As we witness a controversy emerge on the refusal of Indian cricketers to shake the hands of their Pakistani counterparts, after a match which the Board of Control for Cricket in India, despite public pressure, refused to boycott, we are reminded once again that the structure of Indian cricket in the last decade has depleted its utility as a tool of diplomacy. By converting cricket into a proxy for war against Pakistan, to be sold for commercial consumption, and de-emphasising cross-border interactions between fans, camaraderie, and sportsmanship, the BCCI has rendered cricket useless for the two diplomatic purposes it once served so well – domestic de-escalation and as a soft power channel to influence opinion in the subcontinent. While there have been many times over the years when relations between the countries have simply not been good enough to engage in sporting contests, when the teams have met, they have usually treated each other with courtesy. Refusing to shake hands after playing is breaking new ground. A deliberate public slight like this will not be written off as state policy. It is an insult, and it will be remembered as such for a long time. With this, Indian cricketers have gone from being perceived as gracious ambassadors of their country, to be deployed to improve relations when the time comes, to ordinary members of the public, consumed by and participating in the same nationalistic fervour as everyone else. Cricket as a form of domestic de-escalationWhile the India Pakistan cricket rivalry has never been free from the shadows of intense nationalism and conflict (which some argue has added to the experience of watching the matches), cricket in the subcontinent has often signalled a step down from active hostility. A chance for the countries to show each other’s citizens their better sides – their hospitality, and their sportsmanship. In 1952, in the aftermath of the first war between the countries, the Pakistan cricket team toured India. Both teams were hosted by President Rajendra Prasad at Rashtrapati Bhavan, following which the Pakistani team travelled the country, playing a five-test series and additional matches against zonal teams. And while the tension between the countries (who were still ironing out painful details of partition like river water sharing and the return of abducted women) was high, the tests were remembered for sportsmanlike crowds cheering for both sides, and people traveling long distances to see their favourite players brought together. In the aftermath of the Kargil War in 1999, the countries stopped cricketing relations for a period. But in 2004, the first signs of a renewed thaw in relations again came from cricket. When India toured Pakistan in 2004, almost 10,000 Indian fans received visas to watch the matches. Buses were run on the Delhi-Lahore route by both countries, often six days a week, for the duration of the tour. A special cricket train was run from Delhi to Lahore, and over 2000 fans who couldn’t get either bus or train tickets crossed the Wagah border on foot. For many Indian fans, the cricket offered an opportunity for an emotional return to the cities of their birth in Pakistan from which their families had been pushed out during the partition. And while there have been long periods where the India Pakistan relationship has been too fraught for cricketing ties, the signs to the domestic audience have always been clear. A series being played signalled to people that diplomatic relations had improved, and the cancellation of matches usually meant that things had taken a turn for the worse again (the only exception one can think of to this is the 1999 World Cup India-Pakistan tie, that was played while the Kargil War was ongoing, due to the fact that Pakistan’s involvement in the conflict had not yet been established). This meant that the domestic sentiment towards Pakistan could often by influenced or diffused by the government using cricket. Diplomatically speaking, when the state wished to step back from using coercive force and explore alternative paths, cricket was usually the first stop. Cricket as a soft power instrumentAs Joseph Nye argues, coercive measures are not the only means of exercising power in international relations. There are also situations where a state achieves the outcomes it prefers in world politics because other states want to follow it. This ability to affect what other states want, according to Nye, derives from intangible resources including culture – often termed “soft power” instruments. And while Nye acknowledges that there is an element of triviality and unpredictability in popular behaviour, a country that controls or dominates popular channels of communication has more opportunities to get its messages across and to affect the preferences of others. In the sub-continent, cricket is unquestionably one of the biggest channels of such influence. Cricket tours have historically allowed the two countries to bypass entrenched foreign policy roadblocks and to speak directly to the public. This has been used effectively by diplomats from both sides when they have sought to diffuse tensions. In 1987, with a little bit of Soviet nudging, Zia ul Haq was invited by the BCCI to watch a test match in Jaipur. His three-day press