasy. Thousands have died. Entire regions were held back by fear while development was obstructed. The people supposedly being liberated were often the first to suffer. The armed Naxal is now being pushed towards extinction. But the Indian republic cannot afford to leave behind the romantic mythology that made the gun respectable. A democracy can tolerate dissent. It should never be expected to tolerate the glorification of those who seek its violent destruction.

Stumped by Politics

Pakistan’s decision to avoid playing India at the T20 World Cup signals a shrinking space for even symbolic engagement between two hostile neighbours.

Cricket has long been described as the last remaining civil language between India and Pakistan, a rare arena where dialogue, however competitive, was still possible. The Pakistan Cricket Board’s reported decision to not allow its national team to play against India in the T20 World Cup is therefore not just a sporting withdrawal; it is a symbolic retreat.


It also marks a sharp departure from a long, if fragile, tradition in which cricket survived even during periods of near-total diplomatic paralysis. Even after the wars of 1965 and 1971, cricketing ties were eventually restored, often serving as an early indicator of political thaw rather than its consequence.


The question is not whether a single match will be missed, but what this refusal reveals about the present and future state of Indo-Pak relations. At one level, the decision reflects political compulsions rather than sporting logic.


Commercial Driver

India-Pakistan matches are the biggest commercial drivers in world cricket, commanding massive global viewership and sponsorship revenues. Walking away from such a fixture is a political statement. But what exactly is being achieved by it? Is the objective to apply diplomatic pressure on India, or merely to signal ideological rigidity to domestic audiences in Pakistan?


Past precedents suggest that such gestures rarely yield strategic dividends. Pakistan suspended cricketing ties after the 1999 Kargil conflict, only to quietly resume them years later with little alteration in India’s core policy positions.


Historically, cricket diplomacy has worked precisely because it allowed engagement without endorsement. From General Zia-ul-Haq’s ‘cricket for peace’ visit in 1987 to the resumption of tours in the early 2000s, the game often softened tensions when official channels froze. If even this minimal, controlled engagement is now deemed unacceptable, does it suggest that bilateral hostility has hardened to a point where symbolism matters more than dialogue?


The 2004 series in India, which followed years of military standoff after the Parliament attack, remains a telling example. Played amid tight security and deep mistrust, it nevertheless humanised the ‘other side’ creating political space, however briefly, for confidence-building measures.


One must also ask: who bears the cost of such decisions? It is certainly not the administrators or politicians. It is the players, many of whom share personal camaraderie across borders, and the fans, particularly Pakistani fans, who lose a global stage to showcase their team’s competitiveness. Is denying young Pakistani cricketers the chance to test themselves against India’s formidable side truly in the nation’s sporting interest?


Even during the aftermath of the 2008 Mumbai attacks, when bilateral relations were at their lowest ebb, cricket was suspended reluctantly, not triumphantly.


Negligible Impact

From India’s perspective, the impact may be limited. Indian cricket, both economically and structurally, is resilient enough to absorb such absences. The BCCI does not depend on Pakistan fixtures to sustain the game’s ecosystem. But diplomatically, does Pakistan’s withdrawal reinforce India’s long-held position that sports and terrorism cannot coexist? Or does it instead harden Indian public opinion further against people-to-people engagement, making future reconciliation even more remote?


There is also the international dimension to consider. Global sporting events like the T20 World Cup are meant to transcend bilateral disputes. When political vetoes dictate participation, what message does it send to the International Cricket Council? If one board can selectively opt out of marquee fixtures for political reasons, does it undermine the credibility of multinational tournaments? And will other nations, facing geopolitical disputes, feel emboldened to do the same?


Sporting history offers cautionary tales. The apartheid-era boycott of South Africa succeeded because it was multilateral and morally coherent. Unilateral withdrawals, by contrast, tend to isolate the withdrawer more than the target.


This episode forces us to confront an uncomfortable truth whether has cricket lost its power as a bridge between India and Pakistan, or is it being deliberately stripped of that role by political establishments that fear the softening of public hostility?


One must ask whether disengagement has ever produced positive outcomes in the subcontinent’s history. If cricket, arguably the most neutral and emotionally resonant platform, cannot be insulated from politics, what hope remains for cultural or civil exchanges?


The refusal to play India is about a door being quietly shut. The real question when dialogue through diplomacy is frozen and conversation through sport is silenced, what channels remain for peace - if peace is still the goal at all?

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