Shadows Across the Playing Field

by Shashi Tharoor

  It’s a lovely story to illustrate the extent and reach of the passion for India’s real national sport (despite all the general knowledge quiz books which instruct students that India’s national sport is hockey, the marketplace has voted decisively for cricket). But that is not the only reason I cite it here. Readers may have noticed that in reproducing the tale, I omitted the name of the cricket-chauvinist camel driver. Mr Park does not make much of this, but it was Amin Khan. This committed fan of the national team, with his ‘disparaging remarks’ about the players from across the border, is a Muslim.

  It should hardly be worth mentioning. After all, some 14 per cent of our population follows both the Islamic faith and the fortunes of our national team. But it is a sad commentary on our times that the loyalty of Indian Muslims to India’s cricketing success should have been questioned by certain elements in our country. It has long been one of the favourite complaints of the Hindutva brigade that Indian Muslims set off firecrackers whenever the Indian team loses to Pakistan. This is one of those ‘urban legends’ that acquires mythic proportions in the retelling, even though the evidence for the charge is both sparse and anecdotal. Certainly some Muslims may have behaved in this way, but the percentage of the community they represent is minuscule. The camel driver, it is clear, would have been astonished at such conduct: even he, illiterate and poor, knows where his home is, and therefore where his loyalties lie.

  But then those who identify the nation with a specific religion would themselves not expect devotees of other faiths to share their feelings. The unseemly triumphalism of Hindu zealots after India’s victories over Pakistan is disagreeable precisely because it takes on sectarian, rather than nationalist, overtones. And then reports come in – perhaps exaggerated – of clashes between Hindu and Muslim groups within India in the aftermath of some cricket matches with Pakistan. What on earth, I wondered, would prompt petty bigots (on both sides) to turn a moment of national sporting celebration into a communal conflict?

  Cricket in independent India has always been exempt from the contagion of communalism. Despite the religious basis of Partition, Indian cricket teams always featured players of every religious persuasion. Three of the country’s most distinguished and successful captains – Ghulam Ahmed, Mansur Ali Khan Pataudi and Mohammad Azharuddin – were Muslims, as was our best-ever wicketkeeper, Syed Kirmani. Perhaps more important, so were two of the most popular cricketers ever to play for the country, Abbas Ali Baig and Salim Durrani. Who can forget the excitement stirred by Baig’s dream debut in England in 1959, when he was conscripted out of Oxford University by an Indian team in the doldrums and promptly hit a century both in his first tour match and on his Test debut? Or that magical moment when, as Baig walked back to the pavilion in Bombay after a brilliant 50 against Australia, an anonymous lovely ran out and spontaneously greeted him with an admiring (and scandalously public) kiss? The episode is part of national lore; it has been immortalised in Salman Rushdie’s novel The Moor’s Last Sigh. Who cared then, in those innocent 1960s, that Baig was Muslim and his admirer Hindu? Who in the screaming crowds that welcomed his appearance thought of Salim Durrani’s religion when they cheered themselves hoarse over that green-eyed inconsistent genius with the brooding movie-star looks? I will never forget the outrage that swept the country when he was dropped from the national team during an England tour in 1972; signs declaring ‘No Durrani No Test’ proliferated like nukes. I do not believe there have been two more beloved Indian cricketers in the last fifty years than Baig and Durrani — and their religion had nothing to do with it.

  Which is as it should be. Apart from the great Muslim players I mentioned, India has been captained by Christians (Vijay Hazare and Chandu Borde), Parsis (Polly Umrigar and Nari Contractor), and a Sikh (Bishen Singh Bedi). Mohammad Kaif captained the national youth team to spectacular success a few years ago. Cricketing ability and sporting leadership have nothing to do with the image of your Maker you raise (or fold) your palms to in worship. When India wins (or loses), all of India wins (or loses). When I celebrate an Indian cricketing triumph I am celebrating the pluralism of its secular democracy, so well reflected in its teams.