blitz (reportedly to the annoyance of the Indian external affairs ministry) accomplished what he had set out to do – deliver a message directly to the Indian people that Pakistan wished for a thaw in relations. When the Indian cricket team toured Pakistan in 2004, their instructions from Indian Prime Minister Vajpayee were reported to be “khel hi nahin, dil bhi jitiye (win hearts as well as the game).” This is an instruction which generations of Indian cricketers have instinctively followed. Even cricketers with a reputation for aggression elsewhere, like Virat Kohli, have always been at their most charming while playing Pakistan. From the (improbable) Lakshmipathy Balaji in 2004 to Virat Kohli over the years, Indian cricketers have received a great deal of love from across the border. Music and cinema, both in Punjabi and in Hindi, have offered similar opportunities for artists from both sides of the border to influence audiences. And yet, despite this wealth of cultural material to choose from, Indian diplomacy has always been somewhat hampered in its deployment of these resources. This is because an influential section of the public often demands that these cultural resources be wielded like instruments of coercion instead of channels of influence. For example, these groups demand that the state use the financial might of Bollywood or the BCCI to “punish” Pakistani artists or cricketers by excluding them. These measures gain us nothing geopolitically – an effective coercive economic sanctions regime is well beyond the resources of either Bollywood or cricket to build – but generate strong public ill-will. In the 1990s and the early 2000s, the Indian government (across party lines) had the political ability to sidestep this section of the public and push ahead when they saw the need. Despite some unpleasantness, these overtures by and large accomplished what they set out to do. For example, in 1999, the Shiv Sena dug up a cricket pitch to protest Pakistan’s tour of India, but the tour in general was played in warmth and good spirits. It culminated in a historic standing ovation given by the crowd in Chennai to the victorious Pakistan team. This warmth, despite the Kargil conflict that happened later in 1999, endured and was returned by a crowd in Karachi when India defeated Pakistan in a one-day match there in 2004. This has changed in recent times. While India and Pakistan have played the occasional match in multilateral tournaments, there have been almost no fan exchanges. The matches (usually played in the Narendra Modi Stadium at Ahmedabad) have not been marketed as a celebration of shared heritage or even as an intense sporting contest. On the contrary, they have been sold as one imagines a fun day at the Colosseum would have been advertised in Ancient Rome. With no Pakistani fans in the stadium, the implication is that the Pakistan team exists simply to be thrown to the metaphorical lions for our entertainment, and wealthy Indians from cities like Mumbai and Ahmedabad in particular have been willing to pay large sums to view this spectacle. The final of the Indian Premier League this year was marketed as a tribute to Operation Sindoor, cementing a link in the public discourse between the military and cricket, that can only be described as short – sighted. While a measure of good sense prevailed within the military establishment, with all three chiefs of staff declining the invitation to be present, it was a measure of how much Indian cricket fans have come to think of cricket and military action as two inter-connected prongs of aggression.This has been driven primarily by the emergence of an Indian political discourse (including on foreign policy) that almost exclusively revolves around the twin fantasies of dominance and victimhood. While there are few concrete geopolitical gains that evidence this supposed dominance, the audience has been happy to accept demonstrations of petty dominance in the field of cricket administration as a substitute. And the BCCI, for a price, has been happy to oblige. Anyone who, like me, was born in the subcontinent in the 1980s, knows that the India-Pakistan relationship is volatile. We have all grown up in the shadows of multiple wars and terrorist attacks. Our parents’ generation lived through full scale wars, and most of our grandparents witnessed Partition. But we have also witnessed historic thaws that allowed cross-border exchanges at a scale that seems impossible now. And cricket has played its part in each of those thaws. In the end, cricket is an instrument of goodwill. If the time is not right in the geopolitical relationship between the countries for it to be deployed as such, it must be shelved until it can be. To turn it into a weapon of aggression, for commercial gain, risks destroying it. While de-escalation and amity between India and Pakistan seem far from the table right now, history teaches us that a day when we desire better relations will come again. When it does, it will be a shame if one of our best tools for that process has been dulled or destroyed just to assuage the greed of our cricket administrators. Sarayu Pani is a lawyer by training and posts on X @sarayupani.Missing Link is her column on the social aspects of the events that move India.