Taking the trendy knee

Indian cricketers are hypocrites for kneeling for American civil rights while turning their backs on intolerance in their own country

India captain Virat Kohli cuts a dejected figure following his side's 10 wicket defeat to Pakistan. Michael Steele, via Getty

Cricket is the one religion everyone on the subcontinent practices. On Sunday, 24 October, both nuclear-armed countries, hostile to one another for decades, ground more or less to a halt to watch the India-Pakistan match, part of the T20 World Cup. The game was just about to begin when my mother asked me and my siblings to stay away from social media and refrain from posting anything about the match on twitter. ‘Whatever you write, even if it’s praising India,  it will be used against you,’ she said. This sentiment resonates in most Muslim households in the country.

An India-Pakistan match has always been the biggest test of patriotism for the cricket-loving among India’s 200 million Muslims who are accused of being more loyal to their neighbouring Islamic republic by the right wing ecosystem and its holier-than-thou patriots.  I do not remember a single match between the two countries when well-meaning friends did not teasingly ask us, “So which team are you supporting today?”

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As kids, we were subjected to this question from our school friends, decades later nothing has changed. My niece was asked the same question by her friends. All in good fun, of course.

This all got worse on Sunday, when Pakistan outplayed India and defeated it, winning by ten wickets. It was one of the worst performances by the Indian cricket team in years (except for the amazing half-century by captain Virat Kohli). Hindu nationalists in the country found their fall guy: Muslim cricketer Mohd Shami. Messages to and about Shami on social media were Indian bigotry at its worst: He was hounded, humiliated, and asked if he had sold his soul to Pakistan. Some asked if he deliberately gave runs to the Pakistani team; others accused him of being a traitor and an anti-national. The invective flooded his social media. And as Shami was being abused virtually, Kashmiri Muslim students in the northern state of Punjab were allegedly attacked physically.

Two of India’s leading cricketers-turned-commentators,  Gautam Gambhir and Virendra Sehwag, posted dog-whistle tweets slyly accusing Muslims of setting off firecrackers in celebration of Pakistan’s victory. All without a shred of evidence, of course. When my brother and I tweeted last night, our timeline was inundated with replies asking whether I was enjoying the victory of my brothers in Pakistan. This was mainstream India, these were normal people who on an ordinary day would be teaching civility to their children. 

Ironically, all this transpired on a day when the Indian cricket team took a knee just before the match began. And why? In honor of American social justice movement Black Lives Matter, almost two years late. Like other Indian celebrities, who wear the hashtag #BlacklivesMatter as a fashion accessory, the Indian cricket knelt against racism as Muslims in India are being maimed and humiliated and farmers are being persecuted and killed while protesting government tyranny.  The team did not come to the defence of its own player, Shami, who was left alone to defend himself. One former player, Indian cricketer Irfan Pathan, also a Muslim, bravely defended Shami, in contrast to his peers’ nauseating silence: Monday evening, he tweeted, “Even when I was a part of India versus Pakistan battles on the field where we have lost but never been told to go to Pakistan! I am talking about the India of few years back. This crap needs to stop #Shami”

It’s true: the practice of scapegoating a single Muslim cricketer for the performance of the entire team is comparatively recent. Indian cricket captain Virat Kohli and his mentor M.S.Dhoni, two stellar players, were broadcast sharing warm moments with the Pakistani cricket team. But both have been silent, not just about the attack on Shami, but about the vicious political climate of this country. Taking a knee is a powerful symbol when public figures stand against brazen oppression. In 2016, American football star Colin Kaepernick knelt before the national anthem because he said he could not take pride in the anthem of a country that oppressed black people. It was a strong statement, and it forced others in the public eye to re-evaluate and question their own commitment to fairness and justice. But when the Indian cricket team took a knee at the behest of the Cricket administration in India, their hypocrisy was overwhelming. Jay Shah, the Secretary of the Board of Control of Cricket in India, the richest cricketing body in the world—happens to be the son of the Home Minister of India, Amit Shah. The elder Shah has been responsible for introducing laws that reduce Muslims to the second-class citizens and was behind bars in 2010 on charges of murder, extortion, and kidnapping.

The controversy over Indian cricketers taking a knee for civil rights in America gets more hypocritical. Some of India’s greatest cricketing icons denounced a solidarity movement between international activists and the farmers protests last year. . India’s own God of Cricket, Sachin Tendulkar, lashed out at the activists: his tweet was repeated verbatim by other cricketers, calling the activists’s support of the farmers in India an attempt to destabilise the sovereignty of the country.

I suppose we can hope that the Indian cricket team grows a spine and takes a knee for its own colleague. That would be the biggest trophy the team can bring home: its own neglected humanity.