Khan't be Don(e)!

Raju Korti
Speaking white lies and throwing dust in the eyes of the international community without even a pinch of conscience is an art honed and fine-tuned by the Pakistani establishment. It has gone on an overdrive once again in a script that has been played out before. Not surprisingly, the central character of the plot is Dawood Ibrahim.
Pakistan's feverish alacrity in trying to clear the non-existent mist on India's most wanted criminal each time the two countries are headed towards the negotiating table has all the trappings of a best-seller. Expectedly therefore, with the prime ministers of the two countries set for talks next month, Pakistan is getting its act together on the fugitive gangster.
While conceding Dawood's  presence on its soil for the first time, Shahryar Khan, Sharif's special envoy for improving relations with India, said ""Dawood was in Pakistan but I believe he was chased out of Pakistan. If he is in Pakistan, he should be hounded and arrested. We cannot allow such gangsters to operate from the country."
Khan's pre-emptive statement is pregnant with contradictions. He did not exercise himself with the likelihood of being asked why Dawood was not "hounded and arrested" when he was enjoying life king size in Karachi. Nor did he worry his head that someone from the Indian government would question him why Dawood was "chased out" instead of being arrested and if he was "chased out" to which country. It is not surprising that Khan carries such airy confidence. Indian authorities are not known to be comfortable asking questions on Dawood .
Interestingly, Khan was speaking to reporters at a pre-launch event organised by the Indian Journalists' Association for his latest book Cricket Cauldron: 'The Turbulent Politics of Sport in Pakistan' in London. "I think he is in the UAE. The Nawaz Sharif government is very much in favour of taking action against criminals who not only affect Pakistan but also any other country, whether it is India or Afghanistan or wherever. We cannot allow criminals to flourish in the country. If they come to us, we will take action. That is why I think he (Dawood) has left Pakistan." Apparently, no Indian reporter countered him when he was bullshitting them.
So what was Khan's surmise of Dawood holed up in UAE based on? Who chased him out? Pakistani police, the troops or the ISI? If he was chased out how does anyone not know where exactly? If the syndicate mastermind was wallowing in luxuries in his Karachi residence, why wasn't he "hounded and arrested" all these years? Is Khan obliquely trying to wash his hands off and point fingers at the army-ISI regime? The answers are as obvious as the questions are interesting.
Remember how during the Agra Summit, Gen Pervez Musharraf was apprehensive and guarded when asked about the presence of Dawood in Pakistan. His cultivated smile turned into a deep frown  when LK Advani, then home minister in the NDA alliance government, handed over to him a list of 20 India's wanted. To the crafty Musharraf, Dawood was a "chhota tactic" in the scheme of talks.
It would continue to suit the Indian viewpoint that Khan is playing the same shot with a cross bat. In Pakistan, Pakistanis oppose only Pakistanis. On Indians, they have one voice.
The l'affaire Dawood will run its course for how long is anybody's guess. But I suggest Khan write another book and title it "The Turbulent Sport of Politics in Pakistan."

They can keep talking..

Raju Korti

It is appalling how the country's prime minister routinely lends himself to public ridicule each time he tries to open his tongue-tied mouth. It is therefore only natural that the nation speculates what to expect -- if any -- when he confabulates with his Pakistani counterpart Nawaz Sharif during the New York summit scheduled for coming September.

One cannot but lose sight of the sheer concurrence when you realize that apprehensions and assumptions are equally rife on the other side. Both Sharif and Singh are beset with domestic problems peculiar to their country, most of them of their own making. There is a growing sense of trepidation that the bilateral meet will end up as inconclusive as it has during the long history of previous ones because there is no convergence on key issues including Kashmir.

Kick-starting talks!

There is this rhetorical grandstanding on either side each time a summit is planned. Even as the run up to talks is muddied with trouble from across the LoC, Islamabad keeps trumpeting that the perpetrators are not state players while Delhi dithers with diplomatic gibberish. Yet, the charade called peace talks goes on. It doesn't fool anyone anymore.

