Author: Avinash Dharmadhikari
Publication: Maharashtra Times (Marathi Daily)
Date: January 17, 2008
(Article translated from Marathi Daily)
Umpires hijacked the Sydney cricket match.
The arrogant and threatening players of Australia corroborated that plan and
its execution. Moreover, they kidnapped the presence of Harbhajan Singh who
was consistently 'capturing' the wicket of Ricky Ponting. The religious Cricket
lovers spread across India were bound to be dreadfully furious at this. Everybody
was of the opinion not to seek a compromise with the crooked and domineering
opponents. But our leaders were singing the same old song of amity, and formal
opposition by first watching the situation, with the ideas of making appeal
or underlining the so-called and ill-fitted principles of sportsmanship to
this burning situation. There strategy of having faith in the enemy's courtesy
that has continued for centuries together was visible once again.
Everything happening till then was in accordance
with our country's tradition of surrendering to the injustice inflicted and
touching the knees before the aggressors. Passing remarks like, 'Let us bear
with them. This much of domination is expected and we should live with it',
too is not uncommon. This has throughout been the immortal philosophy propagated
by our culture. The masses are willing to rebel but the leaders' remaining
silent too is quite according to our tradition. While Draupadi is being humiliated,
what else had Yudhishthira had done other than sticking to his chair and what
else Bhishmacharya whispered but 'Money rules everybody' (in Sanskrit : Arthasya
BCCI Dasaha'). But for the first time, the Sudarshan-Chakra roared out of
the Indian cricket team so much so that the team India disembarked from the
bus, unloaded their bags and rallied unanimously against the unjust treatment
meted out to Harbhajan Singh.
This had never happened earlier. The warrior-like
spirited cricketer Sudhir Naik was accused of theft and he had had to return
alone from the tour of England. Even Dilip Vengsarkar too was humiliated like
this and nobody from the team had questioned it as though it was Vensarkar's
personal issue. But now the young Turks valiantly retaliated and refused to
travel to Canberra. Only after feeling the heat erupted in the minds of Indians,
did the series organizers revised their stance to say, 'Enough is enough'.
Now the white teams habituated to dominate us right from hockey to history
offered their piece of criticism by saying, 'Nothing doing. Everything happening
is correct indeed'. Even the match referee Mike Proctor had earlier expressed,
'Nobody has witnessed what exactly went wrong between Harbhajan and Andrew
Symonds and that only Sachin was present in the vicinity'. But the same 'gentleman'
Proctor went scot free by only listening to the accusations of the Australian
player before announcing the punishment for Harbhajan Singh and he did not
even bother to take Sachin's opinion into account. On the contrary, he started
justifying himself by saying, 'I am a South African player and I do understand
the meaning of racial discrimination. I am not against India and my decision
is quite correct.
If this is so, then what is the meaning of
what he spoke on the live telecast ?. Besides, it is true that Proctor belongs
to South Africa but which South African era does he represent ?. Proctor hides
the glaring truth that he belongs to that South African era of white players
there when they were implementing the policy of racial discrimination and
Indian Government had officially proclaimed its boycott to play with South
Africa. In this entire mess the awful behavior of the second umpire went unnoticed.
First he asked Ponting whether Clarke indeed caught the catch of Ganguly.
Ponting seizes the opportunity and raises his finger and then the umpire follows
the suit to raise his finger too and then goes to the extent of threatening
a journalist who questioned Ponting for these actions. Even the ICC led by
Malcom Speed voice that Steve Buckner will not be removed. Through this momentum
alone, did Indian leaders realize their commercial and monetary strength that
70% of the entire world's (official and moral) cricket turnover belongs to
India alone.
It is true that Steve Buckner has been removed
but the allegations made against Harbhajan are still not withdrawn. Worst
still, Australians addressing Indians as 'racist' is the uppermost limit of
heretics. How can the word - 'Monkey' - pronounced by Harbhajan be termed
as 'racist' ?. Monkey is the ancestor of entire mankind and why should we
humiliate entire mankind's ancestor by calling Symonds alone as monkey.
