The good news is that the renowned Pakistani ghazal singer Ghulam Ali will be exhibiting his virtuoso before an admiring Indian audience once again in Kolkata. The bad news concerns the sorry display of the lack of self-confidence of the premier city of Mumbai, to which a regional outfit can apparently lay siege any time it likes. Worse, the BJP government in the state showed it couldn’t take the situation in hand and tell the Sena (its ally) where it got off.
Help rushed in from Delhi and West Bengal whose leaders opened their doors to the much-loved maestro from across the border, and Ghulam Ali, although disappointed, was gracious enough to accept chief minister Mamata Banerjee’s offer. The Pakistani visitor is a household name in his own country and ours, and it is great artistes like him who help keep alive the civilisational and deep cultural links between the two countries through the nurturing of people-to-people contacts in spite of the deep political divide.
Indeed, it is only when contacts at various levels of civil society begin to flourish is the stranglehold of the Pakistani Army on its people likely to loosen, making it possible for a political meeting of minds. But bigoted boors are unlikely to grasp this. They may not even be aware that prominent generals of Shivaji were Muslims in the fight against Emperor Aurangzeb whose principal commanders were Rajput warriors.