  So when Irfan Pathan beamed that dazzling smile after taking yet another wicket for the India he so proudly represented on his first tour of Pakistan, he filled my heart with more than cricketing pride. He reminded me that he represents a country where it is possible for a (then) 19-year-old from a beleagured minority to ascend to the peak of the nation’s sporting pantheon; and even more that he represents an idea, an immortal Indian idea, that our country is large enough and diverse enough to embrace everyone who chooses to belong to it, whatever be their caste, creed, colour, costume or custom. This is an idea that no one, however well-connected politically, has the right to deny. The pluralist palimpsest of Indianness can never be diminished by the killers of Gujarati Muslims and the evil men who incited them. Irfan Pathan is their standing, leaping, glorious repudiation.

  Ironically the Hindu chauvinists themselves have sought to capitalize on the success of India’s Muslim cricketers. The Shiv Sena’s Bal Thackeray, for instance, publicly praised Zaheer Khan for a sharp putdown of a Pakistani interviewer who had asked him how he felt as a Muslim playing for India; Zaheer retorted that India was his country, it had made him who he was, and he was as proud of playing for it as any Hindu player. Thackeray approvingly endorsed Zaheer as a ‘true Indian Muslim’. The comment was nauseatingly patronising, the equivalent of an anti-Semite bestowing the label of ‘good Jew’. Are we now, in the enlightened first decade of the twenty-first century, to accept the notion that the leader of a Hinduchauvinist political party is entitled to certify who is, or is not, a ‘true Indian Muslim’? The notion is as offensive as it is unsustainable. I admire Zaheer’s forthright defence of his birthright no less than Thackeray does. But my point is precisely that an Indian Muslim should be free to define his Muslimness as he sees fit (in Irfan’s case, with overt expressions of his piety, hardly surprising in a muezzin’s son) without in any way diminishing his claim to Indianness. An Indian Muslim is simply that: an Indian and a Muslim. It is not for Mr Thackeray and his ilk to determine what makes him a ‘true Indian Muslim’. The degradation of public discourse that has accompanied the rise of religious nativism in our country since the late 1980s must not be allowed to contaminate our national sport.

  India versus Pakistan is a contest between two countries, not two communities within India. It is not the Pentangular revived; India has never fielded an all-Hindu team, and even Islamic Pakistan these days cannot do without a Hindu leg-spinner. Coverage of these matches in communal terms is as reprehensible as covering them through military metaphors, a sin of which Indian and Pakistani journalists alike have been guilty. The tendency to see these matches as warfare by proxy is equally unfortunate. Cricket is a sport; a cricket team represents a country, it does not symbolize it. To ask cricket to bear a larger burden than any other national endeavour is palpably unfair.

  This essay has been written mostly during a period of peace and mutual understanding between India and Pakistan, culminating in the tragic horror of the terrorist assault by Pakistani gunmen on Mumbai. Just as there is no certitude that periods of peace will ever last, so too it is to be hoped that the period of tension with which 2009 has begun will itself ebb. If it does, cricket might gradually achieve a more reasonable place in the national discourse between the two countries. Many liberals on both sides of the border hope that one day India and Pakistan will enjoy relations comparable to those between the United States and Canada – with open borders, shared culture and entertainment, free trade, even frequent migration. Healthy sporting competition would then be part of a healthy overall relationship; cricket matches between the two countries, followed with good-natured partisanship rather than religiously-inspired passion, would be the centerpiece of the new era. Sadly, I do not expect to see that kind of transformation in my lifetime. But it is something to hope for, and to look forwa
rd to, one day.

