Cultures invade games as effectively as games invade cultures. Cricket, the game of the English lords invaded British India to conquer the hearts of Pakistanis and Indians alike but was in turn conquered by the informality of culture of these nations. I cannot say how far the commoners of India are inclined to play the game in their streets or parks as I have not been there but I do know that in Pakistan the common man is not only a spectator but is often found playing the game wherever something approaching a pitch is available and objects that resemble a bat and ball may be had. Starting from the wooden writing boards of village children to the bats of champions and from the plastic balls used as toilet floats through tennis balls to the finest leather equipment, Pakistani innovation in finding a way to satisfy the will to play cricket knows no bounds. A break in the school routine, a pause in traffic along a road, a gap between appointments, any unit of time large or small can be filled with a bit of cricket; even a suited babu may step out of his car on the way home.
Barring the extra posh elite, the cricket playing area [I advisedly abstain from calling it a field] is, like the mosque, a great equalizer in Pakistan. The boss’ son will join a domestic servant in the game, both being valued for their skill rather than their social station. They will rib and appreciate each other on equal footing, imitating the style and action of their favorite heroes in the national or international circuit. This phenomenon may be seen in posh localities like Gulberg in Lahore as also in cantonments in other cities, as well as the more ordinary habitats of Pakistan. As a result, aspirants to the national team come from all backgrounds: rural, urban, illiterate, less educated, and those having the best western education that money can buy. This makes the unpredictable motley crowd we have.
You can tell them apart, the elite who play cricket and the commons, when they mingle. From their accent and the content of their speech, each class retains its identity. This is remarkable only because in all other games, generally either the elite will play it and the commons will not [like golf] or the commons will play it [like volleyball] and the elite will not. If by chance, both categories are active in a sport [like squash] the arenas will generally be separate and, respect for skill apart, the class distinction will remain.
Whatever the quality that sets cricket apart as a unifying sport for Pakistanis, it leads to communication between two relatively exclusive communities. Since I will have much of the Pakistani elite up in arms against me for alleging that they are elitist, let me hasten to qualify and clarify. As all Pakistanis, who have the means, are likely to employ servants, and because they are generally proud of ‘caring’ for their servants, subordinates and poor people in their neighbourhood, they have a broad interface and deep interaction with the non-elite in their range of activity. However, this is not ‘as equals’.
On a personal level, every member of the Pakistani elite has a clear understanding of the society with which they interact. In fact, intuitively, many of them are ‘commoners’ in all except their wealth. Many others retain the common touch in many fields of activity and are ‘typical Pakistanis’ in the day to day conduct of their lives. But when it comes to their political self, most non-politicians belong to an imaginary polity that they wish would be the polity of Pakistan. In order to relate these ideals to ground realities, divergent groups of the Pakistani elite must make a deliberate attempt to resolve mutual anomalies.
Any realist will be quick to recognize, if for no other reason, then the fact that this article is in English, that westernism cannot be surgically removed from our society. I believe that most of the commons are aware of this and reconciled to it, not ‘resigned’, but more ‘willingly inclined’ to accept that which does not go against the grain with them, and to a process of adaptation for the rest so long as their culture is not challenged.
It is the idealism of some of the elite [and I count both the Western-Modernism enthusiast and the Oriental-Islamic orthodoxy as elite] which makes them resist the inevitable; that is the mixing of the cultural implant of the west, the religious dogma and commandments of the Muslim ‘fundamentalist’ and the parochial traditions evolved over the ages through the absorption of ethnicities, beliefs and practices that took centuries in the making.
The cricket field has the ability to bring them together as equals. In a commentary box on a Pakistani TV channel, Rameez Raja is likely to start without preamble with: “hello Faisal…”, Faisal will reply “ BismillahirRehmanirRaheem”. However, neither Rameez, nor any of his cohort, even the semi-outsider Sanjay Manjrikar for that matter, is likely to be insensitive to the counter culture of the Pakistanis. The Desi commentator is even less likely to ignore the Vilayati-ness of the game and its cultural implications. Much though it goes against the grain with me to say so, those of us who wish to see and or seek some kind of national integration in Pakistan may do well to observe our cricket in action.
The child of a rape can no more reject the genes of the father than those of the mother, no matter how much s/he resents either or both. Even America, the guru of the secular, has to aver, in God we trust and none can declare the terms ‘crusade’ and ‘cross to bear’ to be ‘politically incorrect’. To have been born in a Muslim majority country is a cross that all secular minded persons must bear in Pakistan. A democratic decision making system is as tedious a shackles that will inhibit all “Muslim Fundamentalists”. We, the people, have the key and hold the balance; but ‘We’ are not proactive, and are unlikely to be.
This is not to say that ‘We’ are not active, or that ‘We’ are not acting at will. It is merely to say that ‘We’ are not activists spearheading a concerted effort. However, ‘We’ are, one and all, pursuing the business of life, making practical cultural adjustments within the sum of our heritage, sometimes without any attached value judgment; sometimes contrary to our preferred values; and sometimes in pursuit of our preferred values. The aggregate of these life-choices is gradually creating a ‘national choice’ or consensus. What the elite must understand is that unless ‘They’ participate in the process, the choice will be slow and tortuous and the end result may be more different from ‘their’ preferences than it had to be. I believe that the elite which takes the lead in making a compromise between the three strains I have identified above [and the various components they comprise of] is most likely to give the commons an acceptable leadership for the future.
Instead of wasting our energies in pushing for an agenda that is not going to get support from the nation, we should find an agenda integrating our national commonalities and an aim that is inclusive of the various ‘pulls’ that our society is subjected to. Let us learn to play political cricket where the players [including politicians at all levels and bureaucrats of all establishments] are united in the joint effort of performing in the field with different skills of balling, wicket keeping, running and catching in the several positions which they need for various ballers. Perhaps this will also rub off on our cricketers in the field, where their political culture mirrors the national scene in dragging us down.