The gunning down of five Indian soldiers is yet another attempt at subverting talks that will anyways not fructify. If the ministry of external affairs is to be taken on its face value, "the prime minister has things on his mind about Pakistan and a long-term view to deal with it."  There is a supreme contradiction in this. The statement begs two elementary questions: Given his predilection, does the PM have any mind on the issue and if so, what are those long-term measures that he wants people to believe. I am afraid, you can't read more into it than some steam-letting. The country's leadership has long back run out of ideas on how to deal with the hydra-headed monster.

Someone with an extreme sense of optimism in the MEA feels that Sharif will be able to wrest the reins from the Army and bring a semblance of sanity and respect to the negotiating table. It can be only a diplomat's dream interpretation to say that if the killing of the soldiers is a Pakistan army operation then it’s not only a message to New Delhi but also to Islamabad to give up the pretense on holding peace talks.

Given the way he was ousted in the pre-Kargil machinations, Sharif will have to constantly alert to the Taliban sword hanging over his head although a section of the extremists have been a little more amenable for his comfort. The only soothing factor for the thrice PM is he is a Punjabi and the Army has a sizeable number of Punjabis in its fold. Former Army chief Pervez Musharraf knew this well and played his gambit by cleverly drawing a wedge between him (Sharif) and the Army through a bloodless coup.

Singh, on the other hand, has displayed the kind debility that has now come to be acknowledged as the defining characteristic of the Indian standpoint. Political puppetry is not so amusing when you know that you are dealing with an insidious Pakistan, its inherent instability and unpredictable actors. So far, Singh has given no signals that he has any concrete idea on how he is going to stand up to Pakistan's bullying. Why indulge in an exercise whose results have always been abject failures? Take it. The upcoming meet, even if it happens with all the reprisals along the LoC, will have nothing to show up except some sabre rattling and righteous noises. The country needs a prime minister and a defence minister whose body language must send clear signals that the country is ready to call Pakistan's bluff. This is, however, only a pipedream, knowing how the Indian establishment has been wary of taking on Pakistan at their own game. The pitch is far too queered with the two countries, one of whom apart from usual needling, keeps reminding us that its one hand is always on the nuclear button.

Pakistan has made a virtue of its rogue state standing. It knows it has nothing to lose with its economy too in doldrums as against the Indians who cannot run the risk of being marauded by a neighbor with a "Hum to doobenge sanam lekin tumko bhi le doobenge" philosophy.

So much as we keep railing about a weak-kneed leadership, it makes some sense to engage Pakistan in talks and hope that while the pretense continues, it takes the singular credit of destroying all by itself one day. 

An unending game!

