A Nationalist’s Dilemma

Plato, I believe, would never like to enroll me in his Academy where a sound body was deemed as indispensable as a sound mind. I am modest enough not to make pretensions to a SOUND mind, though what I have has served my purpose till date; but of this I am sure that I DON’T have a sound body, unless soundness is measured in terms of body-weight. My romance with games and sports was rather short-lived, as I was overburdened with academic assignments as early as class nine, and also because I did not quite like the rough boys who happened to be my playmates and who were strikingly creative in using expletives. We were birds of incompatible feather.

            Still, like my friends, I used to be very excited about watching cricket, especially ODIs before the match-fixing saga was ever heard of.  Being enthusiastic about cricket was one of the parameters of masculinity. We used to assemble at a friend’s place, sometimes with potato chips and cold drinks, and watch the feats of Tendulkar or Ganguly. When I first heard of betting, I felt betrayed and started distancing myself from the game. It seemed pointless to waste an entire day, swayed by violent emotions, when everything might be scripted. I thought, watching a movie was better than watching a cricket match because in the former there was no camouflaging of fictionality. A movie would not lie since it made no claims to truth. Nevertheless the issue of cricket has recently resurfaced in my life. It is impossible to ignore it anymore. It is no longer a game. It has become a political domain. At least for India and Pakistan.

            I saw a viral video on facebook yesterday (22/06/2017) which showed a Hindu boy from Bolepur, being violently manhandled by an angry mob, since he had declared his love for Pakistan after India’s miserable defeat at the recent ICC Champions Trophy Final on 18 June (2017). He was being treated as an enemy of the state, even a jehaadi (Muslim militant) in disguise. He was being verbally abused, beaten and was told to kiss the holy Indian ground and burn a Pakistani flag. So, a game was a nationalist issue for the outraged mob who could not stand anyone admiring a team from an ‘enemy nation’. This creates a dilemma in the most ironical sense of the term.

            I remember my friends dividing themselves into different camps during the football world cups and support Brazil or Argentina with impunity. Nobody told them that their patriotism was suspect because they worshipped Maradona rather than Chuni Goswami. This is a very common practice even today. Then why does the ambience become tense over an India-Pakistan match? Why this double standard? Why cannot anyone support Pakistan in a match, burst crackers at its win, without forfeiting his/her identity as a patriotic Indian?

The reason may be traced to the history and geopolitics of our subcontinent. And history often privileges reality over legitimacy. Is not the game inflected by the memories of bloody battles fought between the two countries which make any amiable exchange problematic (though ‘desirable’)? Do not the reports of cross-border shelling make us wince at the harmless crackers? Do not our minds play tricks on us and superimpose the image of the Pakistani army onto the Pakistani cricket team? It may sound unjustifiable to intellectuals but history may have made us paranoid about national security and so, supporting Pakistan on the Indian soil seems to be insupportable. Remember, we have fought no war with Brazil or Argentina. So, a Brazilian jersey on an Indian football-enthusiast does not become an eyesore.

But I cannot help thinking that the game of cricket itself is a colonial legacy. Do we not reiterate the narrative of our cultural enslavement by playing the game that our conquerors had taught us? Can we reconcile cricket with the nationalist agenda? Can we support any cricket team at all without undermining our national game, i.e. Kabaddi?