The ‘Sheeda’ Factor

JUNE 2001 - As crowds of Pakistani flag bearing hooligans charged into the grounds at cricket matches that Pakistan played in the Natwest Trophy in England, there was nothing to do but grind one’s teeth and hang one’s head in shame. Are we not vilified enough in the world that we must now add this despicable spectacle of frenzied mobs running amok to that long and sorry list? Who are these people and from which cesspool have they risen?

Pakistan’s image – actually we have no image, has taken a battering for years. The west praised us lavishly for a few years when it suited them to tout us as the great barrier against forces of evil – the Russians in Afghanistan. Then, we were the great upholders of all the great virtues of the free world. It didn’t matter that it was yet another general who had usurped power and executed an elected prime minister. Neither did it bother democracy-loving west at the time that the man was a usurper and a bigot. Once the necessity was over, we were abandoned with millions of refugees, heroin, drugs, klashnikovs, prostitution and bigoted fundos as our new friends. Now so firmly embedded are they in our national life that we can hardly recall a time when we didn’t have them. Hollow and ceremonial sermons duly croaked out are no solution.

Today, more than ever, the green passports of our nationhood we carry cause decent Pakistanis to cringe at every airport. We are irrevocably linked with terrorists and fundamentalists. When people like Osama Bin Laden are mentioned, invariably, so are we. Our economy is a joke and so is our democracy, which tainted as it was, has been booted out by the new paratrooper. Who said Ayub Khan is dead? Instead of leaders, we have thugs and swindlers and every now and then, the army jumps in, fired by simplistic notions of standing by the nation in its hour of need. The hour of need is usually half a dozen years or more, till another swindler gets in and then, like the proverbial bad penny, the army is back. In the meantime, the country is looted and raped at will, laws are broken or completely ignored, the rich go on multiplying their largely ill gotten wealth and bank balances and properties abroad, continue to flourish. There are either floods here or drought and corruption is the national religion, creed and way of life. Piety, our much-prostituted middle name, is raised up as our reason to be, but its practice is alien to our corrupted way of life.

Everyone in Pakistan is out to make a fast buck, preferably illegally and even more preferably, by cheating someone else. Officials extort money on any pretext. Powerful officials extort enormous amounts. Petty thieves do the same, only the scale is different. Every department is ridden with corrupt and greedy men, whose mission in life is to acquire money without legal means. The income tax, police, customs, gas, water and power people, transporters, lawyers, doctors, engineers, professionals – everyone is committed to fleece, extort and obtain money or privileges that is not theirs in the first place. The term ‘failed state’ gets the goat of most Pakistanis but look at the dollars that flow out every day and the visa lines at the Islamabad embassies of USA, Canada and other countries. This is a sinking ship which has just about sunk. The rats, clever fellows, shipped out their valuables long ago. They will abandon ship at just the right time. The ordinary people, the miserable wretches, will die a miserable death anyway, but then who cares? Pakistan was made so that crooks could make money.

And into all this, cricket. The Pakistani cricket reporters, who have filed dispatches on every match, have failed to quote the drubbing the English press has given to the crowds and the Pakistan team. The English have been a pathetic side and watching Australia cut them into shreds, trouncing them by 8 wickets and 20 overs to spare, was a sight for sore eyes. As they have slunk into defeat after defeat, the partisan and bloody-minded English press has laid it into the Pakistani players, for whom the choicest venom has been used. There is an epidemic of innuendos and implied mischief in every newspaper. Michael Henderson and Simon Hughes of The Telegraph have spared no effort to malign the team. Screams one headline, ‘Waqar leads disgraceful intimidation.’ ball tampering by Waqar Younis cut no ice with the authorities, but Simon Hughes reported it anyway. Inzi’s running is described as ‘waddling’ and his outburst with Cork, ‘Inzi flew into a terrible bate, as though some light-fingered rascal had made off with his dinner.’ And when Waqar complained that his players had not been given enough credit, Henderson retaliates writing, ‘made one wonder which papers he had been reading or, more to the point, whether he had just been looking at the pictures’ – an obvious crack at Waqar’s lack of education. And so it goes on. Credit is given, but grudgingly and the smallest error, remark or incident that puts the Pakistan team in bad light, is amplified. The English side, not much better than many of the local sides who play in small towns of Pakistan, have largely been spared and the odd performance or two, painted in glorious prose. This is deep-rooted prejudice and it’s centuries old. No amount of education is going to erase it.

It is against such a background that the crowd invasions by ill-behaved louts, is so hard to accept. There is absolutely no justification for it and Steve Waugh has rightly said, ‘you can’t control idiots, can you?’ In their demented state, these fans have torn our thin skin of remaining pride and brought shame on us and our country. Whether they are illiterate morons who have arrived in UK to enjoy cricket, Marks & Spenser and what have you, or locals, mixed stock or exports from Gujranwala, their behaviour has been shameful. In the Middle East, our brethren – make no mistake about this, regard us with contempt, because the only Pakistanis they come across is servile labour. In England, the immigrants by and large, are law abiding, but those who have broken the rules are no friends of Pakistan cricket or Pakistan. That they have done it again knowing that the English cops will not beat them like ours do here and the stewards are powerless anyway. They have violated the trust of the ground authorities and they deserve widespread condemnation. It is sad because it reaffirms to millions the tardy image they have of us anyway. If anyone needed to confirm that we are without a shred of discipline, self-respect or maturity, the cricket matches have been good testing grounds. Add to it the hypocrisy of the English press, their team’s abject performance and their deep-rooted prejudice and you have a foul cocktail.

Only our country loses out in the end. Ill-informed opinions are strengthened into hard beliefs and the walls of hatred turn a little thicker. The hooligans, faceless and anonymous, will down a few more pints, fold up their precious green and white flags and gloat over their performance. Little do the morons know about the burden they have placed on our sagging shoulders.