In totality, we lost the match because of
our lack of spirit to remain valiant till the last player not because we lacked
the qualities necessary to win a match. The spirit that taps these qualities
was absent. We pat our own backs for concluding a match into a draw rather
than striving to win it. We feel satisfied for winning a tournament with the
score of 1-0 which can be won actually with the score of 2-0. it has been
our tradition to lose the courage much needed to seize the victory with little
more efforts if our leader is knocked out. Not only this but we win the battles
and lose them while imposing our terms on the opponents. We apply all our
strength to quarrel among ourselves and yet welcome our enemies at home. But
we rebel only after being lampooned only to surrender once fake promises are
made to us. We deem ourselves triumphant once Steve Buckner is sacked and
Harbhajan's punishment is suspended. The real triumph is yet to dawn because
the allegations made against Harbhajan are not yet withdrawn completely. Steve
Buckner has gone away but not his lingering shadow ?.
Frankly speaking, this whole test match itself
be declared as 'unofficial'. Nobody has raised this demand but, I think, that
the 'Team India' is aware that their real war begins from now because the
third and the fourth tests are yet to be won.
The masses rebelled when cricket match was
hijacked. Even the media played a key role to voice the Indian concern against
the accusation of India being a racist nation which, no doubt, was indeed
a slap on the face of Indian self esteem. But this hijack reminds me the day
when IC814 airplane's hijack episode that occurred in our country during December
1999. I fail to remember any instance that the entire nation had rebelled
and neither the media had played its role the same way it has played now.
On the contrary our media had glorified the tour of Pakistan President Parvez
Mushsharraf and had made him a 'hero' to the extent of enthusiastically proving
how our Government was pursuing a wrong approach in its bid to rescue the
hostage passengers. The nation that unanimously proposes not to make a compromise
with Cricket Australia had not adopted the same stand against the ruthless
terrorists for hijacking the IC814 from Kathmandu airport and nor do I remember
our leadership being bold enough to forewarn the terrorist and their supporters
by stating, 'Dare you touch our passengers……'. I fail to remember
a single instance of the realization among our leaders that if they would
release dreaded terrorists today for the safety of 158 passengers then their
cowardice will culminate into the same terrorists attempting to cut the throat
of 1580 innocent men and women in future. On the contrary, our Union Minister
of External Affairs personally escorted those terrorists in Kandahar and shamelessly
congratulated the Taliban forces present there for the safe release of our
passengers (whether money was given is never known). The same squad of terrorists
released played a leading role in demolishing the World Trade Centre towers
in United States and also in butchering the throat of Mr. Daniel Pearl, the
Wall Street Journal's journalist by inviting him for an interview. It was
later discovered that these terrorists had also played a role in conducting
the video shooting of that barbarous act.
I remember, 6 months prior to the IC814 episode,
the Kargil war had aroused the self respect of the entire nation and even
the media had shouldered its moral responsibility well in portraying the truth
of Kargil but the same nation and its people were worried whether their year
end fun will get spoilt because f the airplane hijack and hundreds of others
were calm at that time. Even after the release of passengers not an iota of
zeal 'with an oath of Raja Shivaji' was visible to do anything against the
forces behind IC814 episode. What I clearly remember, however, is the treatment
meted out to Afzal Guru.
A brutal terrorist attack was carried out
on 13th December 2001 to blow the Indian Parliament, the highest symbol of
India's democracy. Security personnel offered their lives for the safety of
what terrorists intended to devastate. They safeguarded the lives of scores
of Members of Parliament and their sacrifice was compensated with a handful
of few medals. But the mercy petition of the terrorist leader Afzal Guru remains
unresolved even after following a judicial process that proved and declared
him guilty of waging a war against the nation. The height of shamelessness
is that Hon. Shri. Abdul Kalam, who came to know that the coveted office of
being India's president was rejected to him for the second term because he
was too efficient and competent, declared that the concerned file of Afzal
Guru's mercy petition had not even reached his desk till the last day he held
that office - and even after this declaration everything is still the same
as it was.
Probably we are waiting for one more airplane
to get hijacked for the safe release of Afzal Guru. I sincerely pray that
India's awakening shining in last few years does not remain restricted to
the domain of Cricket alone and let India rule the world not by aggression
or bloodshed but through its intrinsic strength and competence. I pray, let
this zeal to be the world leader too not remain restricted to the sphere of
cricket alone.
