[In 1982, Imran Khan, the captain of the Pakistani cricket team who is now Pakistan’s prime minister, suggested that claims over Kashmir could be settled by cricket. In June 1999, the two countries’ teams met on a grassy oval in Britain while their armies fired at each other in a high-altitude conflict in the mountains of Kashmir.]
By Gerry Shih
In Indian-controlled Kashmir, a
restive majority-Muslim region on the India-Pakistan border claimed by both
countries, police raided a hostel where medical students were seen cheering for
Pakistan and opened an anti-terrorism investigation, local media reported. In Uttar Pradesh, a state in
northeastern India, seven people were detained on suspicion of sedition, state
officials and police announced. Five were arrested.
“Some anti-social elements used
indecent words against the Indian team,” the office of Uttar Pradesh Chief
Minister Yogi Adityanath said in a statement.
India vs. Pakistan cricket has
always been about more than runs and wickets. Since the countries first faced
off in 1952, each match has been fanned by nationalist passions and framed by
the history of one of the world’s most dangerous and long-running geopolitical
feuds. Pakistan is majority-Muslim, and India is majority-Hindu.
This is not the first time that
Indian citizens have landed in trouble for supporting the other side: Fifteen
men in central India faced sedition
charges for shouting pro-Pakistan slogans during a cricket final in
2017.
But for many Indians, the harsh
measures taken this week by authorities — spanning several states and
involving, for the first time, an anti-terrorism legal provision — reinforced
concerns about the drift of a country they long believed to be superior to
Pakistan because of its liberal democratic values, its sense of national
confidence, and, of course, its prowess in cricket.
“We used to laugh at the Pakistanis
for taking losses badly, looking at everything in Hindu-Muslim terms and seeing
everything as about national honor,” said Shekhar Gupta, a veteran Indian
journalist and founder of the online publication ThePrint.
But now, police in different Indian
states are engaging in displays of “competitive nationalism,” Gupta grumbled.
“It’s a race to the bottom,” he said. “We’re held to ransom now by awful
politics.”
After news of the detentions spread
this week, a leading newspaper, the Indian Express, criticized government officials for scoring a
“self-goal [against] democracy.” A former chief economic adviser to the Indian
government, Kaushik Basu, warned that the arrests did “vastly greater damage” to
India’s national standing than the cheering that was being discouraged.
Mohammad Shaban Ganie, the father
of a 21-year-old student who was arrested in Uttar Pradesh, said even if his
son did not go to jail, the criminal record would prove costly.
“This will ruin his career and
life,” Ganie said. “Even if it’s a crime, these kids should be given a warning
and pardoned. It’s just a game.”
When the British departed South
Asia in 1947, they left behind two states — India and Pakistan, which were
created amid great sectarian violence from what was once the nation of India
alone — and an open question over the fate of contested Kashmir that remains
unresolved after three wars between the two countries. The British also left
behind a shared obsession with cricket, another arena in the enduring
cross-border struggle.
In 1982, Imran Khan, the captain of
the Pakistani cricket team who is now Pakistan’s prime minister, suggested that
claims over Kashmir could be settled by cricket. In June 1999, the two
countries’ teams met on a grassy oval in Britain while their armies fired at
each other in a high-altitude conflict in the mountains of Kashmir.
Today, Kashmir is again a point of
volatility in bilateral relations. In February 2019, a Pakistan-based terrorism
outfit carried out a suicide attack in India-controlled Kashmir that killed
40 Indian soldiers, prompting a retaliatory airstrike from India and
accusations that the terrorists’ plot was abetted by the Pakistani state. In
August that year, India revoked Kashmir’s semiautonomous status in the name of
stabilizing the region, a move that overturned a decades-old status quo and
incensed Pakistan.
Since then, flights and trade have
been suspended between the two countries. Kashmiri militants sympathetic to
Pakistan have continued to carry out attacks against Indian civilians and soldiers. As hype
surrounding the Sunday match intensified, an Indian cabinet minister suggested
that the game be canceled, given the border tensions.
Enmity along the heavily
militarized border did not always translate into the world of cricket.
In 1999, after the two governments
conducted nuclear tests, Indian spectators gave the Pakistani team a standing
ovation after the visitors clinched a thriller in Chennai. When the Indian team
embarked on a rare tour of Pakistan in 2004, families in Lahore offered beds to
Indian fans who couldn’t book a hotel, and fans mobbed Indian players as
celebrities, said Syed Talat Hussain, a Pakistani political commentator.
Nikesh Rughani, a cricket
commentator for the BBC who produced a podcast series interviewing one retired
Indian player and one Pakistani player in each episode, said the athletes often
enjoyed a deep bond. Once, in the 1980s, the two teams chased each other
through a Bangalore hotel, throwing colored powder to celebrate the Indian
festival of Holi, the players recounted to Rughani.
“The politics and social media seem
to cause all this divide, when really, most people on the ground and the
players seem to get on like a house on fire,” Rughani said.
After India’s defeat this week,
some of the old divisions resurfaced. Pakistan’s interior minister claimed a
victory for Islam; Indian social media users hurled abuse at the Indian team’s
only Muslim player, Mohammad Shami, prompting the Indian cricket legend Sachin
Tendulkar to come to his defense.
But in both countries, many fans
seized on something else: a video of Virat Kohli, the Indian captain, putting a
hand on the back of his Pakistani counterpart, Mohammad Rizwan, to offer his
congratulations.
In an op-ed published on the Indian
website scroll.in, Sana
Mir, a former captain of the Pakistani women’s team, said the gesture was
exactly what made the Indian team great.
“It shows a lot of security
within,” she wrote. “It means they have a lot of confidence to bounce back.”
Shams Irfan in Srinagar, India,
contributed to this report.
Read more:
In Kashmir, militants target minority killings, stoking fears
of a return to a violent past
India revokes Kashmir’s special status, putting tense region on
edge
Modi vows action after dozens die in deadliest attack in
Indian-held Kashmir in 3 decades