  __________________

  1. Omar Noman, Pride and Passion: An Exhilarating Half Century of Cricket in Pakistan (Karachi, Oxford, 1998), p 71.

  2. Ramachandra Guha, A Corner of a Foreign Field (Picador, London, 2002) p. 389.

  3. Quoted in Guha, Foreign Field, p. 407.

  4 . Guha, Foreign Field, p 420.

  rivalry and diplomacy

  Shashi Tharoor

  t

  ravelling in the Maharaja of Gwalior’s Bentley, Douglas Jardine scanned the jungle, rifle at the ready, his piercing eyes searching for the elusive prize of a tiger. Jardine was captain of the MCC team on a four-month tour of India in the winter of 1933-34. He had opted out of MCC’s team in some of its side matches in search of big game, having shot a lion as guest of the Jam Sahib of Nawanagar and a bear when invited by the Maharaja of Datia. He had responded to the Maharaja of Patiala’s hospitality by insisting on including the Yuvraj (heir) of Patiala, an MCC member, in one of MCC’s side matches. In doing so Jardine had spurned the advice of the British Viceroy who wanted the MCC side to project Britain’s imperial authority against the tide of anti-colonial agitation led by Mahatma Gandhi. As a member of Britain’s social elite, Jardine was comfortable with the Indian princes who dominated cricket in India at the time.

  Jardine was the most hated man in Australia. The MCC’s Bodyline series the previous year had seen England-Australia relations plummet to an all-time nadir at the public level. The scars of this series remain embedded in the national psyche of both countries eighty years later. Jardine was seen in Australia – and even by some in England – as the villain of the piece. He had, in attempting to curb Bradman’s stupendous batting, unleashed a fast-bowling barrage by Harold Larwood, William Voce and Bill Bowes aimed at the Australian batsmen’s head and body that was within the laws but against the spirit of the game. Ugly scenes had taken place on the field and in the stands, with the Australian press mounting a vitriolic campaign against Jardine’s tactics. Only desperate measures by England’s establishment had prevented a breach in cricketing and public relations between the two countries. Cricket had seen, for the first time, nations and their public influenced by a contentious series.

  The Australian reaction against Jardine was as much due to his haughty, condescending demeanour while leading the MCC team as to his Bodyline strategy. Jardine had been to Winchester, the elite English public school, had captained Oxford University and Surrey, before being appointed to lead the MCC team to Australia. He belonged to the upper-class social elite of British society and invariably projected a superior image not only to his fellow professionals but also towards the cloth-capped Australian public whom he silently despised as socially inferior, the upstart new generation of emigrant convicts. Jardine regularly wore his Harlequin cap when captaining Surrey and England and made no attempt to soften the social divide between the ‘imperialist’ Englishman and the ‘plebeian’ Australian. In India, Jardine was patronizing towards the ‘natives’ and seemingly at ease with the princely elite of the land.

  Jardine had returned to England from Australia in 1933 to a heroic welcome laced with criticism for his cricketing tactics in some influential British quarters. In India, where Jardine had spent his youth, he set out to soften his personal image – not by changing his spots, but by camouflaging them. He represented the British imperialist power in India and was out to confirm English superiority against an Indian team that was growing in stature with stalwarts like C.K. Nayudu, Wazir Ali, Amar Singh, Amarnath and Mohammad Nissar. Jardine did not use bodyline in India except when one or two of the natives became tiresomely obdurate. He would then unleash his fast bowler Nobby Clark to bowl bodyline. Socially, Jardine cut a benign but patrician figure at receptions and dinners that he attended in India. He was especially indulgent towards his fellow elite in India, the maharajas, with whom he pursued his passion for big-game hunting, living in their sumptuous palaces and scouring the jungles in their specially converted Bentleys and Rolls Royces for shikar. To his chagrin, Jardine failed to bag a tiger on his extensive tour of India and returned home with the skinned trophies of a lion, a bear and a panther!

  Cricket deeply affects national political and social attitudes. Perhaps because cricket more than any other team sport, like football, hockey or rugby, is played over longer periods in which the character and attitudes of the teams and its players are scrutinized minutely by the media and the public. In cricket, the national and social attitudes of a team are played out on a larger canvas, leaving a deeper imprint on the psyche of a people. Cricket, therefore, has the capacity to build or damage bridges between nations and across social divisions within nations. The Bodyline Tour was the first example of this phenomenon. Thirty years later, the D’Oliviera affair had a profound impact in turning Britain’s divided attitude towards Apartheid into a virtually unanimous condemnation of South Africa’s Apartheid policies. After Independence, India and Pakistan began their cricketing contests in an atmosphere of deep political hostility that saw three wars between these newly sovereign nations. Cricket had the capacity to soften or aggravate the public hostility that followed in their wake.

