When the World Cup final was underway in Mumbai, I was
ensconced on a beautiful bajra, a traditionally bedecked boat
in Varanasi, immersed in the musical genius of thumri singers of the
Benaras school. In other words, I spent much of the evening in
the middle of the serene Ganga, listening to exquisite renditions of
thumri, dadra and chaiti by some of the highly talented artistes of
this genre.
Though they are not as well known as their gurus yet,
most of the performers were disciples of the legendary Girija Devi,
Begum Akhtar and Siddheshwari Devi. Girija Devi was there to revel on
the magical journey that was organised by the Delhi-based VSK Baithak,
a major patron (organisation) of music even if they are mostly partial
to the khayal gayaki (style).
This was my lucky escape from the madness that passed
for cricket that fortnight. And I am happy that I slept through nearly
all of the deafening India-Pakistan match and found Girija Devi’s
company to escape the final. My decision was vindicated by the turn of
events.
Pakistan’s cricket icon Shahid Afridi has been rowing
back and forth over his confused views about Indians and, by
implication, Hindus. He has tried to deny how he disparagingly told a
TV channel at home that Indians could never be as large-hearted as
Pakistan’s Muslims. Why did he have to say something so contrary to
his post-match comments in Mohali just a few days earlier? Did he not
play the Wasim Akram-led test match that Pakistan won in Chennai when
the Indians stood up to heartily applaud the winners?
In Mohali, in spite of losing the coveted match, which
four of his fielders should be held accountable for, Afridi had come
out as a winner with his dignity in defeat. Then he proceeded to make
a hash of it back home with his wayward views about his neighbours’
cultural traits.
So which Pakistani Muslims are generous and
large-hearted in Mr Afridi’s opinion? Those that prostrated in
submission at the Lahore shrine of Data Ganj Baksh or those that
bombed it and killed scores of worshippers there? They both are
Pakistanis and presumably Muslims. A high-ranking Pakistani died
tending to a hapless Christian woman’s right to equal and fair justice
but his killer is as popular, if not more, among Afridi’s fellow
Pakistanis. Which Pakistani and which Muslim is Afridi’s role model?
The virus of bigotry is not new or peculiar to
Pakistan. In the 1950s mullahs of Lucknow tried to make an example of
the great Urdu poet Yas Yagana Changezi by parading him, with a
garland of shoes, astride a donkey. Changezi’s celebrated couplet is
relevant to the Hindu-Muslim discourse kicked off by Afridi’s stray
remark. What riled the mullahs was this Yagana verse:
“Sab tere siwa kafir, aakhir iska matlab kya?
Sar phira de insaan ka aisa khabt-e-mazhab kya?
(Everyone is a kafir except you, does that make any
sense at all?
What is it if not bigotry, that revels in your rise
and another’s fall?)”
Afridi, of course, is too much of a genial, fun-loving
Pathan who makes a competitive, often pugnacious cricketer. It is
perhaps unfair to bracket him with religious or nationalist zealotry;
yet he must be accused of displaying considerable ignorance. It was
naďve of him, for example, to turn a cricket ground into a prayer hall
where his team offered namaaz before a grateful gaggle of TV
journalists.
Can you imagine the obverse? I would dread the thought
of Indian players performing a mass puja with conch shells before a
match. In any case, whenever I travel by PIA, I laud my luck that
Indian commercial flights do not as yet take off to the recitation of
Vedic shlokas.
Of course, Afridi is not alone in wearing the badge of
religion and nationhood to the detriment of the sport that gave him
his identity. Equally jarring was the news of Indian skipper Mahendra
Singh Dhoni’s tonsured head, which reports said was carried out as a
promised sacrifice to a deity after he lifted the World Cup.
More worrying are the news stories since the Mumbai
win of his eagerness to join the Indian Territorial Army and, together
with Sachin Tendulkar, their plan to fly Sukhoi warplanes as an
advertisement for the Indian military. The Indian Air Force has
accorded them the rare privilege.
But what does it all signify – that sports champions
are incomplete without a macho, military facet to their personality,
which comes in handy in a contest against a perceived enemy. (I hear
that the Chinese cricket team is all but ready to make its appearance
on the international stage; what then?) In a display of nationalist
rush of blood, Gautam Gambhir, a first-rate cricketer in any format of
the game, spoilt it for himself. He committed his innings in Mumbai to
the victims of the 26/11 carnage. Suppose a Sri Lankan cricketer had
stepped forward with a similar commitment to the rout of the Tamil
Tigers?
Add to this the filthy display of money-power that was
unique to this World Cup. India is dripping with corruption. Its
hosting of the recent Commonwealth Games is less remembered for the
records broken, more for the loot and plunder by the organisers. The
arrival of the Indian Premier League as a private sector initiative
has only increased the involvement of tycoons and dubious money. A
minister was forced to resign last year for alleged involvement with
the tournament. An inquiry is underway to weed out corruption in the
IPL.
Clearly, the fabled billion people of India, many of
them starving, could not be applauding cricketers being pampered with
fantastic sums of money. The government does not have enough money to
feed the poor, or send children to school, but it lavishes crazy
amounts on cricketers. The vulgarity borders on criminality and comes
close to the standards first set by Dawood Ibrahim and his smuggling
syndicate in a Gulf state in the 1980s.
I would have loved to take Afridi along to my Benaras
soirée. I would have loved to share with him Mirza Ghalib’s famous
tribute in Persian to the holy city.
“Where autumn turns into the touch of sandal
On fair foreheads,
Springtide wears the sacred thread of flower waves,
And the splash of twilight is the crimson mark
of Kashi’s dust on heaven’s brow.
The Kaaba of Hind;
This conch-blower’s dell.”