Cricket feels like the second religion of people in India. No matter how different everyone and their opinions are, people do come together when it’s about Cricket.
There is a different vibe of celebration and nationalism in the air especially in the match between India and Pakistan obviously because of life long rivalry and history that both countries hold. Today it won’t be wrong to say that we as a society have very conveniently and jingoistically ruined this religion as well.
India and Pakistan played ICC T20 world cup on 23rd October and India lost against Pakistan by 10 wickets. In every sport, there is a winning and a losing team and whosoever plays well wins. With this people also have different choices and preferences of the teams they support.
This didn’t go well with the hyper-nationalism of the country and a majority of people started to express their patriotism by spewing hate against the players of the Indian Cricket Team, Kashmiri Students, and anyone who didn’t follow their definition of nationalism. A large number of hate crimes were reported just because the Pakistan cricket team played well and won.
A similar incident was reported in Udaipur when a private school teacher’s WhatsApp status was made viral as she posted a celebratory status following Pakistan’s victory over India in a cricket world cup match.
Nafeesa Attari, a school teacher in Neerja Modi private school posted a status with a caption saying, “Jeeeet gayeeee…” After this, the screenshot of her status went viral and was fired from her job and a case was also filed against her under Indian Penal Code section 153 (provocation with intent to cause riot). School chairman Mahendra Sojatia after a meeting of the Sojatia Charitable Trust said that they have decided to terminate her from her job.
After all this humiliation and havoc created just because of a WhatsApp status, Nafeesa Attari later released a video and apologized for the post saying how she didn’t want to hurt anyone’s sentiments. In the same video, she said:
“Someone messaged me and asked whether ‘you support Pakistan’. As the message had emojis and it was an environment of fun, I replied with a ‘Yes. But, it doesn’t mean anywhere that I support Pakistan. I am an Indian and I love India. I love India as much as everyone else does”.
What I fail to understand as a part of this society is how weak is our fabric of nationalism is? Why aren’t we allowed to support any team that played better and won especially Pakistan? Why does that make me less of a nationalist? Why my definition of patriotism can’t be different from than yours?
The question I want to raise is would this have happened if she was supporting any other team like Australia or New Zealand? Sadly, I do have an answer. This is where we have come as a nation.
