Reactions to India’s defeat to Pakistan t20 world cup are truly extraordinary. It seems that the curtains have suddenly fallen and all our cracks have been exposed to the world. Simply put, we Indians have been fooling ourselves in the glare of the world.
India were completely out in this match. It was a class act by Pakistan and yes, a humiliating defeat for India. But some of the reactions were shocking.
There was an atmosphere of anger and ridicule about the Indian team, its captain and coach, team selection, strategy etc. It is on expected lines and I don’t think any Indian cricketer would have been surprised. Indian fans are passionate and passion cuts both ways.
That’s how it is, and it doesn’t matter whether it’s fair or unfair.
And the India-Pakistan match sparks a very high level of passion. This is also natural. Those who post things like “whatever the result, let cricket be the winner” on social media, a day before the India-Pakistan match, are worse than sanity. They are just plain tedious.
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Before the Ashes series, no one had ever heard an Englishman or an Australian say these things, largely just because they would laugh out of the room. And England has not fought four wars with Australia, nor has it suffered decades of low-intensity conflict, planned and financed by Australia, or successive decades. So let’s embrace the facts and keep our holy-to-you statements to ourselves.
The average Indian cricket fan goes sky high on the cricket team and billions of dollars of corporate money lures him. But when the criticism that comes from despair disregards the norms of civility and reason, it becomes worrisome. For example, to exclude Mohammed Shami after the match and question his commitment to being a Muslim is outright contempt. There is also the wild outrage that shows that the world has ended as India lost a match to Pakistan.
But what is really strange is how some people took the defeat of the Indian cricket team as the defeat of Narendra Modi and glorified it positively. Clearly India is losing a game, proves the worst skepticism of all about Modi.
Soon after Pakistan’s 10-wicket win, Congress’ national media coordinator Radhika Khera posted a tweet in Hindi, which roughly translates to “What, bhakt? how is the taste? Have you managed to humiliate yourself?” It was retweeted over 5,500 times and garnered over 4,000 likes.
She has since claimed that the tweet had nothing to do with cricket, but did not reveal what she was actually referring to, late at night, when almost the only topic of discussion on all Indian media was defeat.
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24 hours before the match, Indian social media was flooded with posts that read, “It’s just a game. Don’t mix politics with sports.”
Yet, minutes after the end of the match, some of these people were posting pictures of Virat Kohli congratulating Pakistan captain Babar Azam with the caption “We have won.” Who are these “we”? And is this the first international cricket match you have ever seen? It is a custom in cricket that the captain of the fielding team congratulates the batsmen after scoring the winning run.
Azam’s jersey number is 56. So joking memes were shared that it was a “Pakistani conspiracy” to shame Modi’s “56-inch chest”. I am sure Lashkar-e-Taiba found this hilarious.
Conversely, if India had won the match, would these people have condemned this victory as “Hindu communalism”?
All sorts of completely unrelated issues were brought up. A gentleman, who has clearly taken the hard work on his Facebook post, wrote: “Captain Kohli acted like a worried husband, unable to see the full moon on a Badal Karva Chauth night. Looking at their top-order batsmen who ‘sharpened’ against fast bowling by not scoring many runs.
Then, “Bad pun! Blame it on the frustration of having so many firecrackers that went ‘without bursting’!”
Many may find the reference to the North Indian Hindu festival of Karva Chauth completely unnecessary and seemingly-ridiculous. And what does the ban on crackers have to do with cricket matches during Diwali? And I repeat, these are the people who were posting “it’s just a game”.
The joy was increased by the fact that Akshay Kumar, seen as a Modi supporter, was at the stadium. One idiot wrote, “Before the start of today’s T20 match, I saw ‘Khiladi’ Kumar in the gallery.” “The least that the Indian coach could have done to win today was to include him in the playing XI. He must have known the drill. This is totally an ad hominem attack (doesn’t Akshay Kumar have the right to watch India’s match?)
From crude ridicule at “bhakts” to empty intellectualism to establish some sort of “liberal” credence as India lost.
Where is cricket in all this?
A frequent claim for social media “liberals” has been that they are intellectually superior to “IT cell trolls”. But they have just revealed how petty and vicious they are. It is shameful that they deliberately celebrate defeat, are more cruel to the Indian team than the “illiterate” fans they ridicule daily, and consider it a defeat for India as a nation.
Indians who celebrate their team’s game defeat to a democratically elected government at Waterloo must indeed have a strange and self-loathing “idea of India”.
What he has done is a tasteless comedy act where the world laughs at you, not you.
The author is a former editor of ‘Financial Express’ and founder-editor of ‘Open’ and ‘Swarajya’ magazines. Views expressed are personal.
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