Author: D. Sampathkumar
Publication: The Hindu Business Line
Date: April 6, 2011
URL: http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/opinion/article1602669.ece?homepage=true
For someone who has spent more time on the
playing fields of cricket than mastering the intricacies of language, Shahid
Afridi, captain of the Pakistani cricket team, has demonstrated a rare sophistication
in the artful juxtaposition of two collective nouns to produce a narrow sectarian
view point, and yet remain politically correct in his assertion.
Answering a question by a TV correspondent
as to what it felt to be playing in India and in front of a throng of Indian
audience, he replied, "In my opinion, if I have to tell the truth, they
(Indians) will never have hearts like Muslims and Pakistanis. I don't think
they have the large and clean hearts that Allah has given us"
Nuanced response
Note the expressions 'Muslims' and 'Pakistanis'.
It is easy to see how the words 'Muslims' or 'Pakistani' used in isolation
would not have sufficed. Saying that Pakistanis possessed larger and purer
hearts would have offended his sense of a pan-national collective identity
built around the principles of Islamic brotherhood, especially with the Muslims
of India.
I suppose he must also have been acutely alive
to the fact that while Pakistan has made rapid strides since Independence,
to impose a monolithic identity built around an allegiance to Islam among
its citizens, it cannot still claim 100 per cent success in its efforts. A
minority of the population still steadfastly holds on to a belief in the religious
dogmas of Christianity or Hinduism or Sikhism. On the other hand, structuring
a response around a claim that Muslim heart beats to a different rhythm must
have appeared as politically incorrect, if not downright obnoxious. Hence
the juxtaposition of the two collective nouns which while professing to assert
a belief in a sense of national superiority, yet leaves no one doubt as to
what he actually had in mind.
No ranting chauvinist
Now, Shahid Afridi's comments cannot be dismissed
as the ranting of a rabid chauvinist. While he is not quite the member of
the rich, anglicised, Pakistani elite, he is no country bumpkin herding cattle
in the rural heartland of Pakistan either. He is as mainstream as they come.
What is more, as a member of the Pakistani national cricket team he has seen
something of the world. If such a person entertains a stridently anti-Indian
sentiment, what chance does a 'no mandate to change borders, but can make
borders irrelevant' brand of external diplomacy that the Prime Minister, Dr
Manmohan Singh, lays so much emphasis on?
Such is the daunting nature of the challenge
of shaping a South Asian identity and inculcating a sense of shared identity
among Pakistanis that the Prime Minister has resolved to achieve that it would
need many terms of office than the little over three years that is left of
his current term.
