Jay Patel
“A very happy Diwali from me to you and your families. May God bless you with peace, prosperity and happiness this Diwali,”
“Please remember do not burst crackers, protect the environment and have fun at home with your loved ones with a simple Diya and sweets on this auspicious occasion. God bless you all. Take care.”
Above is the tweet of Virat Kohl for which fans of him took the twitter on strome and accused him for being Hypocrite on the bases that the 32 year old Caption himself celebrated his birthday in the UAE with firecrackers just a few days ago before the occasion of Diwali. Reactions to the above tweet were ranging from abusing him to accusing him for turning into an elite celebrity who is spreading hinduphobia .
If we see the whole incident and similar events from the intersection of history, sports and religion, remembering the essay “Cricket and Politics in Colonial India” by Ramachandra Guha would be a good start. Cricket was brought to India in the middle of the eighteenth century by British soldiers and sailors. Guha notes that The Hindus started playing cricket partly in a spirit of competitive communalism, for in Bombay they had a long-standing social and business rivalry with the Parsis. At this time the gulf, admittedly, was huge, so much that some early matches were billed as ‘Natives with Bats versus Officers with Umbrellas’- Guha notes.
Cecil Headlam, a historian of medieval European towns notes: “First the hunter, the missionary, and the merchant, next the soldier and the politician, and then the cricketer – that is the history of British colonisation.”
Fast forwarding to the present time, The cricket in India is as influential as a religion and context sensitive society like India (and Pakistan) is going to watch over every move of the players they support and worship them like God.
On such occasions Netizens don’t leave a stone unturned to bring personal accounts of the person in question. The same happened with V.Kohli who was accused of using 100s of liters of water to wash the car and accused of spending millions on his wedding with a tagline practice what you preach.
One user wrote in reply to the above tweet : Diwali is celebrated traditionally by lighting lamps (diyas) not by burning noisy polluting crackers. When Lord Ram returned to Ayodhya he was not welcomed by exploding Laxmi bombs!
Animal sacrifice is central to Id while crackers have got nothing to do with Diwali. Understand? How much cracker ban is effective to curb air pollution is a separate debate and needs another space of an article but here the interesting phenomena is how a message intended to give a positive message is perceived as a threat on majority religious identity. Symbolic connection between festivity of Hindu Festivals, a wish of a favorite sportsman and expectations of mass about the message of that wish shouldn’t be avoided.
It is obvious that natizen will draw a parallel between the past wishes on certain other festivals of different religions. One of Kohli’s well wisher wrote, “Hey Kohli, charity begins from home.Please ask yourself and your liberal wife to be consistent across festivals. Also if you want to be a role model, stop behaving like a brat child on the field, people are following you.”
The common themes emerging out of the conversation around the message of caption are as below. Now Indians have started taking cricket as a professional business and they don’t want any advice regarding how a festival should be celebrated. Second theme was why only selectively advising on one festival and staying silent on similar environmental hazards while observing other festivals of different religions.
One Account on twitter, known for fact checking and busting myth regarding history, True Indology wrote in a reply,
In Summer
When Indians face acute shortage of drinking water
This man uses 1000s of liters of drinking water to wash his cars. Even as his neighbors struggle
to find enough drinking water.
Come Diwali & the hypocrite suddenly remembers environment
The writer continues
Your private jet emits 20 times more CO2 than an airline.
One trip leads to more emission than 2500 average kids bursting crackers. Not to speak of your
SUVs.
These celebs destroy the environment more than anyone else. But can’t tolerate Hindus having
fun for a day. Hypocrites!
The whole conflict can be seen as a mismatch of expectations of the certain elements of the fan base vs what a role-model of society wants to include in his message. One interesting example would be Danish Kaneria, an indian origin hindu player from the team of Pakistan who wished to the followers using a small video message which was hailed by netizens with great zeal.
Cover Point: Here is One interesting event noted in Guha’s essay, In December 1926, the Marylebone Cricket Club, the London institution that is reckoned to be the centre of world cricket, sent out a team to tour India. Hosting a dinner for the visitors, the president of the Hindu Gymkhana boasted that through sport they ‘had been able to bring about considerable social reform among Hindus’. The doors of the Gymkhana, he said, ‘were open to every Hindu including an Untouchable and the Gymkhana had thus been able, through cricket, to remove the barriers of caste’. The intent of this statement was clear – that since high-caste Hindus had given Untouchables a square deal, it was time for the British to start playing on equal terms with the Indians, in cricket and in politics as well.
Cricket in India is always seen as a medium of unified nationalism but It looks like it’s time for Indian Cricketers to start wishing for Equal terms on every festivities.
