Ricky pointing yesterday said in radio interview that he was shocked. Known as punter himself , he felt that allegation on pakistani team should be investigated to get to the root and he also suspected that it is culture of subcontinent. View which watson too subscribed too in more polite manner. Anil Kumble slammed this stating that it happened in west Indies , southafrica and even Australia . So it is global issue but not culture issue.
Anil has right to say what he said. For player who has played more than 17-18 years in upright way , he has right to slam anything like this but this culture thing needs little elaboration and should be taken in holistic view than just cricket.
When Jinnah came up with two nation theory ,he made up his case citing festivals,aspirations , role model , heros and such things. He argued that heros for Muslims are villains for Hindus and vice versa. He argued that there has always been two nations existing in India.
Jinnah had his way and pakistan was born. By definition word pakistan means ‘land of pure’. So land of pure was born with dream of providing land to subcontinent muslims.
Was pakistan dream bought by all muslims of subcontinent. Answer in no. Many stayed back in India while many moved to pakistan to live their life as per dream in which they were enrolled.
Now as 63 years have passed ,if we look back at all these years , amidst war between India and pakistan , issues like kashmir and terrorism , there are many things which are common in India and Pakistan,Bangladesh.
The number one thing which is common in all three is high level of corruption. Out of 163 countries surveyed , Bangladesh comes is 155 ranked , Pakistan is 134 ranked. India managed to improve its position and is now ranked 84th. So there are 83 more countries in the world which are less corrupted than India but that also means that India is highly corrupted.
Another thing common in Bangladesh , India and Pakistan is governance. While Pakistan and Bangladesh being small countries have often been bullied by army ,India has had democracy barring brief period of emergency . Still highlight of governance in all three countries is lack of accountability , divide and rule , fear based politics.
Since India is home to all religions , division in name of religion is easy. India being home of Hinduism , caste based politics is also easy and what caste,religion can’t do region can obviously do. When all fails , Pakistan’s name is good enough to get the job done.
Pakistan on other hand has 96% Muslims so religion based politics is not lucrative. But region based is. Taking hardline stand and blaming raw,mossad,cia aiming at only Muslim nuclear equipped country comes handy. Similar is story of Bangladesh.
Governance uses tool of corruption ,right from filling personal bank accounts to wooing voters.
When Jinnah called Muslims and Hindus as two different nation ,what he forgot was culture and common heritage. While all three countries share rich heritage and ancient civilizations , in same way it shares minus of that and one of the big minus point is corruption. In great history of Indian subcontinent , cases of betrayal,bribes in form of cash or post too makes its presence felt.We have role models of Ram ,harishchandra in India a stats says it all. Corruption has really become part of subcontinent lives and no matter how much we call ourselves different , we are more same than we think we are. We may call ourselves hindus or muslims but what binds us is common problem.
As scotland yard continues its investigation , it is time to look within and ask ourselves ‘do we have culture of corruption?’. The place which produced bhagat singh , chandrshekar azad , tilak , subash , even non corrupted jinnah and mahatma gandhi , the same place has deep rooted corruption in the sytem , in one’s life.
