Unifying South Asia in bigotry, jingoism and xenophobia
We have known for a long time that there is no unifying factor greater than the game of cricket – at least in South Asia. Cricketing diplomacy has for long solved matters between India and Pakistan, and one feels disputes like Wullar Barrage could well be settled over a T20 game. Of course who gets to influence Afghanistan might need an ODI series, while Kashmir can only be settled through a Test championship. Cricket can obviously solve all prevalent issues in South Asia.
Over the past month or so, South Asia has once again proven how cricket is the biggest unifying factor in the region. Just when one thought Afghanistan and Pakistan might run away with extremist titles, along comes Meerut’s Swami Vivekanand Subharti University (SVSU) and suspends 67 Kashmiri students for cheering Pakistan’s victory against India in the Asia Cup. When SVSU realised how ridiculous the suspension was and tried to overturn it, self proclaimed atheist Javed Akhtar tweeted how those Kashmiris should actually be rusticated and sent to Kashmir. Pakistan meanwhile offered the Kashmiri students spots in its own universities if they were having trouble in India.
Now this episode proved to be a unifier because:
a) It showed India can outdo Pakistan in terms of bigotry of a new kind: cricketing xenophobia.
b) It forced Pakistanis to act hypocritically and pretend to be the saviours of Kashmiris, despite having left its own minorities to rot. If any of those 67 students were Ahmadis, would they still be equally welcome?
c) Javed Akhtar proved how religion quite clearly is not the only cause behind bigotry. And how these self proclaimed “atheists” and “humanists” have just as much jingoism and manifest as much ‘holier than thou’ attitude as your average Joe mullah.
d) It also could have given the Kashmiris yet another example of how their future should neither be dependent on India nor on Pakistan. Both of them are equally hungry, egocentric vultures.
All these points of course combine to conjure the same result: South Asians are a bunch of xenophobic bigots, and no matter how much you resist generalisations, they would force you into it.
Just like on the cricket pitch, Bangladesh seemed to have fallen way down the pecking order on the pitch of bigotry as well. However, their resurgence on the later is considerably more conspicuous than on the former.
And while the nation collectively mulls over banning Jamaat-e-Islami – you know to send a statement out to the extremists – Sheikh Haseena Wajid, the Prime Minister of Bangladesh, put a ban on Bangladeshis against flying flags of foreign countries. She was quite clearly upset by seeing all those Bangladeshis supporting Pakistan in the matches against India and Australia.
This ban, even though has since been overturned, along with the suspension of Kashmiri students in India, has taken secular Bangladesh and secular India to depths of bigotry that even extremist Pakistan has never fallen to. While India was hammering Pakistan, there were Pakistanis who donned the Indian uniform in Karachi celebrating their favourite team’s victory. Pakistan seems to have more cricketing tolerance than India or Bangladesh. Who would have thought!
Of course what the Bangladeshi prime minister was actually vying to ensure was that in a potential India versus Pakistan world cup final, the crowd would only be flying Bangladeshi flags. This of course would be the greatest exhibition of unity the world has ever seen, because after all, India, Pakistan and Bangladesh were once one single bunch of bigoted people. Now they are forced into being jingoistic separately.
We are still not sure as to what message flying Bangladeshi flags in a match between England and Australia would have sent out though.