Pic for representational purposes only

Raju Korti
Perhaps the most dicey and flaky aspect to any politician is you will never know from which platform he chooses to air his views. Invariably, when his bluster ends up ruffling feathers, he seeks refuge in the sheepish to 'clarify' that they were his personal views and not those of the political umbrella that he holds over his head. It is a strategy that often works whenever he throws discretion to winds.
Chief Minister Omar Abdulla who is carrying the family's considered belief that it is the sole repository of Kashmiri interests, has made public his intense displeasure over all rounder Parvez Rasool not being given a chance in the recent one-day series against Zimbabwe. "Did you really have to take him all the way to Zimbabwe to demoralize him? Wouldn't it have been cheaper to just do it at home?" Omar said in a sarcastic tweet after Rasool was not included in the last game against the minnows. As if on cue, Union Minister of State for Human Resource Development Shashi Tharoor also expressed disappointment over Rasool not making it to the playing eleven in the final game of the series. "Bizarre selection. Could easily have rested Jadeja and Raina for Rasool and Rahane. What's the point leading 4-0 if you can't give every member of the touring team a chance to play at least once by reshuffling the deck now?"
In a country where majority people prefer to watch Indians losing a game of cricket than winning in any other form of sport, any references to contexts are redundant when it comes to know how the likes of Abdullahs and Tharoors are connected with the country's sport-scape.
This is not to suggest that politicians are not entitled to their views on sport. Nor is there any attempt to stir up a debate on whether sport and politics mix. It is a subject that has been chewed to cud. The point to be pondered over here is whether whoever are at the helm of the sporting bodies are competent and clean enough to administer them by keeping their personal and political interests scrupulously out of the game?
Recall IPL Commissioner Rajeev Shukla's pompous, clique-ridden PR speech during a game when he was patting himself on the back (by proxy) over how smoothly the tournament was conducted and its phenomenal popularity. A few days later the IPL and its managers were grappling to cope with the brickbats thrown at them from all quarters when the match-fixing skeletons started tumbling out. A few years before, "Pune Strongman" Suresh Kalmadi, who couldn't hide his smug expressions behind his thick beard, fell into disgrace in what even a child knows as Commonwealth Games Scam.
Even as he was handling ministerial portfolios, Sharad Pawar never made any secret of his grubstake in the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) and Mumbai Cricket Association (MCA). One doesn't know whether Laloo Prasad Yadav even held a bat or ball in his life, but he had a field day holding the reins of Bihar Cricket Association. Most people came to know only recently that BJP leader Arun Jaitley had started involving himself more in the murky affairs of the Delhi Cricket Association than in his own chosen profession of legal practice. In many cricket associations, if the battle lines are not drawn between politicians and the players, they exist between players themselves on the basis of their political affiliations. How do you identify an administrator? By his sporting capacities or his administering abilities? And finally, what exactly is politics in sport? Is it the entry of politicians or the political mindset? How do you read someone like, say, Kirti Azad who has been a sportsperson initially and forayed into politics later? Ditto with cricketer Chetan Chauhan. It is a tough and tricky call.
Remember, how in 1971 even a respected cricketer like Vijay Merchant as the Chairman of Selectors, threw his casting vote in favour of Ajit Wadekar to  pull down Nawab of Pataudi as the Indian captain. And then we had the regional cricket associations and their honchos pushing their own players into the Indian team. It threw up the question whether players should be selected on the basis of regional representation or solely on their playing merit. Time was when of the eleven playing the Indian team, almost ten would be from Mumbai and the 11th would be Venkataraghvan.
Politics in sport is per se not about politicians trying to capture sports bodies through coups and political machinations. It is also the backroom game players play. It could also take on the hue of a  captain arguing for a particular player to be included or kept out of the team. Politics is rife between the players too and it often gets exposed in public domain obliquely. The other games are not free from this malady either. Cricket perhaps gets center-stage because of the high financial and political stakes. All is rarely well with our Hockey, Soccer, Table Tennis and other sports bodies who often become turfs to settle some of the worst personal and political battles.
What our sporting bodies need are a clean regimen and a cleaner administration that will not succumb to the lucre of money and petty politics. It is irrelevant where it comes from. The moot point is can or will it be possible when those who are supposed to hold the steering arrogate to themselves the status of a sovereign?
Internationally, even bodies like the IOC, UEFA, and FIFA have had questionable regimes. Politics and sport are abiding companions. Although the host city of the 1936 Berlin Olympics was decided before Hitler came to power, there is no denying that the Nazis used the Olympics to promote their evil ideas.
Sport does not take place in a social vacuum. It will admit poisons of many different flavours and intensities. What happened in Boston was at the most terrifying limit of the spectrum. But over the past months we have also seen cricket revisit its corruption trauma and a vile regression in English football fans.
If sport, on and off the field, serves as a microcosm of social challenges and behaviour, then it can only profess innocence by refusing guilt. And that's why it's ludicrous to say that sport and politics don't mix. They have no choice. After all, there is no denying that there is a political dimension to everything.
With due apologies for twisting Leon Trotsky, the Russian Marxist revolutionary's quote "You may not be interested in war but war is interested in you." Read politics in place of war and the case rests.