The more we allow parochial thinking to lead us, the more
divided our world will be.
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| Shoaib Malik and Sania Mirza Picture Courtesy: Internet |
The Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) and Bharatiya
Janata Party (BJP) yesterday opposed tennis star Sania Mirza’s appointment as
Ambassador of the newly-formed state of Telangana. Subramaniam Swamy, the
redoubtable BJP leader, was quoted in the papers as saying: “I agree with the
BJP leaders that when people have divided loyalties, we cannot expect them to
represent the country or any part of the country faithfully. So, the BJP stand
is well taken.” Sania came under attack from VHP and BJP because she is married
to Pakistani cricketer Shoaib Malik. In fact, Telangana BJP leader K.Laxman
called Sania “Pakistan’s daughter-in-law”.
Such thinking is gut-wrenching and numbing.
Sania is a successful sportsperson. And Malik is another successful
sportsperson. The two decide to marry. Where does, and why should, nationality
play any role in this? Mercifully, both belong to the same religion. Else the
self-styled mandarins may have had added more logs to the fire.
Interestingly, in October 2009, when former
Pakistani pacer Wasim Akram’s wife, Huma, was being flown from Lahore to
Singapore in an air ambulance for treatment for renal failure, she developed
complications when they were overflying Chennai. An emergency landing was
mandated. And doctors at Apollo Hospitals, Chennai, treated her for a few days,
before she passed away on October 25, 2009. Dr.Venkataraman, the doctor who
treated Huma, is a Hindu. As are several of the fans who gathered outside
Apollo Hospitals that morning to show their support for Akram and condole his
loss. About a decade earlier, fans at the M.A.Chidambaram Stadium in Chepauk,
in Chennai, had given Akram a standing ovation, after he led Pakistan to a
memorable win in a closely-fought Test Match.
So, in reality, the common folks, people like
you and me, don’t ever get swayed by religion or by partisan thinking. Humanity
and the spirit of sport – of letting the best team or player win – rules higher
in our minds than anything else. Even so, the games politicians play, often for
petty gains or even for demonstrating one-upmanship, are divisive. Not only
should we be wary of them, we must express our secular and objective views on all
such occasions.
There’s an ad playing on TV promoting the 2014
season of KBC. It shows how a boy from a Hindu family, calls his Muslim neighbor,
with whom his family has been having a rift, to ask for the meaning of “as-salaam-alay-kum”
using the phone-a-friend option. He gets the right answer and wins the prize
money. The jingle in the background goes somewhat like this: “Jab Lahu Ek Ho, To Rang Kaise Do?”
meaning, “When the blood is the same, how can it have two colors?”. I believe
that the ad’s, and the jingle’s, message is something we must all hold dear in
all contexts. We are just one world, one people. We have the same blood in us.
The color of our skin may be different, as may be our national flags, or our
religious affiliations. Even so, we have the same feelings as another in any
given situation – all of us have the ability to love and be compassionate; and
all of us feel pain when we lose someone we love. So, for every seed of hatred
and divisiveness that is sown, let’s plant a grove for humanity. As Bob Marley (1945~1981),
the Jamaican reggae singer, famously said, “The people who were
trying to make this world worse are not taking the day off. Why should I?”
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