L'affaire Afridi

L’affaire Afridi

Let us not deceive ourselves. There has been an element of politics in sport from the days of the Grecian Olympics and the Roman Empire. The marathon race has a military origin; the gladiators in Rome fought to the death in front of nobles that the Caesar would get together in an exhibition of strength. The British Empire was built on playing fields of Eton. Much later, Hitler was obnoxious at the Berlin Olympics in 1936, when he refused to hand over the medal to Jesse Owens; the South Africans practiced apartheid even in sport. The US led a boycott of the Moscow Olympics in 1980 and the Eastern Bloc retaliated at the Los Angeles games in 1984. There is macho sub-nationalism in the Scotland-England soccer matches and to a larger extent in the Ashes series. We ourselves have been practicing cricket diplomacy since 1977. Besides, the status of India Pakistan relations being what they are, let us not pretend that cricket matches between the two countries are just that.

Shahid Afridi made a brave attempt to try to keep politics out of the game when at the end of the India Pakistan semi-final match he spoke with dignity and grace. India cheered him. He went a step further upon returning to Pakistan when he admonished the press corps for injecting politics into the game. Those of us who saw the interview applauded him again. Twenty four hours later he recanted to Samaa TV. It was no longer about cricket, Afridi had injected Allah into the game and pronounced that Pakistan and India could never be friends. Yet ultimately this was not about Afridi the man said but the circumstances that made his say this.

This reaction was possibly to Gautam Gambhir’s silly comment that he dedicated the Indian victory to Mumbai 26/11. This meant terrorism, which meant Lashkar e Tayyaba which ultimately meant Hafeez Saeed. This was not going to be acceptable to some in Pakistan. Since then there has been a hyper twitter and a hyper Pak press with churlish articles being churned out by the likes of retired Air Vice Marshall and former Ambassador Shahzad Choudhry accusing India of cheating and worse, scoffing at Sachin Tendulkar. This is in poor taste and one can only draw the conclusion that Pakistan makes a poor loser. Besides, it was Pak Interior Minister Rehman Malik who led a maladroit charge against his own team when he warned them against match fixing. Naturally any media would latch on to this, especially in a high voltage encounter that was going to take place.

It was not about good or bad media coverage. All host countries including Pakistan play these games. Come to think of it was Afridi who targeted Sachin Tendulkar prior to the match in an interview. This is perfectly acceptable in these days of gamesmanship and media blitzkreig. It was not about Afridi but the circumstances that made his say this. He is now caught in a cleft stick. If he says that he made these comments of his own volition then this makes him a bigot. If he admits that he was forced to make this comment then it only proves that the same hidden power that killed Salman Taseer and prevented any fateha from being read for him or the Pakistan Parliament from condemning the killing and honoured the assassin, increasingly and ominously rules the roost. Obviously, Afridi will never be able to say he was forced to make this statement.

This is Pakistan’s problem, but this is an ominous trend because it is not only threatening Pakistan’s liberal section but has now begun to attack even the Father of the Taliban, Maulana Fazlur Rehman with two assassination bids. It is the same mindset that is on the rampage when three bomb blasts killed 40 innocents in the attack on the Sufi Sakhi Sarwar shrine near Dera Ghazi Khan in southern Punjab on April 3.

One does not have to be Hindutva follower or a right wing extremist to say this, nor is this wishful thinking, but the truth is that Pakistan is in deep trouble internally today. The country’s weakened liberal society is slipping into the Pastor Martin Neimoller syndrome (“Then they came for me and there was no one left to speak out for me”) as the Nazis rose to power in Germany with all its consequences.
It is fashionable to remain in denial but to Afridi’s gratuitous remark that ‘their’ (Indian) hearts are different from ‘ours’ (Muslim and Pakistani) all one can say is – “Thank God”