Everyone can recall the international cricketing community being forced to bend their knee for Black Lives Matter. An American movement that claims to speak for the rights of the black community which went roaring up after the “George Floyd police brutality case” in 2020. Seldom the supporters of this movement talk of the violence it caused in USA over the years. Anyways our focus is on our people, our cricket team. Every player across the international cricketing Community followed the protocol obediently but one, Quinton de Kock. He was the only one who resisted politics being shoved down people’s throat as some justice movement. And even he was later forced to bend knee for it.
But let”s put our focus back to the Indian Team. Is Black Lives Matter related to India? Does it have anything to do with our issues? Do we lack our own issues, so we resort to focus on western issues?
From here let’s jump to the Shami incident. Let me jog it down your memory lane. When India lost to Pakistan in T-20 WC last year. Shami was attacked online, over his religion. Especially on twitter. Later it was found out that a lot of the attacks were orchestrated by Pakistan to dent India”s image as a nation. And to sing in unison with the “India is getting intolerant” narrative which is a mere political notion and not the ground reality.
Now Virat Kohli the next day jumped up and defended Shami like he should have and said “Targeting someone over their religion is the lowest a human can fall”. True Virat, it’s very True. But only if you were a bit more consistent, people could have actually respected you.
Remember Virat, just two months before this India-Pak match something was taking place right across our borders. Some people were being targeted over their religion. Remember? It was Bangladesh. Where Hindus were being lynched and killed, Idols of Durga Maa were being desecrated by a radical Islamist front Jamaat-e-Islami. Hindus of Bangladesh spent their Durga Puja in pain and grief, in fear and despair.
Where were you, Virat? Or where were all the virtue signaling cricketers and celebs who come up with ” No to firecracker ” agendas on Diwali, and ” Save Water” propagandas on Holi. Who can bend their knee for Black Lives Matter, but can’t lend out even one word for the horrible lives our fellow co-religionists have to live right across borders because of Extremism.
And don’t for a moment think this silence comes with zero repercussions. According to a report done by a Bangladeshi professor, no Hindus will be left in Bangladesh in the next 30 years. Yes, you heard me right. It talks about the ever shrinking population of Hindus in Bangladesh, mostly due to Islamic extremism. Hindu population was 28% during the 1940s and today it’s below 9%.
Constant attacks from radical Islamists have either forced the Hindus to convert, to leave Bangladesh and settle abroad or even die. Sounds like a ” Raliv, Galiv, Chaliv ” moment doesn”t it? It hasn”t reached that level yet, but the extremism against Hindus is increasing in Bangladesh day by day and if we stay silent, like our Cricketers and Bollywood Celebs and say nothing against this slow genocide of our fellow Bangladeshi Hindus then it might one day end up in that.
Because remember once a wise man said, ” For evil to win, it takes good men to do nothing”. Decide today who you want to be. A silent watcher or a vocal activist who wants to save lives and the quality of lives of people who have no real voice, for whom international community is deaf, for whom speaking out isn”t as cool as going to a UNICEF camp, for whom even Indian govt is silent at times because it disturbs the relations between the two nations and also shows how ineffective Indian govt can be at influencing her neighbours and how incompetent Indian govt can be in forcing their neighbours to treat their minorities better.
Remember, no one took the rising extremism seriously enough in the 80s and then “The Kashmiri Pandit Genocide” took place. Let’s not make more Kashmirs, and hope lives of people can be better all across, despite religion, despite creed, ethnicity or class. All lives shall matter equally in the eyes of all humans. Peace.
