The rise of the cricket team of the Bangladesh Cricket Board (BCB) has undoubtedly been one of the fairy-tale stories of the cricketing word in recent years. The team, nicknamed the ‘Tigers’, have made cricket arguably the most popular sport in Bangladesh, following patterns elsewhere in the subcontinent. The team has evolved from being a pariah to a weak side whose test-playing status was questioned by others to a maverick side that could put up a tough fight to occasional giant killers to their present status as an important force in the world of cricket. The relationship of cricket and political-ideological feelings have always been part of its pull and vitality in Bangladesh.
During the East Pakistan period, cricket - like the state apparatus in general - had an unofficial ‘not welcome’ sign for those from East Bengal. Cricket had the image of being a game elites played, especially fair-skinned, sharif elites in the context of Pakistan. This attitude was brought out well from an account I had heard from a person who was visiting a veteran left-wing trade-unionist in Barisal, Bangladesh. The veteran fighter of the masses was irritated by the cricket enthusiasm of the young people of Barisal. He said, “Amago polapain khyalbe cricket? Cricket khyallbe Hanif Mohammed!”(translation: “Our boys will play cricket? Cricket is for the Hanif Mohammeds!”). Hanif Mohammed was a legendary cricketer from Gujarat, then West Pakistan, and this comment revealed his attitude about cricket and Bengalis being incompatible. Things have certainly changed since then, especially after Bangladesh’s World Cup appearance in 1999 and attainment of test-playing status in 2000.
The passions unleashed by the 1971 conflict have moved also to the world of cricket
Before the rise of the Bangladesh team, the cricketing audience's allegiances were divided between India and Pakistan
Notwithstanding the fact that popular cricket has long been a proxy for nationalism, both insurgent and assertive. Written off as a ‘basket case’ after 1971, the rise of Bangladeshi cricket has also been envisioned as the struggle of a underdog people, fighting against insurmountable odds, fired merely by their indomitable spirit. This echoes the popular narrative of the 1971 Bangladesh liberation struggle and nation-state formation itself. More than one politician from Bangladesh has associated wins against Pakistan in cricket as being revenge for 1971. Thus, cricket also comes with the hegemonic assumptions of a nation state. When the idea of the nation-state is a contested one, cricket also reflects these multiple contestations, by proxy. The political divides within Bangladesh continue to get refracted through the lens of cricket. Before the rise of the BCB team as a major cricketing power, the cricketing audience’s allegiances were mostly divided between the Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) and the Board of Cricket Control in India (BCCI) team. These divides were as much about domestic political attitudes and self-identities as they were about cricket and were best reflected during “India-Pakistan” matches. Support was defined more by what the supporter opposed more. Those for whom the ‘original sin’ of Pakistan and its state ideology defined their predominant dislike, came to support the BCCI team. Those for whom the regional hegemonic moves by India in general and anti-Bangladesh actions like border killings by BSF in particular serves as the primary dislike, PCB team was the one to support. On top of these, there were undercurrents, true and alleged, that made rounds. For example, the suggestion that the Hindus of Bangladesh tended to support India, with the innuendo that it is religion that ties these citizens to the Indian Union, which is their “natural” homeland as per the 1947 Partition’s logic. These attitudes have sad on-the-ground consequences in the form of harmless taunts to not-so-harmless aspersions about “disloyalty”. The similarities to the narrative in the Indian Union that Indian Muslims sercretly or overtly support Pakistan in cricket is unmistakable. On the other hand, support for Pakistan is made part of a narrative where shared Muslim-ness is the basis of support with the allegation that such support is a grave disrespect to the hundreds of thousands who were brutalised and killed in 1971 by Pakistani forces. This leads to the more damaging allegation that such support is a sign of being a ‘Pakistani collaborator’ or razakar political stance. Now, with Bangladesh being a viable team, much of these energies make themselves known in BCB vs PCB or BCB vs BCCI matches, where the pro-Bangladesh sentiment is at times coupled with anti-Pakistan or anti-India sentiment, as the case may be. Visible and well-known partisans of the BCCI and PCB team like Sudhir Gautam and Mohammad Bashir were alleged to have been manhandled when in Bangladesh. While the allegations were ultimately unsubstantiated, the popular discussions around them bring out earlier fault-lines. Recent political events also cast their shadow. This is particularly evident in the age of social media. India’s Border Security Force has the sordid record of regularly gunning down people it considers criminal trespassers from Bangladesh. Naturally, there is a strong sentiment against this in Bangladesh, especially in the context of relatively weak military prowess vis-a-vis the Indian Union as also its geostrategic location that links its economic life strongly to the Indian Union. This sense of powerlessness and unfairness was channelised by a Facebook picture that went viral a few years ago after a win of the BCB team over the BCCI (Indian) team. It showed a crouching tiger amidst tall south Bengal grass and was captioned “Amra kantatar-e noy, maathe mari” (translation: “We vanquish you in the cricket field, not in barbed wire”). The reference to the barb-wired Indo-Bangladesh border and the killings associated with that border is unmistakable.
