Thus Spake the Pakistanis

I recently read on www.rediff.com that the visiting Pakistani cricket team has refused to play Test matches in Ahmedabad because of the communal riots there. I fully support their demand. They are quite right to refuse to play in Ahmedabad.

In the interest of fairness, however, I would like to propose that the Indian team take a similar stand and refuse to play at any city in Pakistan. The official reason forwarded for this should be worded along the following lines:

It is a matter of some concern to us to note that the Pakistani army was responsible, as recently as 1971, for the genocide of 3 million Bengalis, most of them minority Hindus, in the erstwhile state of East Pakistan, which is now known as Bangladesh. This genocide, that was singled out by several human rights organizations as one of the worst genocides of the century, even ahead of Rwanda and Bosnia, alarms us greatly.

We are also saddened to note that the Hindu minority population in Pakistan has seen steady decline since 1947, when British India was partitioned into the independent states of India and Pakistan. Your country, which had a robust minority of Hindus--twenty seven percent of the population--as recently as 1950, now has a combined minority population--Hindus, Christians and Buddhists--of one percent. We are hard pressed to find a natural demographic cause for this decline, and strongly suspect that said decline is an indicator of state backed ethnic cleansing.

In light of the above disturbing facts, we regretfully inform you that we are unable to play further cricket matches in your country until an unspecified future date.

But of course we won't do this. The "We" in this case being the Indian Government, which in turn consists of politicians that we the people have elected.

I think we should approach this from the perspective of a Prisoner's Dilemma game, on game theoretic principles. In the Prisoner's Dilemma game, any attempt at altruism has an even chance of producing the least desirable outcome for at least one player. Sport between nations often becomes a foreign policy tool (most every cricket team boycotted South Africa during the apartheid era), and foreign policy can be seen as a series of moves in an extended, and repeated, Prisoner's Dilemma game. The coy refusal of Pakistan to play in Ahmedabad is a move in this extended Prisoner's Dilemma game. In an extended Prisoner's Dilemma, the most stable strategy is to mimic the opposing player's previous move. In short, tit-for-tat is the way to go. Cooperation is met with cooperation; betrayal with betrayal.

That is why I strongly recommend that India respond in kind to Pakistan's refusal to play in Ahmedabad.