Sandipan Deb
What happened to Anushka Sharma, Virat Kohli’s girl-friend, for a
few hours on Thursday was nothing short of a medieval and despicable
witch hunt. The 20 hours or so after India was defeated in the ICC
World Cup semifinal by Australia have been a sort of mirror to our
society and our values and attitudes.
When India started its chase of 329 runs, I forwarded a message that
I had received from a friend: “Indians are very good at chasing
targets in the last week of March.” Someone replied: “Good one! But
only 11 Indians are working today!” Half an hour later, Virat Kohli
was out, scoring just one run off 13 deliveries, and the TV camera
was focusing on the dismayed face of his girl friend, actor Anushka
Sharma, sitting in the stadium.
Then it began. Instantly, someone… posted … in response to the
earlier post: “Only 10, not 11. Not
Mr Anushka.”
By evening, Anushka Sharma was the most publicly vilified Indian of
the day. Twitter went berserk. Nasty jokes about her and abuses
aimed at her proliferated. An idiotic attention-seeking small-time
actor even called for people to chuck stones at Anushka’s house.
Film director Ram Gopal Varma tweeted: “I personally like Anushka
Sharma’s performance much much More (sic) than the performance of
whoever and whatever her boyfriend is?” Emotionally unstable men
were calling up FM radio stations complaining that Anushka was
panauti for India, a Hindi word for something that brings bad luck.
The logic: India won all seven of their earlier games, and the first
game that Sharma comes to watch, India lose.
Sexual innuendos flourished. After all, Anushka and Virat are not
married, so she must be a loose woman, right, and fair game for any
vulgar calumny?
Some people somewhere even burnt some posters of her, after of
course making sure that there were TV cameras around. At night, one
particular English TV news channel went ballistic about India’s
loss, saying the team did not have the will to win, it was an abject
surrender, and that these 11 men had let down 1.25 billion people…..
About the Anushka episode... It simply revealed the worst-kept
secret about India. That we are still, to a large extent, a
regressive, misogynistic, irrational and superstitious society. This
attitude is not restricted to uneducated people. It’s there at every
level of the pyramid.
Perhaps these people did not even realize what they were doing meant
in a broader social context, and if that is true, this blind
insensitivity is even more disturbing. We descend into a mob
mentality at the slightest provocation. When we can find a woman to
blame, it’s a bonanza. What happened to Anushka for a few hours on
Thursday was nothing short of a medieval and despicable witch hunt.
A lot of Indians believe that the Indian team has signed a sacred
covenant with the nation that it will never ever lose. This, they
think, is one of the fundamental rights guaranteed to them…. They
cannot understand that other teams can be just better, or that our
team can just have a bad day. When the team wins, we treat the
players as demigods, and when it loses, suddenly, overnight, they
are the scum of the earth, and, of all things, unpatriotic.
This is immaturity of the lowest level. By late last night, the tide
had turned. Sane, rational and civilized India fought back and shut
the scum up. Social media was flooded with messages of rage, and
this time, correctly directed rage, at the people who had attacked
Anushka and the Indian team. It was civilized India’s response that
became the world’s most trending Twitter hashtag, and regressive
India was silenced. That is definitely cause for joy.
Quite wonderfully, the best comment I have read so far on the attack
on Anushka is a blogpost by Pakistani writer Zahra Peer. Here’s a
brief extract: “Some may suggest that the Twitterati firestorm
against Anushka Sharma is sexist. I, for one totally disagree. I
feel as though the people behind the onslaught are paying Anushka a
very high compliment in suggesting that she can so control one of
the best batsmen the world has ever seen. To be able to manage such
a feat would imply that one is a very powerful and capable woman
indeed, so more power to women and way to go Anushka. Pakistan—and
it appears Australia—needs many, many more women like you; women who
have the remarkable ability to make India lose a game. If India
won’t have you, we will gladly accept you with open arms. Hop along
the border and accept the role of Pakistan’s Mauka Mauka because if
it isn’t you, it can’t be anything or anyone else. Duh.”
You made my day, Peer. We Indians managed to prove we are good
people. As for the Indian team, you did a great job in the World
Cup. We never expected you to do so well. You had a bad day in
office in Sydney. It happens to all of us. Move on.
Anyway, when the Indian Premier League begins next month, all these
losers who are abusing you right now will have forgotten everything
and cheering for each of you. That’s the nature of this nation’s
engagement with cricket.