There are some incidents that get forgotten as time goes by. However, the learnings from them shouldn’t. So let us talk about two very similar tales from India and how we reacted and moreover, no one really compared these two.
Sometime back, India lost terribly to the rival Pakistan in a cricket match during T20 world cup of men. There was communal slur thrown by allegedly Indian fans post the match at Shami, who is one of India’s finest fast bowlers. First things first, if anyone brings communal angle or questions the integrity of sportsperson, such fans are to be abhorred. They do not deserve any justification whatsoever, period. Needless to say, such fans do not represent any significant size of Indian population. But wait, did any Indian actually said so? We don’t know. Was there any “proof” that such comment originated in India or who said so? It must be remembered that given the influence of social media, quite likely that someone with a motive to defame India could have easily have made that comment with or without a VPN. So we do not know if some Indian actually made that comment. Quite elementary, isn’t it?
But without getting into any deliberation of whether it was actually made by countrymen or the implications of raising such comments, our so called sporting legends started the rat race as to who “stands with” Shami in such a “terrible” time. Needless to say that there are several vultures out there who are always looking to defame India in name of secularism and minority protection and they took advantage of this desperate attempt with both hands. As several big shots tweeted, western fraternity, even some of the fence sitters would have felt like questioning India’s secularism.
In such a scenario, no one would have actually taken a step back and asked themselves that if India was so so communal why most of the India’s biggest superstars, scientists, sportsperson are from minority. Let us come to the tale of second India. An Indian female athlete, possibly one of the biggest sporting superstar India has ever produced, Saina Nehwal, said something which seemed to suggest something positive about India’s government. To one of India’s liberal “hero”, ironically it was not acceptable. The second grade hero said something on his verified twitter handle, which would bring shame to any parent for having given birth to such pathetic human.
Even the fact that the terrible double meaning sexually loaded comment was made by a man to a woman, did not matter to the feminists. The same sportsperson who were on bullet train to quickly comment on Shami case did not find it suitable to even call it unfortunate for a comment made to a fellow sportsperson. Compare an unverified comment to that of a tweet by a blue tick and guess which one garnered the attention of our sporting superstars, and that my friends, is the story of two Indias where just because you are on “right” side of spectrum, you do not deserve to be stood up with, no matter you are a woman, a champion or both. But guess what Saina, after this, you are bigger superstar than all of them put together.
