Politics beyond the boundary

India’s cricket team received its comeuppance in the Champions Trophy final. I was not in the country and missed the match, but I hear our captain’s face appeared longer in the spots flogging deodorant and insurance between overs than the total time he spent at the crease. No matter: It’s only a game. For those of us who see all Pakistanis as enemies, the defeat was a moment of catastrophe, but of course everyone will have moved on by now.

A few days before the match, as Pakistan was muscling its way to the final, a reporter called to ask me about a controversy regarding their captain’s poor English. Apparently in his post match comments he spoke it without familiarity and with a thick accent, as an Urdu medium person might. Was it fair to judge him for his accent rather than his playing abilities, the reporter asked.

I’m no expert on the subject, but I have been a columnist long enough to be on the speed dial of journalists looking for a quick quote. I said it reflected very well on Pakistan that such individuals were picked and rose to captaincy. It showed an egalitarian system where people were selected on merit, not background. 

It seems difficult to do in India, where the urban, upper class and upper caste man usually makes the team. Brahmin players such as Sunil Gavaskar, Dilip Vengsarkar, Sanjay Manjrekar, Sachin Tendulkar, Rahul Dravid, Saurav Ganguly, Javagal Srinath and Anil Kumble are easy to recall. Indians from underprivileged backgrounds who made it to the national team, leave alone captain it, don’t come easily to mind. Mr Gavaskar once observed how close the Dadar Union team, which he represented, was to the Indian national side. It cannot be that there were few talented and deserving Indians outside central Mumbai.

Today we think someone from Ranchi, even if anglicised and middle class (M S Dhoni), shows our team’s inclusiveness. It doesn’t. The Dalit Christian Yousuf Youhana, who later became Mohammad  Yousuf, the son of a sweeper in Pakistan Railways, played 90 tests.

Of course Pakistan also has the occasional Oxbridge type, such as Imran Khan, but looking down the years at their team, it is fair to say that their players and captains, judging purely by the way they speak, come from more modest backgrounds than do ours. I wish India had won the match, as I always do, but I do not grudge success to men who have picked themselves up and made something of themselves despite their circumstances. 

The other thing that the match, more specifically its aftermath, revealed was how totally brainwashed Indians have become when it comes to Kashmir. It angered many that Kashmiris celebrated Pakistan’s win. I think this anger and surprise is essentially borne of two things. First, the success of our nationalist propaganda. It has managed to convince us that the problem in Kashmir is entirely the doing of Pakistan. Kashmiris love us, or are misguided, and if Pakistan were to stop its mischief they would fling themselves into our arms.

Why we need hundreds of thousands of soldiers in that state and who they are fighting against is not, and has never been, debated in India because it is a taboo subject. The remarkable thing is that educated Indians have been shocked by Kashmiri hostility for over three decades.

Have you wondered why no cricket matches are held in Srinagar? There are none any longer (and only two have been played, the last in 1986) because it would give the game away to the world in an instant. In October 1983, the World Cup winning Indian side took on the West Indies in a match in Srinagar. Mr Gavaskar wrote in his book Runs ’n Ruins of a hostile audience which was booing the Indians and cheering the West Indies (who were also baffled). 

Mr Gavaskar was confronted by youngsters in the stands aggressively waving Mr Khan’s poster at him. Mr Gavaskar disarmed them by pointing to himself and then at the ground, and then Mr Khan and the sky. This was applauded. 

Mr Gavaskar wrote that “we were stunned by the change. As the Indian players came into the arena to loosen up and do their physical exercises, they were booed by some sections of the crowd. This was unbelievable. Here we were in India and being hooted even before a ball had been bowled. Being hooted after a defeat is understandable, but this was incredible. Moreover, there were many in the crowd shouting pro-Pakistan slogans which confounded us, because we were playing the West Indies and not Pakistan. The West Indians were as surprised as we were but were obviously delighted to find support in their first big encounter against us after their defeat in the Prudential Cup finals”.

Remember that this was 34 years ago. It is 2017 and we continue to be surprised. My question is: What incentive does the Kashmiri have for supporting India? I don’t really understand why a people should cheer their tormentors. We reward a soldier for violating a Kashmiri’s fundamental rights. And then we expect them to applaud India? Astonishing. 

Illustration by Binay Sinha

The second reason the Kashmiris celebrated our enemy’s win over us is our incapacity to empathise with Muslims as they are being actively persecuted across India. Our slogan is sabka saath, sabka vikas. The most charitable thing that can be said about this statement is that it is dishonest.

From ticket distribution to public lynchings, India’s Muslims are being shown their place by Hindus relentlessly and in punctilious fashion. The Muslim League’s charge against the Hindu Congress was hypocrisy: Mumble some homily about inclusion but do something else. Who can deny this is true in India today?

Kashmiris also watch the news. They can see what is happening across India to Muslims, and they can observe what the callous and insensitive reaction of Hindus to their suffering is. Our best defence against this, certainly the one we use most often, is: Pakistan is worse than us. Is that acceptable to us as reason enough to manhandle our own citizens? Apparently. 

Our cricket team, not our nation, received its deserved comeuppance with the loss in that final. But as we continue on the destructive path we are, the loss is of something more profound and ultimately impossible to win back.