Foreign Secretary S Jaishankar’s recent assertion while speaking to the Parliamentary Standing Committee on External Affairs that people-to-people contact with Pakistan would continue and there was no plan to stop it is a much-needed statement to clear the confusion around this issue.
In the aftermath of the Uri terror attack last month in which 19 Indian jawans were killed by terrorists who were trained and armed by the Pakistan establishment, the MNS (Maharashtra Navnirman Samiti) had issued an ultimatum to Pakistani artistes to leave India. With the Central and State governments tight-lipped on this, it was presumed that this had their tacit nod. Whatever may have been their thinking over this, propriety demanded that the official policy be made clear.
The MNS had also threatened to stop the screening of films featuring artistes from Pakistan. A clearing of the air on this was required but the Central and State governments typically kept mum.
Subsequently, the Indian Motion Pictures Producers Association passed a motion to ban the artistes from the neighbouring country. As the crescendo built up and fearing repercussions, the Cinema Owners Exhibitors Association of India decided not to screen the films with Pakistani actors in four states – Maharashtra, Gujarat, Karnataka and Goa.
The protagonists of people to people contacts saw a silver lining in Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s speech at a rally in Kozhikode last month where he had said: “A day will come when the people of Pakistan will go against their own government to fight terrorism…. The people of Pakistan should ask their leaders that India and Pakistan got freedom in the same year, but India exports software and your (Pakistan) leaders are exporting terrorists.” The surmise was that Modi was making a distinction between the establishment in Pakistan (the government and the hawkish army) and people at large who wanted peace with India, and that the Prime Minister was reaching out to the latter.
It cannot be denied that Indo-Pak cultural relations get a rude jolt whenever the two countries are at war or in a war-like situation. That is quite natural because while Pakistan-trained and Pakistan-armed terrorists are unleashing their arsenal on our brave soldiers and on innocent villagers in the border villages, the people in India can hardly remain unaffected.
In better times, there is people to people warmth. Pakistani artists, actors, singers, journalists and writers are treated with characteristic bonhomie in India and the same is the case with visiting Indians in Pakistan.
But having said this, it was necessary that there be a government clarification on where it stands vis-a-vis the Pakistani people. One hopes that the Foreign Secretary’s remarks which undoubtedly must have been cleared with the government at the highest levels will set the record straight.
There is weight behind the arguments of the likes of actor Salman Khan, director Karan Johar and producer-director Anurag Kashyap that those films with Pakistani actors which were launched and even completed during days of relative calm in Indo-Pak relations must be allowed to be screened. The fate of many Indian participants in the projects is tied with those of the Pakistani artistes and there is no reason why they must suffer the consequences of rupture in current times. At the same time, the film fraternity must bow to the demand that no new project with Pakistani actors must be taken up in the surcharged atmosphere until conditions improve at the border.
The Central and State governments are duty-bound to ensure that the completed films are screened without hindrance in the shape of mob violence.
Having said this, there is indeed no mistaking the fact that the Modi government’s tough posture vis-a-vis the Pakistani government is well-appreciated within the country and its diplomatic espousal of Kashmir being an inalienable part of India and of this country’s zero tolerance policy towards terror has deservingly earned kudos in India and abroad. For far too long the weak governments at the Centre allowed Islamabad to take India for granted, giving this country the reputation of a soft state that would not assert itself through tough means even if it was grossly wronged.
The Indian army’s retaliatory ‘surgical strikes’ against launch pads of terror in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir have also been well understood by the world at large.
If there is an element of dissonance on India’s war on terror it is only confined to China which has an axe to grind in supporting Pakistan and will not budge from its stand. The Chinese cannot countenance India’s growing clout and would do everything possible to counter us, but that is a reality that cannot be wished away.
The Russians have huge stakes in their new flirtation with China and while the surfeit of deals signed in Goa between India and Russia have salvaged relations between our two countries, the virtual snapping of Russian links with the US in recent days has brought them within Beijing’s embrace.
The Chinese are also attracted by the free access they have to the Gwadar port in Pakistan and the imminent construction of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor which will drastically reduce the cost of Chinese exports through the Arabian Sea while enhancing Beijing’s influence in the region.
Considering that the economic corridor will pass through Pak-occupied Kashmir to which India still stakes claim, it remains to be seen whether India would have the gumption to challenge the Chinese at some stage.