  Sir John Major describes the deep impact of cricket on peoples’ minds in the following extract from his superb anthology of English cricket More than a Game. Referring to the West Indies’ triumphant tour of England in 1950, Sir John Major states:

  This is a classic illustration of the power of cricket. It can uplift whole communities – whole nations even – or cast them down. And because cricket is played largely in the mind and reflects the society from which cricketers spring, it can imprint the character of that nation indelibly upon the minds of those who watch the way in which a national team plays.

  During the Raj cricket was not yet a sport with a mass public following, even though interest in supporting communal teams like the Hindus, Parsis, Muslims and Europeans was beginning to grow in the port cities of Bombay, Madras, Karachi and Calcutta at the turn of the century. Until the end of the Second World War, cricket remained the preserve of the British Raj and its surrogates – the princely states. For instance, Col. C.K. Nayudu and Mushtaq Ali played for the Maharaja of Indore (Holkar); Major Wazir Ali was employed by the Nawab of Bhopal. The Maharaja of Baroda engaged among others Vijay Hazare and Gul Mohammad in his team and at one time the cricket playing maharajas of Patiala employed eight white Australian and English first-class players in their team. Indian touring teams to England were invariably led by ruling princes – the Maharaja of Porbandar led the 1932 Indian team to England, the Maharaja of Vizianagram captained the team to England in 1936, and immediately after World War II the Nawab of Pataudi was captain in 1946. Except for Pataudi, the venerable ruling princes were barely club-level cricketers who displaced worthy captaincy candidates like C.K. Nayudu and Vijay Merchant. The selection of the princes reflected the British political policy of stemming the proindependence groundswell through the favoured feudal aristocracy.

  The social divide between several layers of Indian society – the princes, the educated middle class and the common man – was an important element of Indian cricket. The British had brought cricket to India in the late eighteenth century and indigenous cricket began to take root, initially in the port cities. The princes then carried the baton inland into their respective domains. The Parsis – essentially middle-class professional and business folk – were the first to organize themselves into a cricketing unit. They began playing in Parsi gymkhanas (clubs) with growing accomplishment. The Parsis sent their teams to England in 1880 and 1888. They were followed by the Hindus and later by the Muslims and Christians who began playing cricket in their respective gymkhanas. These community teams began attracting a local following, and some titanic battles were played between the Hindu and Parsi gymkhanas – and later between Hindus and Muslims – until they began challenging European teams who, at their best, had a sprinkling of Oxford and Cambridge Blues, a few county players and the public school-ed
ucated officer class of English players who were serving the Raj in India.

  The basic social divide was symbolized by caste differences mainly in the Hindu community, where lower caste Hindus were not initially included in the Hindu gymkhana teams. The most glaring example of this social divide related to the schedule caste Hindu, Palwankar Baloo, who is probably the finest bowler ever produced by India. Baloo was a left-arm slow medium bowler whose extraordinary wicket-taking exploits became a legend in indigenous cricketing circles. Knowledgeable cricketers consider Baloo to have been the equal of S.F. Barnes, F.R. Spofforth and Wilfred Rhodes. Yet for many years, employed by the English as a groundsman and net bowler, Baloo could not represent the Hindus because the orthodox Hindus were against his inclusion. When political and cricketing pressure built up to make his selection unavoidable, Baloo was not allowed to take lunch or tea in the Hindu dressing room. The other communities – Muslim, Parsi or Christian – had fewer inhibitions, but it was evident that the richer, educated elite was reluctant to admit the common man into the fold. For instance, in the All-India team that toured England in 1911, all three Muslim players came from Aligarh University, the elite Muslim educational institution that catered to the privileged class. Only the princes had no inhibitions of caste, playing underprivileged cricketers to bolster their respective teams. Thus the princes gladly employed able cricketers as butlers, clerks, gardeners and simply hangers-on to provide them with a living.