After losing Lok Sabha elections in May 2014, ‘Sickulars’ (Seculars) turned themselves into ‘Liberals’. The beauty with this lot is that they are good at coining words, so one can find them conveniently donning a cap of socialist, humanist, intellectual and they use there words according to the government of the day. Generally they are found in academic and cultural institutions; sucking the government funds like parasites. Some of them are also found in media and theatre. Those who are inside the government bodies, fund the outside ones through awards, grants, projects etc. Their networks are nothing less than mafia networks, which works as a perfect ecosystem. They don’t hesitate to criticise Government and Constitution, if it doesn’t works as per their wish and they are not at all averse to violence, even self-inflicting ones, if it serves their purpose. Lying is their first nature and any criticism of them becomes “silencing of liberal voice”. Only they have the access to truth, anything else is always questionable. There close links with Naxals and Missionaries are always accidental or co-incidental.
 Winning the World Cup might just make India's macho and hyper masculine nationalism more intense….. In case India wins the World Cup, the fear is that majoritarian nationalism will become more aggressive.—Ashish Nandy |
Not only India, but various nations across the globe are suffering because of liberals and are also exposing them. “Liberalism and Secularism: One and the Same” (The New York Times, September 2, 2007) wrote Stanley Fish, summarising; “The liberal order does not extinguish religions; it just eviscerates them”, unless they are the religions that display the same respect for the public-private distinction that liberalism depends on and enforces.
In case of India, liberals have bestowed upon themselves with the responsibility of not only dividing but disintegrating India on the lines of cast, religion, economic prosperity etc. As sickulars they could have abused only Hinduism, but as liberal they can abuse everything and anything related to Hindus.
 The reason for attack on Cricket is the belief that the institutions that keep us together are those bequests of the British: the civil service, the army, the railways, the English language, and the game of cricket.—Ramachandra Guha |
I have taken as innocent a subject as sports to demonstrate their modus operandi. Sports has always been used to foster relationship across the world. Olympics are the biggest example of the same. In case of India, the most popular sport is Cricket. Liberals have tried to drag religion, cast in Indian Cricket for a long time. The whole process is highly networked, from NGO to Media, Historians to Researchers, and Nationals to Internationals.
The quote by Ashish Nandy (a Christian who has written “colonialism began in 1947” in “The Intimate Enemy” and at Jaipur Literature Festival said “People of Low Cast are Corrupt”) is not a statement in isolation.
The reason for attack on Cricket is the belief that, “The institutions that keep us together are those bequests of the British: the civil service, the army, the railways, the English language, and the game of cricket.” (Ramachandra Guha).
In the study “Cricket and Indian National Consciousness” conducted by Emily Crick at Institute of Peace and Conflict Studies, New Delhi, in 2007, she concludes “It has been argued in this paper that several elements have contributed to the close links between cricket and Indian national consciousness…..In conclusion it can be argued that cricket both unites and divides the people of India, and which of these happens depends on a variety of factors including the team’s success”.
She quotes Ian McDonald, (“Between Saleem and Shiva: The Politics of Cricket Nationalism in “Globalising India,”): The rise of the BJP brought communalism back to the fore. It has been argued that “due to its place in civil society and as a significant element of popular culture, international one-day and Test cricket offers fertile terrain for the articulation of Hindu chauvinism and communalist ideologies.” And further writes “This rise of Hindu chauvinism was shaped in part by the Hindutva consciousness proposed by the BJP” and goes on to describe riots in India. She emphasise “this study has paid particular attention to the relationship between Muslims and support for the Indian cricket team.”
A year after Emily tried her luck on creating rift between Hindu and Muslim using Cricket, Andrew Stevenson wrote “Caste could play a role in who represents India” in The Sydney Morning Herald on 5 January 2008. In a cheap fashion the author described cast of Indian Cricket players.
