The refusal of the defence services team to play a cricket match in Srinagar has very little to do with cricket. It is about the politics associated with it and the message it conveys.

First the Union Home Ministry decides to ban the use of pre-paid mobile phones — which are 85 percent of the total mobile connections in the state — in Jammu & Kashmir. Then, the services cricket team — a joint team of the army, navy and the air force — decides not to turn up for their cricket match against Jammu & Kashmir in Srinagar. The reason, though not officially provided during the day, would have been the security concerns about their cricket team.

Then, the issue flared up with the state government taking serious offence to this decision of the services. Late in the evening, the services apologised to the cricket control board for “the administrative slip-up in despatch of its team” and requested for fresh dates to replay the match.

This is actually not merely about a cricket match between two lowly placed teams in the Plate division of the Ranji Trophy. It is much more than it, with all the political implications and messages that such an event in Srinagar conveys. The foremost among them is to shatter all the claims of the state government about a return of normalcy to the state. When the defence services themselves are unwilling to play a match in Srinagar, the Indian government’s continued insistence on a peaceful Kashmir has little credibility left in the international fora. This will also damage the peace process in the state recently initiated by the centre and weaken the hand of the government in these quiet talks with the Kashmiri separatists.

There are a few issues involved with this decision making that need to be probed further. The most important among them is finding the army official responsible for taking this decision. The security assessment would have obviously come from the local army formation, the Corps headquarters at Srinagar. And then the recommendations would have gone up the chain before the decision would have been taken at a higher, if not the highest level, in the army. If the political implications of such a decision were not grasped by people at that level, which necessitated referring such a decision to the political executive, then they simply do not deserve to occupy those high offices in the army headquarters.

In many quarters, this incident has been perceived as an attempt by the army to snub the state government, particularly the young Chief Minister of the state. His continued efforts to press the centre for diluting the provisions of the AFSPA, and for moving the army and Rashtriya Rifles out of the cities and towns have not gone down well with the army. In fact, there have been very few, if any, statements by the army proclaiming normalcy in the state. All statements by senior army officials about low violence figures in the state are laced with predictions of increasing attempts at infiltration and reactivated terror camps across the border. While these caveats may be true, this cultivated avoidance of acknowledging and promoting the return of normalcy to the state by the army brass lends credence to the charge that the army has developed vested institutional interests in maintaining the status quo in the state.

Finally, the damage control exercise by the army is an outstanding example in how not to conduct public diplomacy. The apology has come rather late; who has tendered the apology is not clearly spelled out. The apology has been tendered to the BCCI for an administrative slip-up, not to the state government and the people of Kashmir for a genuine mistake. Insincere and disingenuous, the apology and the offer of a rematch conveys the unmistakable impression of a decision forced on the army brass by their political masters. Where does it leave the army’s claims of building its image and winning the hearts and minds of the average Kashmiri now? In tatters, one presumes.

Since 1990, the army has done a great job and an yeoman service to the nation by fighting the might of Pakistan-sponsored terrorism in Kashmir. It is also equally true that the nation and the government have, at times, failed to recognise the efforts of the army in bringing normalcy to Kashmir. However, its glorious record of yore can not be an excuse for the army to take a political decision that nearly undoes all its past good work in J&K.

The army brass thus deserves a rap on the knuckles, not only to retrieve the lost ground in Kashmir, but equally importantly, to ensure that the army does not repeat the same mistake in the future.

Tailpiece – While pillorying the army over this cricket match in Kashmir, how can one ignore the Army Chief, General Deepak Kapoor’s recent statement. Echoing his Pakistani counterpart and other Pakistan government officials, he says that “the South Asian region is infested with terror groups. Be it India, Afghanistan or Pakistan, we have to collectively battle such [terror] threats.”