Times of India Editorial - Patriot Games
Like all wars everywhere and at all times, the Kargil conflict has brought out the best in some people and the worst in others. If gallant young men with giant hearts are giving their all on craggy uninhabited peaks thousands of kilometres away from their homes, others with small hearts and smaller minds have been wallowing in an excess of jingoistic zeal. In the process, they are squandering away on the moral and ethical plain what our brave jawans have secured on the battlefield. The call by some sections of the sangh parivar for a nuclear strike on Pakistan, the demand for an end to cricketing contests and cultural exchanges with that country, the banning of Pakistan Television and the blocking of Dawn's website by VSNL have all done incalculable damage to India's image as an open and mature society. The latest manifestation of this Dutch auction in chauvinism is the campaign that politicians from the Shiv Sena, BJP, Congress and Nationalist Congress Party have launched against the veteran actor Dilip Kumar. Last year --- after due consultations with Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee -- the actor travelled to Islamabad to accept the Nishan-e-Pakistan award from the Pakistani government. Today, Dilip Kumar is being bullied in an attempt to make him return the award. The Nishan-e-Pakistan was given to him in recognition for his immense contribution to cinema and popular culture in the subcontinent. At the time, Mr Vajpayee's view was that the honour would help foster amity and goodwill between India and Pakistan. That belief may have been optimistic, just as the belief that a bus ride from Delhi to Lahore would bring about a sea-change in bilateral relations proved to be. But to conclude that Dilip Kumar was wrong to accept the award -- or that the Prime Minister was wrong to board the bus -- would be to draw an entirely unwarranted conclusion.
In giving Dilip Kumar the Nishan-e-Pakistan, Islamabad was not endorsing the Indianness that runs through the veteran thespian's films like Shaheed, Naya Daur, Leader and Ram aur Shyam any more than his acceptance represented an endorsement of Pakistan's stand on Kashmir. In any case, Dilip Kumar was not the first Indian to be given that award. The late Morarji Desai was also a recipient for his contribution to Indo-Pakistani friendship when he was Prime Minister of a coalition government in which the sangh parivar was an important constituent. As far as Dilip Kumar's case is concerned, three points are in order. First, no political party should be allowed to take the law into their own hands and intimidate citizens. Second, cultural, sporting, social and familial links between the people of India and Pakistan should not be politicised and linked to Kargil. Third, and most important of all, nobody has the right to dictate to an Indian citizen what it means to be patriotic. A citizen must abide by her or his own conscience -- and the law -- and not by McCarthyite fatwas of the kind Dilip Kumar is being subjected to. Pakistani soldiers have entered Indian territory and they must be repulsed. But this does not mean that Indians should sever their attachment to the people and culture of Pakistan. If Dilip Kumar is forced to return his award, it will not be long before we are told that it is unpatriotic to read Faiz and Manto, listen to Abida Parveen and Ustad Salamat Ali Khan, and may be even to speak Sindhi.
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