The post-Partition nation-states of the subcontinent, whose hegemonic self-identities carry the indelible imprint of Partition-era fault-lines, make it very difficult for people to hold multiple loyalties or “wrong” loyalties. That is true for cricket too. Thus, it is not easy being a genuine fan of the BCCI or BCB or PCB team while being the citizen of the ‘wrong’ nation-state. When the BCB team wins big against some team other than the BCCI team, the press in West Bengal is typically jubilant. When the BCB team defeats the BCCI team, the loyalties of West Bengalis understandably remain unacknowledged, unpublished and un-discussed. No one can doubt that Bengal was partitioned in 1947 on the basis of religion, which conceived West Bengal as the predominantly Hindu Bengali homeland and East Bengal as the predominantly Muslim Bengali homeland - with the West faring much better than the East in providing security to its minorities. Nonetheless, it is a fact that there have been more Hindu East Bengalis playing for the BCB team at a given time than Hindu West Bengalis in any other international cricket team.
With corporate money and glitz riding high on cricket hyper-nationalism, the game is often reduced to war by other means. With cricket stars being elevated to the dubious status of warrior-gods, it is important that this phenomenon is put in the context of greater society, beyond nationalism and pride. Few are able to do that better than Mashrafe Mortaza, the philosopher-captain of the BCB team, who says, “I am a cricketer but can I save a life? A doctor can. But no one claps for the best doctor in the country. Create myths around them. They will save more lives. They are the stars. The labourers are the stars, they build the country. What have we built using cricket? Can we make even a brick using cricket? Does paddy grow on the cricket field? Those who make courtyards using bricks, make things at factories, grow crops in the fields - they are the stars.” Mashrafe goes on to bury any comparison between real Bangladesh liberation warriors of 1971 and cricket stars, “What do we do? If I say it very bluntly - we take money, we perform. Like a singer or an actor, we do performing art. Nothing more. The Muktijoddhad (liberation warriors) didn’t face bullets to get money on winning. Who is being compared to whom? If there are any heroes in cricket, they are Rakibul Hasans or martyrs like (Abdul Halim) Jewel...Rakibul Bhai had dared to enter the cricket field with ‘Joy Bangla’ inscribed on his bat (before 1971). That’s big. Even bigger was his going to the front with his father’s gun. Shohid (martyr) Jewel left cricket and joined the crack platoon (a 1971 guerilla formation). That is bravery. Dealing with fast-bowling has romanticism and duty, not bravery.” And he has this to say on cricket-based patriotism, “I say, those who cry ‘patriotism, patriotism’ around cricket, if all of them for one day did not drop banana skin on the streets or did not spit on the streets or obeyed traffic rules, the country would have changed. This huge energy was not wasted after cricket and was used to do one’s work honestly even for a day, that would be showing patriotism. I don’t understand the definition of patriotism of these people.”
Garga Chatterjee is a Kolkata-based commentator on South Asian politics and culture. He received his PhD from Harvard and is based at the Indian Statistical Institute, Kolkata. He blogs at hajarduari.wordpress.com