The issues was internationalised in a small way earlier, when S Anand's critique of “Lagaan” from a dalit perspective featured as the cover story in the March 2002 issue of the Kathmandu-based magazine Himal. S. Anand, has written provocatively and critically of the Brahmin domination in Cricket, and suggest it is easy to “infer that cricket is a game that best suits Brahmanical tastes and bodies, and that there has been a preponderance of Brahman cricket players at the national level”.
Almost, always to buttress the argument of religion and cast bias, often the religion and cast of players is wrongly attributed. Complete disregard to the form and capability of the player are the foundation of these arguments.
Emily mentions in her study that Cricket in “Bombay was organized along communal lines” and “The Quadrangular tournaments in Bombay consisted of English, Hindu, Parsi, and Muslim teams, also said that they developed into the Pentangular – the fifth team being known as ‘All the Rest,’ comprising Indian Christians, Buddhists and Jews.” What she doesn’t mention is the apartheid practised by White Christians.
Ramchandra Guha’s paper “Cricket and Colonial Politics In India” mentions: “In the 1930s, for example, when a number of promising Indian Catholic cricketers were unable to find a place anywhere, the Hindu Gymkhana asked for the Europeans to reconstitute themselves as a ‘Christian eleven, retaining the convenient quadrangular format. The Bombay Gymkhana was adamant; although it had chosen Australians in the past, it would not even consider the famous black Trinidadian cricketer, Learie Constantine (who toured India in 1934), let alone Christians of Indian origin. This was a clearly a question of status: ‘white Brahmins of the Bombay Gymkhana (were) afraid of losing their caste by enlisting non-Europeans in the European ranks’.
This led to the formation of the 'Rest’ and the conversion of the tournament into a Pentangular, as a residual category, the ‘Rest’ could afford to be inclusive in its cricket eleven and included, at different times, Indian Roman Catholics, Protestants and Syrian Christians.
At the same time, Cricket worked as a unifying factor not only between Hindu and Muslim, but also within Hindus. Ramchandra Guha has also noted about the player Baloo in the same paper.
The story goes, Baloo was from lower cast, and worked as a servant in Poona Gymkhana and used to bowl to Britishers. The Brahmins of the Deccan Gymkhana recruited Baloo into their team. Baloo was then followed by his younger brothers, Shivram, Ganpat and Vithal, who were all gifted cricketers.
Baloo was never appointed as the team’s captain. In 1913, when M. D. Pai was appointed captain and was being felicitated at a public function for the same, he said, the honour of captainship should have been given to his friend Mr. Baloo, for being the most senior and experienced player in the team.
Finally, Gymkhana appointed Baloo as the vice-captain of the team.Three years later, Baloo's younger brother, Vithal, was officially appointed as the Captain. Under his leadership, the Hindus won the Quadrangular tournament. At the end of the final game against the Europeans, a seething mass of humanity invaded the field and carried the Hindu captain in triumph to the pavilion…Untouchability was forgotten.
One must recall here the hatred of white Christians towards Black & Brown Christians demonstrated on the field now and then during football matches involving Europeans and American teams.
One finds, beyond “cast” there is an “economic” angle also in abusing Cricket. Ramachandra Guha has also noted that “India will never be a tiger (in terms of economic power) to match the other Asian tigers (e.g. South Korea, Malaysia). India ranks about 150 in the World Development Report, just below Namibia and above Haiti. It is the cricketers and they alone, who are asked to redeem these failures, to make one forget, at least temporarily, the harsh realities of endemic poverty and corrupt and brutal politicians.”
Now under the leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi India becoming an economic power is a reality, and hence the liberals have decided to attack Cricket. According to them, Cricket binds India and poor performance in Cricket may not disintegrate India but might help vitiate the atmosphere (instigated by liberals) in India on the lines of Cast, Religion and Region, which in turn will impact the economic growth of India.
India is finally out of Cricket World Cup Final and liberals like Ashish Nandy will be celebrating the same. But now the times have change and such liberals will fail in implementing their evil plans.
Sandeep Singh (The writer writes a weekly column “Narendra Modi & CXO Leadership” on www.swastik.net.i)
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